Machinima, real-time filmmaking, virtual production and VR. Four veteran machinimators share news, new films & filmmakers, and discuss the past, present and future of machinima.
Phil Rice 00:35
Hello and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, the podcast slash YouTube show about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. I'm Phil Rice, and I'm here with my co hosts, Damian Valentine, Ricky Grove and Tracy Harwood.
Ricky Grove 00:54
Hello there.
Phil Rice 00:55
Hey there. So today, we're gonna focus on Tracy's pick for the week. This is a well I'll be honest, I after watching this, I don't know exactly how it was made. I want to say some advanced tool like I'm gonna guess. Maybe Cinema 4D or blender one of those two. But it has a machinima feel for sure. It's a blend of World of Warcraft and elements of Cyberpunk 2077, which we've seen mixes of that before, but I don't think we've ever seen it executed to this level. This is an amazing pick. Tracy, tell us about it.
Tracy Harwood 01:41
Absolutely. Well, I loved this one I saw it's called Neo Stormwind WOW Machinima and it's by Duren and it was released in August and during is a French machinima filmmaker. And basically what he's done is he's used assets from World of Warcraft. I think he said Heroes of Storm which is another Blizzard game, Overwatch, Hearthstone and Cyberpunk 2077. And so far as I understand it, it's been made using the WOW model viewer and export tools with Cinema 4D, After Effects Premiere Pro, as has Gigapixel and Shader Map. Its a pretty looks a pretty detailed process to me. Wow. Yeah. But basically, I kind of love this combination of cyber, Cyberpunk and World of Warcraft, they just seem so complimentary. Yeah. Stormwind is is basically a human city in World of Warcraft, and it's the capital of Azeroth. I guess you guys will already know that. I had to check that out. But this has been very much integrated into the Cyberpunk world such you almost don't know what's World of Warcraft. And what's Cyberpunk. It's, it's, it's really great kind of work on that combination front. I think basically, what's going on here is the story is centering on this character. And these upgrades in in a cyberpunk kind of way. And it includes this well, basically they're including robotic hardware which just kind of lift it a little bit further and and in that general description. The film is supposedly about the two WoW factions just trying to live together, the Horde and the Alliance. I don't think I really got too much of a sense of the human versus the elves as such versus just gangs, especially superbike gangs, kind of like, I don't know, new New York ish in or maybe Mad Max ish, save from Yeyond sort of Thunderdome just just sort of traces of that, I think, plus all these kinds of Neo lights in the cityscape. The soundscape, I thought was amazing. And just really takes us into another dimension. It's kind of part music, which is a cover version of Insomnia by by, by 2wei I think with very little voice acting used really just giving it a flavour of what's going on rather than any kind of narrative and, and then just park city, city life sounds. So you know, you hear the motorbike revving and the general kind of crowd noise for example. And it's really the balance of these sounds and I think just creates this cacophony and this sense of being in this you know, these characters being in a sort of cyberpunk world. I you know, it's really a kind of, I don't know a moving image urban photography kind of piece. And we've seen those sorts of pieces before this year, which I think quite quite fascinating. But it's also about the creation of this kind of superior robot, which also reminded me a little bit of Robocop, I don't know what you guys thought about that kind of robot creation sort of scene, although this one seems to be a bit more of an antihero than a than a hero, so to speak. And then right at the end, I was super intrigued to see that our old friend Olibith was being credited in this, particularly his series called never stay tuned. And you know what I was inspired to go and watch or rewatch that first episode of his series. And it's, you know, it's basically World of Warcraft, machinima gold. It's hilarious commentary, reflecting and commenting on popular culture within World of Warcraft. So I'll put a link up to that too, so you can kind of grab and then the other one that he's crediting is also is, is somebody called 1Kedit, or 1k Edit. And the work there is secrets of Ulduah, which is basically this cinematic of World of Warcraft, which has actually recently been remastered, so I'll share that link with you too. And both of those seem to be fantastic cultural references to the way that this is been created. And I love the way you know, you only really see the French do this, don't use it in such detail. What you know, they sort of clearly credit where their inspiration has come from. And I love that Duren has done that. And it's not really, I think this the story of Neo or new Stormwind that he's taken, but the desire, I think, to do something original with craft, maybe Warcraft. That actually I think is something that he's taken from these, these two that have inspired him. And I think he's achieved what he set out to do. It's really interesting, so much detail to it. I don't think we've seen anything quite like this from certainly from the World of Warcraft community for well, I'd say for a really long time, if ever, but I loved it. What did you guys think?
Ricky Grove 07:28
Well, my notes excuse me, once I get my notes I wrote, holy smokes, what a great film. Go ahead.
Damien Valentine 07:44
I really enjoy it. I like the mashup of World of Warcraft but projecting it into the sort of Cyberpunk future. And it kind of shows the different factions of from the game, but now crowded together in this sort of futuristic city. And I really liked the biker gangs in the cybernetic parts of it. There's some sound elements I noticed that were taken from both Blade Runner films and yes, yeah, but the was it the join now for offworld adventures that sound like this from the original film? The exact phrasing but you know what it is? He's
Ricky Grove 08:24
advertising voice. Yeah, right.
Damien Valentine 08:26
And there's kind of a it's kind of an engine noise. It's kind of like a plane but it's not quite it's kind of I don't know how to describe it this near the beginning of the film that's from the second Blade Runner film these it again at the end when the flying car goes through the city. This video and you've got that reference of the pink elf pointing at the character that's again from that was
Phil Rice 08:50
so well done. Yeah, that's my favourite scene in the movie there. That was just really a nice little cameo. Yeah, I'm glad
Damien Valentine 08:57
that they did those references to Blade Runner, but I thought that the way that they mashed up these two fantasy worlds and the cyberpunk world, and even though they got this Blade Runner references, it feels more like the Cyberpunk 2077 Because it's really in your face bright light everywhere and the people got the cybernetic implants, very visible. And obviously there's a fan of both games. And he's decided, well, let's put them together and see what happens. And I think what happened was really, really good and entertaining. It's, there's not really a huge story to find. It's just kind of a snapshot of different aspects of this world that he's kind of put together. And I kind of hope he does do a little more because I like to. I'm intrigued. I want to see more of this. So that's to say it was great pick.
Ricky Grove 09:46
I love Go ahead. Okay, I loved it. I wrote that I wrote here I said I can only imagine what original World of Warcraft machinima filmmakers would think of this fast edited visceral little, little Jim. Just the wow factor is so high and I agree with you. The Tracy the sound music. Editing is just absolutely superb. It really makes kick kicks, the the quality of this story in the world making up into another level. Just remarkable short film, perhaps a little too fast for old brains like mine to follow. Maybe. But then again, I think younger folks would say I hear an old fart. It's perfectly timed. But I love that. And I think he's great. And he did a wonderful job of putting it all together and hearing that he used so many different tools makes sense. It's well edited. It's smart. It refers to other things. It's ironic. It's funny, at times. It's got a there's a look, it's I don't know how you put cute and grotesque in together in the same film. You know, it's remarkable I really, really fantastic pick.
Phil Rice 11:10
Yeah, I think this one definitely falls into a category that we've discussed several times in the past where a film that's not emphasising narrative, but it's coming across. It's evoking a feeling it's a it's almost it's it's poetry, or it's a painting of sorts. And this for me, really falls into that category of that I wasn't even. I wasn't even looking for narrative in this. I don't know why I just, I guess I kind of approached it with well, if it comes out to me, I'll follow it. But it didn't. And I didn't care. Yeah. Because it was it was it was more about this is an experience, not a story. And and it seems to the film seems to know that about itself. That's why it works. You know, when someone's trying to tell a story, and it comes off as a cacophony, as we said, it's not so good, right? But this was deliberate, and masterfully done. The crispness of those scenes when he's panning across the street. And there's all this activity going on. The crispness of the visuals, was just astonishing. That's that's the point where I thought, Okay, this is not just there's some advanced tool toolery going on here, right? You know, I knew it had to be. Honestly, I was really leaning towards Cinema 4d, but I thought, well, maybe Blender, but it's just so crisp, and everything fit together. So if he was doing if he was doing compositing, if the filmmaker was doing compositing, I certainly did not detect it. And that means some some great colour correction was going on. But I think a lot of this was rendered in, ultimately rendered in the platform, because it just it fits too well. The lighting is falling everywhere, it needs to perfectly. So yeah, and the sound was just was just magnificent. It was a little overwhelming. But I think that was the point. And there's footage game footage I've not played. Believe it or not, I've not played Cyberpunk 2077 I don't own the game, but I've watched a lot of footage of it. And when it's just footage of someone going down a busy street there, that's the feel you get is a sense of okay, this, this is like Blade Runner, with about 5 million more people living in the city, you know, like it's just constant. This city never sleeps, just constant. Stuff is happening noises and the fact that so many people are modified with, you know, bio mods and machinery and whatnot, just adds all these other types of sounds that you wouldn't normally hear walking down the middle of LA or something. Yeah. And it's just wonderful. So, yeah, to me, this film is, for lack of a better word successful in every way. Like, I think the aim that this set out to do it achieved it like, big time. It's just just wonderful. And yeah, my favourite scene is that the pink giant pink lady, it was framed exactly like Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I used to clip from that from the real one. I used a clip from that in a in one of those Master Toots episodes, months back and I got a little familiar with with the scene and yeah, it's just, it's just perfectly done. So you remember the
Ricky Grove 14:44
memory the old MTV series called Liquid Television?
Phil Rice 14:47
Oh, absolutely.
Ricky Grove 14:49
This would fit this
Phil Rice 14:51
absolute collection. Yes.
Ricky Grove 14:54
It's a great stoners film.
Tracy Harwood 14:59
Brilliant Yeah. All right. Well,
Phil Rice 15:01
great pick Tracy, do we have any news or anything that we'd like to mention today? Or did we cover all that last week?
Tracy Harwood 15:08
I covered most of mine last week,
Ricky Grove 15:10
I'll add my news by being dramatic.
Phil Rice 15:15
Okay. You that's it well, thanks for joining us. It's it's been our pleasure to discuss this craft that we all love and we hope you've enjoyed it too. We'd love to get your feedback, leave us a comment on the video or drop us a message through our website, Completelymachinima.com and we'll see you next time. Bye bye bye