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.
Damien Valentine 00:44
Hello, welcome to another instalment of And Now For Something Completely Machinima. I'm Damien Valentine. Happy holidays. And I'm joined by Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove. Hello. and Phil Rice.
Phil Rice 00:58
Hey there.
Damien Valentine 01:01
So yeah, this week, we're gonna be talking about Tracy's film. But do you have any news for us as well?
Tracy Harwood 01:07
Well, actually, I've got a question, more than more than news. And actually, the question is for Ricky, because I was really interested to see this SAGAFTRA ad kind of settled its dispute with studios. And I guess the question I got for you, Ricky, is, does that mean you'll now get paid for the use of your characters, including the ones that have been repurposed from previously? Yes,
Ricky Grove 01:35
but the amount will be minimal for me. Right? Because, except for maybe one film Army of Darkness. Because I was a lead in that one. The the? Well, now, let me think a second. They're not doing percentages, like residuals, they're doing something they call bonuses. Yeah, I'll probably be getting some from it. I think they had to compromise in the final analysis, there was an interview with a guy who was on the negotiating team. And he said, they had got everything else taken care of, except for the the streaming issues, and they even got the AI squared away. But the the studio's absolutely refused to give a percentage of any streaming, very successful streaming service, they absolutely refused. So the negotiating committee had to go back and rethink what they were doing. And they come up, came up with this idea of a bonus, which is a compromise, I think they should have stayed to their guns and got forced them to do a percentage. But then again, everybody's hurting when you have a longtime strike. So I think they were thinking about that as well. But it turned out that successful show everybody who's on any streaming platform, once you hit a certain threshold of money, is entitled to a certain level of bonus. The most successful programmes are the ones that are gonna get the reasonable bonuses. That's unlike residuals in which in which residuals are based on a percentage thing, for example, even today, after what 20 some odd years of doing Army of Darkness, I still get two to $500 checks based on that, so that's a good deal for me, verse residuals. However, it was a bonus situation, I don't think that money is going to be as high. The Screen Actors Guild claims it's going to result in over a billion dollars of extra income. I wonder about that? I'm not sure I think maybe their calculations based on their calculations, they believe that but I'm not so sure that's going to be is it's going to be high, but it's not going to be that high, I don't think but anyway, they compromise in order to come up with something that's acceptable. They got something in return, which is the best way to do a negotiation like that. They had leverage. The producers had leverage. They worked it out and got it taken care of and stopped the the strike. So I think it's okay. I think it's good. So the answer to your questions. Yes, I'll be getting a minuscule amount of money for successful streaming on Netflix.
Tracy Harwood 04:43
Thank you. That's really interesting. That wants you to find that out after I after I heard that. You know, your character was just taken in included in a game and then you got nothing for it. So it is really interesting to hear you say you will get something from it. And they did
Ricky Grove 05:00
get strong, they did get strong safeguards against use of actors images with AI. And that was a big deal for them. So that was probably their biggest achievement in that in that association.
Tracy Harwood 05:14
Indeed, indeed. So, I guess I've got no more news though. I was going to sort of kind of segue from from an Army of Darkness into my pics actually. Okay. If you if you're happy for me to do that. I this month have picked two films, and both of them are cinematic battle scenes. One is filmed in Unreal Engine and the other is in Warhammer. And the first one I found was actually the Warhammer film. So let me start with that. And then I'll go into the other one. And then I've got a question for you all to think about. So bear with me where I go with this. So the first film is called Northern Wars. It's a Total War Warhammer two cinematic battle. machinima by Game Thumb released three or four years ago now. And it's actually a music video which was the aspect of it that really caught my attention, first of all, because at first I thought it was that kind of guttural throat singing. I don't know if you ever if you've ever heard of the heavy metal Tibetan band called HU? Which they do this kind of really guttural kind of
Phil Rice 06:41
I think I think they're Mongol Mongo. Are they? Oh, okay. Well, yeah, that started that region, that region of the world.
Tracy Harwood 06:47
Yeah. Well, that just kind of fascinated me. I've sort of followed it a little bit for the last sort of couple of years, because I just never really heard anything quite like that. And I thought this was was going to be in that kind of vein. And it kind of is, but actually, it's not at all. It's set to Berzerker by a project called Danheim, which is a Nordic folk and Viking inspired. Company project which he calls a project, which is based in in Copenhagen. And it's worth saying that Danhaim is inspired by ideas and stories from the darker side of the Viking period consisting of kind of Nordic mythology, old Danish folklore and what he describes as a vivid imagination. And it's been used in TV shows like The Vikings and Vikings Valhalla. The subject, the Berzerker, were Norse warriors who apparently fought in a trance like state, which is where we get the word Berzerk from and you often see these guys wearing things like bear skins, and wolf skins and all that kind of thing. But I'm guessing Ricky probably you can tell us a little bit more about this type of mythology having played Duke Henry the Red in Army of Darkness. But before we get into that, let me tell you that tell you about the Machinima it's it's it's a really bloody battlefield cinematic with these kind of two opposing factions in full cry from Warhammer and, and basically the guys sort of edits the footage to this music. I think he's done it pretty well actually. It's been created using a bunch of mods to capture the scene that these kinds of guttural sounds that you hear they are both from the music and also from the ogres and the creatures like the mammoths and the dragons, and the wolf and the and the bear skin warriors in the in the game. There's some really good timing, I think with the with the editing, the timing of the action and the slow motion shots, I think, a really quite a highlight here. There's clearly a winning side at the end of it, although I don't think I really care what that is by the end of it. It's, it's what I would say is utterly gruesome. It's it's brutal, but it's also kind of mythical and I think captures pretty well what that music portrays, I listened to the music, also without the animation, I tend to feel overall that this film added a layer to it. And I liked the the detail in the characters on which the creator had kind of focused so for example, the kind of lumbering way the characters move and the facial expressions and such which I think partly justified or was his attempt partly justify some of the guttural sounds in in Danheim's music. So I'll move straight on to the second one and then you'll see where I'm going with it. The second film is a similar ish kind of proposition which is described as a mediaeval fantasy made in Unreal Engine five. It's called a Oryctes, or rectus, rectus, rectus rectus, I think, or something like that. Bye bye. Glow Production. It's a battle scene again, this time between just two characters, a dragon and a knight or a warrior. And once again, you kind of catch the scene midway through, it's kind of an epic battle. There's magic and myths involved and some kind of gory action. I think the dragon is actually named Oryctes, because of its rhinoceros like fighting horn. Although when I look that up, it's actually really quite disappointing to discover it's the name of a rhinoceros beetle. Rather than a mammoth like creature,
Ricky Grove 10:58
Oh, you're very different. It was a tiny little beetle that the guy was fighting.
Tracy Harwood 11:04
Oh, maybe it was, I don't know. Maybe there's a scaling thing. I don't know. The soundscape though, is lots of grunting and clashing of weaponry. There's really no music in this at all. And there's not much story to it either. Although there's a surprising kind of translation at the end.
Ricky Grove 11:21
debate you on that? Yeah.
Tracy Harwood 11:23
When? What I think what caught my attention with this one. And what intrigued me about this one is, is actually the the interesting camerawork that followed the fight. And I kind of watched this a few times, and it made me jump nearly every single time I watched it when that dragon came into shot in the beginning. And then, you know, then then you kind of followed that action with it skidding across the ground as the as the warrior kind of gets thrown about. I thought that was the most fascinating bit of it. I guess you won't be surprised to know that the creators of this are actually professional, CG production, professional CG production company. They're also one of the very few that's based in Malaysia. And I think that partially explains what I'd really call the mishmash of cultural references in this particular film, which is what troubled me about it. And whilst I love the detail of the editing, just like I did when we talked about the Alchemists Confession one I really love the detail in that you guys were absolutely bang on when you when you were critiquing it. But in this one, I think the the assets to me, just didn't gel with the story arc somehow. And that that goes from everything from the what's it called Oryctes's named for the dragon a night rather than a warrior, a werewolf, some ancient woodland, and right at the beginning and Asian carving on the rock. Somehow they just clashed somehow. And I guess, at some level, you might call these kind of anachronisms. But then again, maybe that was the whole point of this. That's maybe perhaps why these guys put these things together to kind of create the tension between these kinds of things to create to create this. But what I wanted to do with you guys here, and why I wanted to discuss these particular films was so that we could further explore some of the things that we talked about during the November's podcast episodes. You'll recall in several episodes, we talked about writing for the characters. But here, what I think we're focusing on is the issue of writing for the cinematics. And I thought these two films would probably be a good way to discuss it, you might well disagree, but I thought they were kind of a good way to sort of get into that, because there are both similarities and differences between them. And obviously, one is machinima. It's made in a game with mods. And the other is a is more of what I call probably a virtual production using Unreal Engine, probably with assets from the marketplace, and almost certainly made using mocap for character movement, but maybe we can ignore some of that side of it for now. I think for me, what this character this kind of comparison exposes is that there needs to be clarity in choices in the choices that are made, which are consistent with whatever it is you are trying to portray, and I think it's it's the mood sense, let's say in both of these films in the first one, I would say I got a clearer sense of the continuity between the choices the creators have made. I mean, the scenes are I suppose bloodier as they are, are kind of justified in the context of that music and the backstory to that music. So it's not I don't think it's just because because it's a game, and everything is probably already in the game. But the choices he made in putting that together, I think, are are creating that mood scene. It's a kind of what would you call it a vignette, perhaps, in a Rick tease, I kind of felt that it should have been as as compelling as the other one. And whilst technically it is, it is pretty well done, I think it just kind of lacks that clarity in the achievement of the mood state for me. So I thought, here's my analysis of it. Here's two films that are broadly similar. But I'd really like to see what you guys make of these and whether or not you can add to that discussion or whether you disagree with me completely. Well,
Ricky Grove 16:09
I think you've done a marvellous job of arranging several balls of reasoning onto a pyramid. And I'm really sorry to have to smash that pyramid down.
Tracy Harwood 16:21
Great.
Ricky Grove 16:22
I have the exact opposite reaction to you know in Oryctes I found the story to be compelling. It had a clear beginning, middle and an end, the characters were empathetic, whereas in Northern Wars, the Warhammer one, it's the kind of battle that is so unrealistic, you'd only find it inside of a game. You know, you've got groups of people grouped together so closely at times, that there's no way they can actually fight. They would be encumbering each other. And although it was bloody, it seemed to be more spectacle than actually real characters that you could empathise, I could immediately identify with the situation in Oryctes. And although you're right to point out those details that were discontinuous, none of that mattered because I was focused on what was occur the action of it. There it was, and it was so well added, and the pace was just right. And then you had a little twist ending, I don't want to ruin it for people. But the twist ending was really nice. If you broke it down to if each movie represented a game, and they were advertising that game, I would play a Oryctes, but I wouldn't play northern more. And that's it.
Tracy Harwood 17:51
Thank you. Both,
Ricky Grove 17:52
though, I have to say, I enjoyed watching them, and I thought they were fascinating pics, and and the discussion of the difference between the cutscene and a film, I think is a really rewarding conversation.
Phil Rice 18:08
Yeah. I'm trying to I'm debating about which one to start with. I guess it doesn't really matter. I'll start with Northern wars. You know, since the, since the dawn of the modern special effects era, when we've gotten to, and I think specifically of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie, you know, these, these are novels that I grew up with. And it was all down to my imagination of what does a troll look like? What does a cave troll look like? And it was just magical to see those these really other worldly strange creatures, even orcs, but the big ones in particular, just gives me goosebumps. The thing that was disappointing about our what was I believe our first major encounter with a troll using the modern technology in Peter Jackson's movie was it was in a cave, and like the colour palette of that was grey to slightly darker grey. So bland, and I realised that's just that's just the nature of where they were. This is like all the vivid colour that I would have hoped for that I imagined what is a troll look like and woolly mammoths. I grew up learning about Sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoths. They were particularly interesting because we were very confident that they roamed North America. Dinosaurs you know, they're all over but those seem like they're, you know, they were talked about like, yeah, this could have happened to right here. You know, woolly mammoths in particular. I I know I'm rambling here a bit but the point is, is that for me, the very first thing that gripped me about this Northern Wars was seeing those big creatures in all this this vivid colour. It's, it's, it's a neat looking aesthetic. You're right, there's not really a they weren't really even endeavouring towards story here. So I feel weird. I don't feel right criticising it for lack of story, because that was that clearly wasn't the intent here. There wasn't really a narrative, I think we can use the word spectacle. And I think that's, that's what this was. And it's pretty neat look, and it's very, very clearly video gaming. You know, some of the, the way that the action plays out, there's a there's a it's unrealistic. It's stylized, I guess. And yeah, there's parts of it that don't quite make cohesive sense. It some of the behaviours of in the battle and these larger than life, you know, sweeps of you know, huge guys flying all over here reminds me a lot of the tech that Peter Jackson used in those Lord of the Rings movies, for the large scale battles, a boulder goes crashing, and you just see all these, you know, it's just little figures getting smashed. I mean, it's it's such a large scale, it's hard to take in. And this feels like it's, it's, it's aiming more towards that than it is towards anything resembling a realistic battle. But I enjoyed it. And I guess I found myself enchanted by it, because of the way that those larger creatures were portrayed. So it's a very personal reaction. You know, and it's, it's, it's not a game that I would go out of my way for, but I'm very, very picky. But it is. I mean, it is neat looking. I have played some of the early Warhammer games on a PlayStation One. It's come along a little bit since then. This is, yeah, graphically a little bit superior. Yeah, it is. It is a Tarantino level of bloodletting. Like it's just it's just comical almost.
Ricky Grove 22:24
Yeah, how many times that they show that goddamn troll? chopping down? Person? Come on. Yeah. Yeah.
Phil Rice 22:32
So and, frankly, that, that, I think that that means that this game, you know, has that element to it? You know, it's a little frightening that, you know, people like, you know, game players, like my kids age are probably so desensitised. To gore and violence that they won't, they won't be put off by that. When I step back and think about that. That's a little frightening. That that's away, though. I mean, frankly, when I was their age, if I saw something like this, I would be I'd be running for a bucket. You know, and now it's just like, ah, that's more of that than I prefer. What? So? Anyway, I was it was pretty over the top in that regard. But I'm glad I wouldn't I don't know that this would have ever ended up in my feed from the algorithm. And I'm glad that I got to watch it. There's, there's stuff to be admired in it. And it's relatively well edited. And I loved the music. Like take the Yeah, that's true. Excellent. The music was extraordinary. I love that kind of thing, too. I followed that HU as well, was really neat to see that kind of when they had their moment and kind of came to the public eye. I followed them after that point two is pretty neat. And yeah, that guttural singing, which is there's different parts of the world well, that's worked its way into things Vikings being one. That's that's fascinating stuff. So alright, so Oryctes are Auiktes are auric T's. I don't know. I don't know which way is the right way to pronounce it. But so I think that I suspect that some of Ricky's extra level of affinity for this is the Elden Ring effect. You know, the mean, he's that game has really taken hold of him. And so And there's many games that preceded that in that line of kind of the swords and sorcery games that I haven't really had much personal involvement with. So I can't say that the story immediately engaged me, but it didn't take long. And I think I owe that. I think that's completely owed to the craft of it. I do You think this was very well crafted. It was not at all like Ricky emphasised It was not hard to understand to get my bearings, like, just seconds into the film. Okay, so I don't know who this is, or how he stumbled upon this creature or why he's got a quest. I don't care either. Like it doesn't matter. I know what's going on here. You know? It's the story is archetypal, I think, is that the way you pronounce that word are archetypal. It's an archetypal. Yeah, archetypal story of, you know, King George and the St. George. And I don't know, I'm messing it up. But it's this element of a who I think we can presume as a hero, facing this larger than life, opponent, and, you know, trying to to prevail trying to survive, but and also prevail in it. And then yeah, I wish we could talk about the twist. I hate that we can't because it's very important. It's it actually. It determines which archetypal story we're looking at here.
Ricky Grove 26:21
Indeed,
Phil Rice 26:22
it's not just slay the dragon. It's not just that story. That twist actually recontextualizes what we've just seen happen. And I love it. And it's not because I haven't seen it before. It's been done many times. That's but but I think that, that I think that that's okay. I think that archetypal stories are told and retold for a reason. I think they stick with us over millennia, for a reason. It's
Ricky Grove 26:51
not just the archetypal, it's also the high fantasy tradition. It ties itself into that. Yeah.
Phil Rice 26:59
Yeah. So it's, it's, and you know, as far as the craft of this, I mean, come on. This is, this is one of the best crafted things that's ever been on our desk for this show. I mean, it's almost flawless in that regard. And, you know, they're professionals. So okay, you know, but I mean, it's just, it's exquisitely made. So now I'm just down to what do I take away from it? Because, you know, seeing extremely well made is neat in the moment, and that's great. And I want to learn something from it, perhaps and rewatching Oh, wow. You know, the way that they handled this or the way they've lit this particular scene, or the shot selection, there's all kinds of stuff you could dissect and learn from this. But ultimately, what am I going to take away from it? It's what was underneath that that story? And yeah, it's there. It's there. I think there's reasons why it will be more compelling to some than to others is like with the thing I mentioned about the the Eldon Ring effect with with Ricky, I think my son would absolutely devour this, because he, he really loves Elden Ring, even more so than the game he loves. Kind of the story, opening up the unfolding, what the world building was behind that game. Like, in the same way that I think somebody who read who read a Game of Thrones, or who read Tolkien's works, not saw the movies, actually read it, because that's where the world building is, is in the actual novels. I feel like that Elden Ring is a novel. I mean, it has great effect. Funny,
Ricky Grove 28:49
George Martin raishin. George Martin was he was to the story.
Phil Rice 28:53
Yeah, yeah. And it shows it shows. So you know, when you're entering into this film, remember, we talked a few weeks back about Ludwig Wittgenstein, I brought him up about his notion that you bring something to a text, you know, a text isn't a static thing, necessarily. It's about interplay between the reader and the text. Yeah. So you're in context to the text. And I think that this film is ripe for that. That if you've if you're coming to it with a context of world building, then this just it nestle's in place like a jigsaw piece. I mean, it's just this fits into that world instantly. So that may be why it didn't instantly resonate with you, Tracy, because I get the impression you're not playing Elden Ring on a regular basis.
Ricky Grove 29:45
No, I don't think she Right. Right.
Phil Rice 29:47
So yeah, it's it's, it's it's just an extraordinary pick. I feel like I need more watches of it to Yeah, you Just see if there is any more detail of that story to extract from it. And it's, it's challenging, because to address your point about writing. Yeah, there's no dialogue, right. And there's I don't think there's a single single word of dialogue in either one of these, or they're correct. But yeah, and frankly, I don't, I don't think that I don't think there's more than two sentences of writing behind Northern Wars. I don't mean as an insult. It's just, it's just a battle. This is this is one of those things that, like, on a screenplay, there would be like a couple sentences. Right.
Ricky Grove 30:33
Right. And that would be being a 15 minute scene, right? Yeah.
Phil Rice 30:37
So well, with with Ricky's, there's writing that happened here. It's just not dialogue. That's all. But it's, it's, it's absolutely. You know, even if it was never committed to paper, it's written, it's there is writing structure going on here. And, and is very effectively done as a, you know, what is essentially a silent film, you know, a film that tells its story, through nonverbal through the action through facial expression. And those are, those are tools and to some degree, it's advantageous to not have anything spoken because this film is 100% international. It is universally understandable. Because of that. There's no end, okay, they messed up some of the symbology and did some anachronisms and stuff there or cultural anachronisms, which I honestly, I did not catch, because I'm not nearly as educated on that. As you are, I believe that they're there. But it didn't. It didn't strike me. And yeah, it is curious, like how that how that would come to be? Is it carelessness? Is it deliberate? It's hard to know. Yeah. But even even if you stripped those things out of this film, the specifics. This has a universal, if not appeal, a universal understandability. Yeah. And some of that is because it is an archetypal story of of a kind. And some of it too, is just they told the story using other terms that it's writing that that isn't about the words, so much, if that makes sense. So great pics, I'm really glad. I'm really glad you shared this with us. I really
Ricky Grove 32:31
quick comment on story. Before we move on to Damien. One interesting thing is, is that the Oryctes had a title card with a description of what the world is it says dragons have taken, taken over the world, humanity must fight to get That's right, I forgot. So it immediately put it into context and the tool in the Peter Jackson films, all that spectacle you immediately know who to root for. And who is the bad guy. The problem with Northern Wars is they would have benefited from some sort of title card, putting it in context, because it takes you several minutes to sort of sort out who's fighting whom and why they're fighting and who you should root for. If anybody. You don't I mean,
Phil Rice 33:30
that is so true.
Ricky Grove 33:32
I think that was one of my problems with that. Yeah, I
Phil Rice 33:35
think that they could have they could have appended to the beginning of that film, they could have prefixed a statement like that, that you know, the Blade Runner, you know, and not changed anything else. And it would completely transform how you consume that film. Isn't that interesting? Just a couple lines of context. Just make something up. But and I think it would it just something to contextualise what what we're about to experience. Just a couple lines is all it would have taken and it would change that. That's really interesting how that works. I think it's right, I think you're totally right.
Tracy Harwood 34:16
Thank you both.
Damien Valentine 34:17
Yeah, yep.
Tracy Harwood 34:18
Damian, what are your thoughts?
Damien Valentine 34:20
I have to say I don't I know even less about fantasy side of Warhammer. Are we talking about the some of the Sci Fi? We'll have a film that the form of Warhammer 40k pills before? We don't know who decides our Star
Ricky Grove 34:36
Wars of the Rings, then you'd pay attention? Yeah,
Damien Valentine 34:40
they'll get my interest. I mean, as far as I know, it's I think I said before, there are no good guys in Warhammer 40k And I think that applies to fantasy. Yeah. Somebody
Phil Rice 34:52
made that clear to us. Yeah.
Ricky Grove 34:56
Very good point
Damien Valentine 34:57
about the fantasy side of it. So I don't know. But here we've got two films, they're both sort of fantasy, set films, both fights, of different descriptions. And we've got Oryctes, which is a one to one very personal fight, we don't have any backstory to, except for that little brief bit at the beginning of the text was a very personal one to one fight, and getting really close. It's extremely well crafted using the Unreal Engine, they've obviously put a lot of work into animating it and do all the, you know, the effects and the sound was so good. You know, all of that. And on the other side of it, you've got this huge sprawling battle made with this Warhammer game. And one of the things that struck me was, you could not make each of those films in the other engine, because then that you couldn't have a one to one personal fight in the Warhammer game, because it's designed for huge armies. And you couldn't do a huge, sprawling battle like that in Unreal, because you need such an incredibly powerful machine to do it. And if you're going to animate each individual soldier or creature, that's a huge amount of work to do in a short video at that point.
Ricky Grove 36:17
Good point.
Damien Valentine 36:18
And the other thing that struck me was that obviously, the Warhammer game is a strategy game. We don't see much machinima make the strategy games, not like this. I mean, obviously, the Sims is a strategy game, to an extent, but not a sort of war game strategy game, we don't see that very often. And I think that's actually a shame, because games like this design for huge armies, or you could space games with huge fleets of ships or whatever. And if you want to tell a story that has a big conflict, well, these are the kind of games that you need, maybe you can mix up with footage from and other games have the personal scenes to explain what this conflict is in your story. But then when you want to show the actual, the battle, switch over to something that, you know, is designed for that. And maybe you could do something along the lines of Lord of the Rings so, Phil, you're talking about that is that these know that Peter Jackson or the rings films were the sort of the first real instance of this being done. So it can be done with machinima. And I think this kind of shows that it's possible these two different films, you just got to figure out how you could put put together, but I think I'd be done. I enjoyed both films, I didn't really need the backstory for either. Either those fights, I did find the director's one little bit more appealing, because you could just fill in the gaps yourself of why this fight was happening. And it was when it's just a generic spool of armies fighting each other. You need a bit more context. I think it's just got I think the rest of you said as well. So a little bit more would be there. Maybe people who are familiar with Warhammer, they already know exactly what's going on, because it's part of the game lore that they know. But for those of us who don't know, put a little bit in for us. So yeah, you can Yeah, you can grab it. But yeah, it's interesting to see how you can have a fancy two different fancy fights and do different games on two different scales. So yeah, enjoy both of them. But I don't really have anything else to say but good picks.
Ricky Grove 38:36
The scale, the scale idea that you came up is just perfect. And it reminded me back in the heyday of machinima, you know how I would just go on these internet sprees to find interesting films. And I find a film that was made in Warhammer and there was an opera, the vogner opera, I think it was got her dama Rome. And they use an old public domain Recording and they used Warhammer with this huge spectacle, because that's exactly what Wagner operas are. And it was just mind blowing his full length. It was like an hour and a half. It was just mind blowing too long to sustain your interest with not high quality, resolution and everything. But the idea was great. So I watched it. I saved it. And then several years ago, I remembered it and I went back to try to find it and it's lost. It's gone now. And I was thinking, you know, the idea of spectacle, large spectacle. Groups of characters. It works perfectly with fighting because that's the game side of it, but can also work well in large spectacle music. A symphony and opera in particular would go because it's an elevated style, but we haven't really seeing anything like that. You're right. They don't. People don't tend to do that. And even they did it more in the early days of machinima, but not so much, at least to my knowledge. If any listener knows about movies that we're missing, please let us know. But I just thought that was interesting.
Phil Rice 40:18
Yeah, one other thing that I'll mention about Oryctes is, if there's, if I have any criticism of it at all, it's I'm pretty sure I heard the same 'oof' sound used at least twice and maybe even more than twice. So a little pro tip. Yep. You're if you're going to hire, you know, someone to do voice acting for a part and that character is going to fight or fall or strain to lift something or any of those types of things. Have them record way more of that content than you think you'll need? Like, multiple multiple one. Oh, is not enough? Because one oh, done well. And that's the only time you hear it is great. But if you hear that same Oh, yeah, you're making your own little Wilhelm scream moment for the audience where it becomes comical that it's like, Dude, that's the same sound he made just a minute ago, and is different fall. So that's the only. I mean, I had to really dig down deep to even remember that. It is so petty. Such a great such a crafted film. But yeah, you did have a different Oh,
Ricky Grove 41:41
good lord.
Tracy Harwood 41:45
That's a really great comments. And it's really interesting that you didn't see the same side of it, as I was kind of trying to extract from the discussion, but really, really interesting comment. Yeah, yeah, about both of them. So thanks for that really good.
Ricky Grove 42:03
Sometimes I think that films we pick, even if we disagree within the produced discussions that help us understand the film more after being together and discussing it, as opposed to just writing down your own thoughts. And that's part of the reason why I like that being on the show is to be able to share those thoughts with you guys.
Tracy Harwood 42:24
Yeah, me too.
Damien Valentine 42:25
Yeah, there's definitely two interesting films you've chosen. Tracy. So as always with him, yeah. And discussing it as well, like you said, is very interesting discussion of all different sides of these films. Yeah, gotcha. Again, as I said, last week, I'm glad to have been part of it. So I think that wraps things up for this episode. So if you've got any feedback, if you want to talk about this film, if you want to send us your OOF sound effects, if you want to tell us how we spell it, pronouncing, Oryctes, if it's, if we're doing get it wrong, please tell us because we all have different ways of saying please contact us at talk at completely machinima dot com, our blog, also completely machinery.com Where you find more than the newsroom, the show notes. And that's it. So thank you all for being here. Thanks. And happy holidays.