In this ep, Phil leads the discussion about one of the most *disturbing films we've ever seen, called 917 by Krad Productions, released 30 Oct (spoiler alert: Phil designed the soundscape for it). It is disturbing that there's a true back story to the film, which is explained - and having watched the film, we couldn't really think of another adjective that summed it up better. Yep, its disturbing... and we are definitely none the wiser about the truth of 917, that maddening frequency that sends you off into a twirling spiral of err...... All theories welcome!
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 00:30
Hello, and welcome to And Now for Something Completely Machinima podcast about, you guessed it machinima and related technologies, virtual filmmaking, whatever name you may call it. Before we dig into the film that we're going to talk about this episode, I wanted to remind you that we do have a blog, Completely machinima.com/blog. And lots of news and developments there that are discussed. Tracy works very hard on that. She's our in-house scribe. And we used to do that as part of the podcast episode but we made a format change midway through this year, and shifted that content over to the blog. And the podcast now just focuses mainly on films, but we wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that that's out there. So be sure to check that out. It's Completely machinima.com/blog. That's also where you can give us feedback on the podcast as well.
Ricky Grove 01:33
It's very robust too, Tracy has been spending a lot of time putting news in there, and a lot of very interesting news. So definitely check that out.
Tracy Harwood 01:43
Absolutely. I mean, just so you're aware, this, this this month, what we've got is a bunch of stuff on AI generators, and filmmaking, which we'll cover in one of the tech updates, including a couple of really interesting projects. One is a music video. And the other is a film which has been released in episodes on Twitter. Absolutely fascinating. And then in the second Tech Update, we'll cover some of the platform updates, there seems to be every single platform that we can think of has released something in the last month. And alongside that we've got some great links for different types of libraries we think you might be interested in also excellent, all super useful.
Phil Rice 02:26
The AI stuff is so fascinating. And my because I've been really busy lately that my only exposure to it is in my Facebook newsfeed. I follow a guy that many of you out there listening will know by the name of Warlord, and he's been posting some of the experiments he's doing with this stuff. And it's just mind blowing. It's really mind blowing. I know Ricky, you've seen it because you've commented on some of this stuff. It's just amazing. And I've got another friend who's a professional photographer, and he's, he's our age Ricky and and he's posting occasionally, he's gotten into it from a photographer's perspective, he'll tell ya, AI renderings. He'll label them as such. I mean, some of them are just, it's, it's unbelievable. So anyway, I'm Tracy, I'm looking forward to see seeing the results of your deep dive there.
Tracy Harwood 03:14
Absolutely. There is actually just one thing I'd like to say really want to give a shout out to Leo Lucien-Bay. And his latest project, which is called TagToons, which is selling e-cards using machinima. And it's perfect. If you're looking for alternative Christmas cards to send folks this year. Wow, cool. It's TagToons.com I think and it's also on Facebook. So definitely look out for that
Phil Rice 03:40
one. Cool. That's awesome. He invited me to try it out. Right. Right before the hurricane hits. I haven't gotten to check it out. Definitely.
Damien Valentine 03:52
He's, he's taught me about it a while ago, he was sworn to secrecy. So I didn't tell any.
Tracy Harwood 03:58
Okay, well, he's out there now. So we can already good.
Phil Rice 04:02
All right. So in in my best, what's the term nepotism? I'm picking my pick. For the film today is one that I had an active hand in, which is a reminder that sometimes when a film is one of our picks, it's because we really want to talk about it. In this case, I was a few feet underwater, figuratively with the hurricane. I'll that's the last time I'll mention it, I promise. And so someone kindly slotted this film in for us to talk about today, which is great, because if those of you who know me, you know that it's really hard to get me to shut up about stuff that I've worked on. So right. The film was called 917 or 917. Actually, we've never spoken it out loud. So, but it's yeah, the number is 917. And the official description is a young man traumatised by war and death struggles to keep his grip on reality. It's directed by Evan Ryan, whom I'm sure you recall has been mentioned on the show by me many times because he's a good friend of mine and a very talented artist. And I handled the audio on this. So, before we get I want to hear you guys feedback on it. I'll give you a little bit of background on how and why this film came about. I want to say a couple years ago, on an email account that I monitor, but isn't one in my name, so it was just very random. I started receiving this series of emails. I don't think that they were intentionally addressed to me physically, they were just to this account. And the only thing I can compare it to is if you've seen the movie Seven, the old classic kind of thriller with Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey as one of the best bad guys of all time. When they find the bad guys stash, he's got all these notebooks, hundreds of notebooks that are just filled in with all these diatribes on this kind of quasi religious nature and all that stuff. The ramblings of someone who's essentially mad. That's what these emails were. And I'm talking 10s of 1000s of words, per message. And then always a link to this really obscure website. It wasn't geo cities, but it was something like that, like some just ancient hosting platform. And it was just text in in these paragraphs, hundreds of 1000s of words, I actually never did scroll all the way to the bottom, I couldn't make it. Oh, my goodness. So basically, it was just this maddening text of conspiracy theory wrapped in weird kind of pseudo religious references. And to me, it just, it seemed like clearly it was from someone who's who's disturbed, probably schizophrenia or something in that spectrum. And also I had no idea who it was. It's all anonymous. So I shared it with my friend, Evan Ryan. And said, in reading this, I had this idea. Because I've, I've long been fascinated by a mind consumed with madness. With this, schizophrenia, this disorganised thinking disorganised speech, because it's so disturbing. And no one really understands it, like, you know, people have been trying to over the last century, and it's just, I think they understand it physiologically now. But in terms of trying to make sense of that disorganised speech, it's very, very difficult next to impossible because the thoughts are so scrambled. And this seemed like a really unique insight that you might only get as some kind of a clinician or psychiatrist or something along those lines. So I shared it with Evan, and just says, I want to see if we can make a short film that tries to capture the essence of this mindset. It's not to preach it, it's not to comment on it as right or wrong. It's certainly not to poke fun or exploit. And I felt safe, it not being exploitive, because the author was anonymous. But I said, I'd like to do that. Here's what I would propose. It's a formula that I used one other time, with, with Tom Jantol actually. But it was at Tom's request. He says, I want a song. And he gave me like, a bunch of adjectives about what, what it was, make me a soundtrack. And then I'm going to make a movie based on the soundtrack. And so we did that. And I can't remember what he ended up titling that movie, but it was one of Tom Jantol's films. Boy, I wish I could remember the title. Because the title changed several times, he had no idea what the film was going to be until he received the audio. So I was really intrigued by that process. And I thought, well, I'm going to propose at this time, the same thing, I'm going to make audio. I'm going to narrate some of the text, keeping as true to the original wording as possible. And then I'm just going to throw that to you and then you do what you want to visually with it, and I'm not going to meddle. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm not going to tell you what I was envisioning. You'll have the same source text and my audio and go to it. And so he did and he worked on it for, I want to say it was close to a year. And every once in a while, let's share a little screenshot here and there, whatever. But we worked independently like that. So and this is the result. I mean, I think maybe in the in the final stretch, when it was time to do the final edit, he may have asked me to review it. And I gave a couple little minor suggestions for the final cut. But But 90% of it is 99% of the visual is just Evan. And the audio is me. So that's how the film was made. Since it's been released, it's it's been, I want to say half a dozen Film Festival selections, Evan took care of submitting it where he felt appropriate, including one horror film festival in somewhere in South America. I can't remember which country. Yeah. But anyway, so that's, that's how the film came to be. What engine did he do it in? This was done in Unity 3d.
Damien Valentine 11:13
That's what wondering that as well, once you get to see Yeah, it's not quite like iClone it. And it's not Unreal. So what was it? And of course, that makes sense.
Phil Rice 11:22
Yeah, he did it in Unity. And I know very little about how he did. Because I don't know Unity very hardly at all right. I've never actually used it. And I know that there was a little bit of motion capture for some of the movements. But not, not entirely, some of its hand animated. So yeah. Well, we'll have to talk to Evan, if you want some more details about the craft there.
Ricky Grove 11:52
Lets do an interview with him. I think he'd be very interesting person to talk to you about working in unity with Unreal becoming dominant. It's interesting to see somebody working in Unity, which is very accomplished platform and free as well. Right. So it's worth talking to him about it. How do you feel it turned out Phil?
Phil Rice 12:14
I think it's disturbing. I've shared it with a few friends who don't have anything to do with our craft. And that's the word that's in every single review: it is disturbing. Some, that's all they said. Production feedback at all is one guy who is a has studied psychology, and worked in mental hospitals and said, Yep, that's, that's what schizophrenia sounds like. That's, that's that sounds like,
Ricky Grove 12:49
That's a great compliment.
Phil Rice 12:51
So yeah, I, I mean, hey, I didn't I didn't write this film. I just selected the lines from whoever the writer was. But But yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's interesting. And, I don't know, I was as surprised as anyone with with what Evan did with it visually, because there's, there's a narrative in there somewhere, you know, and you get pieces of it. Which I had no idea that that was gonna be in it. I I honestly, I didn't have a narrative in mind at all. I couldn't, I couldn't get it. Which is part of why I chose Evan. Because he does he he lifts things out of things. He sees things that I don't and yet the narrative isn't, like, linear or really in your face or forcing a particular interpretation of it. But there's enough there that you can kind of piece together some semblance of story or at least of character that he projected on the on the narration so yeah, it's it's, it's fascinating. It's nothing I could have ever done on my own, that's for sure. Because I and I've had many discussions with him and with Tom and with others about and with you, Ricky about that abstract. Anytime you veer into the abstract, it's just an area that I'm either I'm either weak in it or I'm very low confidence in it so I don't go there. So it was it was a pleasure to this is probably actually,
Ricky Grove 14:30
You actually do go into the abstract with video which I have trouble. Yeah, you don't do it visually. Yes, this whole process that you've done is abstract and unusual. Creativity. So you are involved in it. It's just it's Yeah,
Phil Rice 14:46
I do have that. I'd have done a visual audio, right. Yeah. What did you guys think of It?
Damien Valentine 14:53
I'm glad you explained the backstory because when I watched it, I thought this is very disturbing. Friends now I know the origin of the story. I'm not gonna say it makes what like makes more sense, I understand where it came from. Yeah, disturbing us could pay for it, this is what I'm interested in is the way that you and Evan worked on it is you had that email, you figured out the audio, and then send it to him. That's a very fascinating sort of workflow, which I hadn't really thought of before. So yeah,
Ricky Grove 15:32
just very impressed with that.
Damien Valentine 15:35
The film itself is very well made, and I can see the schizophrenic aspect of it. And I don't personally know anyone that suffers from that. But that this film was what I would imagine, it would be like, from my limited understanding of schizophrenia, and those kinds of mental health issues. So yeah, that that kind of captured it really well. And I gotta say, again, it's very disturbing.
Tracy Harwood 16:09
Shall I have a go, because that, you know, yeah, I do. You know, it's really interesting to hear you say schizophrenia, because I didn't pick schizophrenia as the way that I would describe, actually. But what I would say, I'll tell you for why I, you know, this is such a powerful film, it's, it's really shocking, actually, visually shocking. And to me, what this guy had was PTSD. And in my interpretation, because like, like, Damien says, I don't know anybody with schizophrenia, I have come across people with PTSD. And maybe that does similar things. In the in the, in the in the brain, I don't know. But just for a moment, I felt that what what we were seeing was, was potentially what that might really feel like. And these images, mix things together, that you might relate as childhood memories, such as that teddy bear, and landscapes, flowers, and such, with death, and shock and destruction, but also things like science fiction and conspiracy theories and religious texts. It's like this, the world for this guy no longer makes any sense as a safe place for human life. And that central character to me had clearly been a soldier that the helicopter excerpt showed that really well. You only really got a sense of that at the beginning part of that through the soundscape. That kind of thudding noise as these huge blades chop the air, which was just about audible. But then later, you know, as I was kind of listening to my sort of thoughts are confirmed with some of the images that you then began to see. And then sat on that chair in a kind of almost drunken stupor. This guy's in an hallucinogenic zone, maybe he's taken drugs, as well as alcoholic see the bottle, but maybe he's also a medication that point is, you know, his conscious, his state of consciousness consciousness by that kind of otherworldly look on his face, and and, and his position in the chair, and he's losing it big time. All these memories of the things that he's seen, whilst it to me it felt like he would, he'd been, say, I don't know, posted in various parts of the world, I'm guessing maybe Afghanistan primarily, but maybe also Iraq. And these things are catching up with him. It's never kind of revealed what role he he played specifically. But you know, clearly soldiers are there to do a job. We all know that. And evidently, he's not coping well with what he's been involved with as part of that. That, to me seemed to be the narrative that was running through it. And then the opening scenes are nothing other than truly disturbing just as we will say. And it gets worse from from those opening themes, that that soundscape is a cacophony of white noise and voices moving in what seems to be a kind of spatial swirling environment around you. And I'm really curious, the 917 frequency. What's the theory behind that? Because I tried to look it up and I couldn't really find anything about it. I'm guessing there's more to it than maybe my consumer and researcher grade algorithmic profile gives me access to or maybe this story has just caught me out in a way that I wouldn't expect it to. So anyway, the lip sync and such doesn't really compared to some of the other work we've seen in Unreal and iClone projects recently, but for this, I really don't think that matters at all. The facial crudity, if I can describe it as that is actually a really interesting aesthetic choice here. It's definitely not realistic. In much the same vein that the characters stylized in Martin Bell's Prazinburk Ridge that we reviewed a while back, they also weren't realistic. And it's not about photo realism of the characters, the environment or even the movement of ease, it's the situation that counts and the moment. And it's fascinating to have seen that captured in the five minutes duration of this film. I think the length felt about right. And actually, the credits and the way they were done was also a really interesting choice here. Yeah. That kind of Krad flash at the end, really, really interesting. Enjoy it. No, I can't say that I actually did. But then again, that wasn't the point of this was it? It's a really masterful short, and my congratulations to everyone and you fell for, for delivering something far more disturbing than I think any horror movie could ever be for me. That's my thoughts on it.
Ricky Grove 21:07
Nicely, put nicely. But I have a lot of things I want to say about this film. So I want to try to do them in an orderly fashion. I enjoy this film very much. Although enjoyed is a relative term, right in describing I was not disturbed by it. But I was affected, strongly affected by it. And although I'm critical, I really, really applaud the risk taking involved in it. And now that I understand the back background process of putting it together, it makes even more sense to me. The my problem initially was a personal one, which is, it was the last film I saw in a sequence of all the films that we're looking at this month. And it's suffered in comparison. And it was only because of that, because they had seen all of these beautifully rendered films. And suddenly we get into this. It's like looking at Rembrandt paintings, and then walking over and looking at Clay or Goya or something like that they the subject matter and the style are so jarring, you immediately go no, no, I don't like that. But once I realised that was my reaction, I stopped that and I started paying attention to the style. And there's some really, really interesting things being done directorally and in this, what is is that the style of the film, as Tracy points out matches the kind of interiority of the person, the madness of the person, having experienced mental health problems myself, I know what that feeling is that sense of racing thoughts and hopelessness and stress, and I can't get out of this, I can't get out of this. And he captured that both of you capture that very well. I think the style of it was just perfect. To reflect the content. It the strange shapes, the movements of things, the the isolation of the character that kept, the director kept putting him in isolated situations. So you could see that in a way it almost explained his madness, and that he was so isolated from everybody. And in trying to cope with that isolation, he starts making all of these mental collection connections to things without actually rationally questioning whether those connections are actually true or not. He just assumes they are and then from my own past, I know that's the case, you just reach out to grab something that will give you some connection, so you can stay whole and you won't fly off and to the bits and pieces of things. And I thought it captured that experience very, very well. Now. And I think the highlight of the of the thing was the remarkable soundscape and music design. I think that was the highlight of the film. You're working on that because you're just so good at that Phil. Thank you. You have such a great talent and being able to put sound and music together in a way that is just so compelling. It's on a whole other level. Now it wasn't it didn't stand out so much that it called attention to the the aesthetics or the or the visual style, because they blended well together. But it was so so good. Now there were some problems with it. One is pacing was a problem. I had no idea what was going on until the narration started. And I think that had the narration started earlier would immediately connected me to what was going on so it was too long of a period of time before we got to that connection. Also I think although the narration was a good choice, there's a problem in acting when you do something that's monotone, or the same thing over and over again. And the choice was to do this as the same rhythm, the same monotone, over and over again, the problem is, is after a certain period of time, you begin to tune out what the person is saying, because it's the same repeated pattern. So the trick is to finding variety in something that doesn't appear to have variety. You know, what I mean? And I think, I think, had had you worked with, with the director a little bit more, to find a way to build that, that monologue, so that it became more intense, and it had an actual climax. Because the problem was is you were doing the same thing at the end of the film that you were doing at the beginning of the film. And the challenge is to find a way to put dynamics into that. Because inevitably, what you want to do is you want to make, I imagine this is what you and and the director wanted, you want to make this character empathetic. You want to understand not like the person or this is a good person or make value judgments. But you want to understand you want to be, you want to feel that sensibility, when people say disturbing, that's an easy way to describe something that is much more in depth and much more complicated than that process is which is empathy. You know, and I think giving the narration more than just a monotone all the way through, it would have helped a lot. So I think you guys should have worked a little bit more on that. And it was just a matter of corrections, you know, just finding ways to create dynamics all the way through it. And like I said, I'm I'm critical of the film, but I really, I really enjoyed it. I love I love the style of it. I love the sound of it. I loved its effect on me because it made me remember and think about times in which I struggled. And you just don't often find these kinds of films or subjects of these kinds of films in machinima. So it was a risk and originality to it that made me very, very impressed with a result. I liked it very much. And I applaud both of you for putting it together. And thank you sharing your experience of creating this intriguing and hard to watch film.
Phil Rice 27:46
Such great feedback. Thank you, Ricky. Thanks. Sure
Phil Rice 27:54
That's everybody is that I'll answer the 917 thing to close things up. So the 917 terahertz that was mentioned multiple times, there were other frequencies mentioned in his I hesitate to call it a manifesto because there was no real structure to it, but that was prominently mentioned as supposedly a frequency that's used for for the government to be able to read mines and and ultimately, influence and control mines as well. I wasn't able to I tried to research it as well Tracy and I was not able to find even anyone else talking about it, which I did that before I even shared the text with Evan and it was actually discovering that solitary nature of some of these just crazed thoughts that to me increased the intrigue of this is something special and unique. And if I had a way to well I don't know if I had a way to reach out and contact the person I don't know if I would I was simply because the only impetus to do so would be if I thought that I could help them I'm not qualified to help Yeah, yeah, someone anywhere near that state. You know, I
Ricky Grove 29:16
No, you don't want to mess with that kind of person.
Phil Rice 29:18
I can be fascinated by it. But I have you know, the most mental health experience I have is chronic depression. That's not this. This is something else. This is another banana. So but yeah, that's that's what it was. Tracy was just mentioned in the text multiple times to where it's like, okay, this is not an accident. I'm not an accidental number in his mind, his or her mind.
Ricky Grove 29:49
It's an appropriate film for our times to because we're in a paranoid time in which there's extremes of course of opinion It's about things and, and, and this whole notion that somehow secrets are buried beneath, and those who are in power are hiding all of these secrets, you know. So it's fascinating to see that rendered. And I, one of the things I love, I personally love to do is to found objects or ephemera, and then create art from them. And I thought the idea of taking this this text from this unknown person and turning it into an art was is a fascinating occupy preoccupation and project because there's so much of it out there. I collect photographs, ephemeral photographs, and I put them up. And every single one of them tells me stories. And I think, Oh, my God, how did that happen? What did they do this? And I want it to, I want to make a story out of it, you know,
Phil Rice 30:54
right. Right. That's very much the experience of encountering this text is yeah, like a found something.
Ricky Grove 31:01
It's a rich experience. And I encourage any machinima filmmakers to look for that. If you're struggling to find a source material. Don't just sit down and say, Okay, I want to do a story about, you know, that parallels a television programme or, or a commercial or a movie, look for found objects look for found text, there was a magazine that came out for maybe 12 issues called Found. And all it did was published stuff that people found everywhere, including photographs, pictures, letters, postcards, and on their website, they even had audio recordings that they had discovered, and that they shared no comments or anything, just what it is. And I think those are great sources of creative source has to launch into a project. And this is a perfect example of how it can turn into some a really fine personal expression of the Paranoid Personality.
Phil Rice 32:01
Right. And you're right, Ricky, the Paranoid Personality, situated in this particular time, in this time of free exchange, globally, of not just information, but misinformation. And yeah, crazy ideas that can just can just, you can go on the internet and find communities of people around 1000s completely irrational ideas. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's madness is not new to our time. But but the the, the speed at which one could assimilate evidence to support your particular madness is truly unbelievable. And it's one of the more frightening things about the internet, I think. Yeah, as I do. And believe me, I'll all day I'll log the great things about it. But that's one of the things that's, you know, that's right next, to me that's in the same category is like dark web and things like that. The kinds of things that go on unseen. It's, it's fascinating and wonderful and terrible.
Ricky Grove 33:15
Yes, it's as if the style of the film reflects the inner reality of the character. You're actually seeing the inner feelings of the character in the external world that he's surrounded by. And that's just a great stroke. That's perfect. Yeah. Why did you because you could see it being done in the Unreal Engine style with none of that. And I don't think it would have been nearly as effective.
Tracy Harwood 33:42
I agree. Yeah, I completely agree with that. It. I mean, it's a truly just disturbing film. I can't tell you. That was a
Ricky Grove 33:52
thing. Yes. Yeah.
Phil Rice 33:55
Yeah, that's interesting, because I know that an important part of the film's process is to, to promote it.
Tracy Harwood 34:03
How do you promote it?
Phil Rice 34:04
Well, even on Facebook, you know, it's like, do I really want because I won't get the chance to tell the story. I just told him the origin is put it out there. And if you don't know that story, it's like, well, that's Phil talking. Is this what's really going on inside that demented head of his?
Ricky Grove 34:25
I think a way to promote it is promote that 917 aspect of it. Because you may catch people who are interested that sort of thing. Oh, my God.
Phil Rice 34:37
Wouldn't be just my luck. Yes. Yes.
Ricky Grove 34:40
The whole community of paranoids all going this is a great film.
Phil Rice 34:45
We can stop for all the wrong reason. Great job. Thank you guys very much. Excellent job. Really appreciate it. Yeah. So that's it for this film, and this episode, and next week, we'll be talking about the next film in the queue. So thank you for joining us. I didn't even introduce us the beginning of the show.
Ricky Grove 35:07
Oh, they all know us by now. Oh, by the way, the show notes, show notes at Completely machinima.com will be listed. We'll have links to all of the things we were talking about the subjects and everything, just check out.
Phil Rice 35:21
And our names and our name. Oh, that's great. So but you know, given that that film was anonymous, maybe that is the best approach on this one. So thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. All right.