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 00:10
Hello and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima introduces Phil. My name is Phil Rice. Thank you and I'm here with with Ricky Grove. Hello, Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine. Damian is connected to us from his witness protection home. Yep. So don't ask about where he is. Don't ask about wearing fancy. Yeah, yeah, it's the price of fame. It's the price of fame. So this week we're, we're going to talk about yet another film that is, from an engine that we have not seen a whole lot from I think of the four films we've done this month. We've seen more from this engine than any other but this is a Red Dead Redemption 2 film. It's my pick. And it is called The MADI The MODDED Wacky West by BedBananas. So I believe that this is some kind of sequel to one that was just called the, I believe it just called The Wacky West. I really didn't, didn't dig too deep into that I was just kind of obsessed with this film, for what it is. And I think what what drew me into it was what at the time I watched it first was the pinned comment on YouTube, which said something along the lines of this is the most accurate depiction of what it's like having a dream that I've ever seen on screen. And I read that and then what I read that comment before watching the movie and watch it now I can't unsee it that way. It really does feel like a dream, maybe a nightmare, arguably, but it's a dreamlike landscape. And basically, it's this very chaotic journey following you know, the character of Arthur from the game through all these this kind of bizarre scenarios, and it starts off with a bang. I mean, he's He's crashing to the ground and what looks like a mangled stagecoach, and then just running around and the sky is falling. You know, it's it's chaos. And it is also, at times incredibly beautiful. And very, very bizarre. And I think essentially, it's, it's making use of a whole plethora of different mods that are now exist in Red Dead Redemption to the game, because having played the game, I don't remember seeing 600 foot tall children, or, or a landscape of, you know, livestock with their heads in the clouds, they're so large, or hot air balloons that travel basket first. This is just a few of the things. Crazy, I don't know much about the honestly, normally what we would do is give it the Tracy treatment, which is dig in, find out what did they do to make this? How did they do it? I deliberately didn't do that. I didn't want to know. And so if you know, I'm probably going to plug my ears if you talk about that when it's your turn. But I want to know as little about how this was made as possible, because it's a real it's an experience. And I've watched it many times, since I added it to the list for my pick. It is it is this surreal. Strangely hint of a narrative story in there. As weird as that may sound as chaotic as it was. There is kind of an arc with Arthur and being almost pursued by this image of this child. And it ultimately gets resolved at the end in a way. Of course then there's the end joke where he again he gets hit by a stage coach. Yeah, it sounds like I'm on something. That's how I feel after watching this. It's it's a real bizarre and just wonderful film that I find I'm laughing at, even though there's not really any jokes in it per se. There's not any punch lines, but it's just absurdly funny and interesting and bizarre. What did you guys think? Oh my God,
Tracy Harwood 05:03
shall I start?
Damien Valentine 05:04
Go ahead because I have no idea what to say. Yeah.
Tracy Harwood 05:07
Well, this is I mean, BedBananas is his name, isn't it? It is absolutely bananas. It's told in some really strange chapters and it's to me it's it's surrealist machinima at its very best and to be honest, the only other example of this type of machinima and whether I ever recall paying any attention to was Laney Voom's Push. Which by the way, Phil has remastered for the Machiniplex channel, but it's the only other truly surrealist machinima that I actually remember seeing. And it's kind of got this kind of wonderful and weird sort of horror movie with kind of shades of some sort of zombie, a couple of apocalypse. And it's, it's kind of a total nightmare, focusing on what seems to be the dream of Arthur author's dream. And as I was just listening to you talk there, I was thinking, you know, what does it end where it starts? Is it a circular? Is it a repeating dream? I don't know. Maybe, maybe that's
Phil Rice 06:06
maybe a good point.
Tracy Harwood 06:08
I don't know. Anyway, we got this kind of third person perspective to this. So he's standing all the way, just behind Arthur, and thank God because he really does have these most wacky experiences. You don't want to be seeing it through his eyes. It's kind of this, this nightmarish dream from which he seems to never be able to, to wake up and I think everything else is in control, and he's just completely lost. Can you imagine having this dream I mean, anybody that says, this is this is my dream. God only knows what sort of life they lead to. Those kinds of dreams because, wow, I couldn't keep up with it. There's this kind of around the world in 80 days come dollars, Gulliver's Travels thing? Going on to where you've got all these giant? All these miniature creatures? The miniature?
Ricky Grove 07:01
Oh, that's right. I
Phil Rice 07:02
didn't think about Gulliver. That's perfect. Yeah, me
Tracy Harwood 07:05
a little bit that but but they're all behaving in a way that only Red Dead Redemption assets can you know, that kind of in that dark way that only they can really? And then this kind of central character. This kid Arthur's nephew, is he called Jack? I don't know. I think so. I'm just kidding. But it kind of emerges that perhaps the reason for the nightmare is the fact that he's never had a great relationship, sort of, you know, uncle-nephew relationship that maybe is part of the American dream, taking this kid fishing. That's maybe where it's all gone wrong for him. So he's never been treated as he as he as he should have been. That seems to be where he resolves the dream. Towards the end, it seems that he finally resolves. Actually, I'll just take the kid fishing, and then quack. That ending you know, you just don't even see it coming, or I didn't see it. Kind of surprising in a way that I just didn't think anything could surprise me in this. The editing I thought was was was perfect for this. It's really told through what appears to be gameplay. It's kind of glitchy and jerky. But it's also much more than that. The character kind of grunts and moans as the odd bit of swearing, there's a there's the faint sort of sound design, which is presumably patched from the gameplay footage. It's really all this needs. Because the visuals are just the most astonishing thing about it. It's it's kind of exhausting. Just trying to keep up with what's going going on. And, and however, these things have been modified in this kind of this whole environment. I mean, to me, this was this was really just like a surreal painting for the computer game era. I think it can only be described as surrealist. I'm sure history will look at this work and think, in much the same ways probably that you know Dali's work might have been reviewed and tried to explain perhaps, the symbolism in it. And I you know, I was I was, I was you know, I went back on some criticism of Dali's work and whatnot, and then sort of had another think about this. And actually thought, you know, perhaps what this is a commentary about is the American Dream anyway. So you know, there's there's a lot of references in this to all kinds of cowboy thing, the relationships between people and there's this fear of death. There's a bit of racism in it, there's poverty, there's wealth, and there's also alcohol. And it's all the kind of the contemporary challenges that people face as well. And it's beautifully captured in this in this kind of film. There is one more thing that I'll mention on this one And because I have absolutely no doubt that the avant garde community might well pick up on this, but this will be something that they will never be able to show in a in a gallery or in a film festival. And I'll tell you for why the creators of this have got over a million followers on their channel. And since it was released in June 2020, it's been viewed over 16 million times. It's a very clear example for me of the things that we were talking about one, when I came back from Oberhausan, and on the role of community being quite central to the production of this kind of work. And this creator hasn't produced much in the last few years, I'm not really too sure why. Although I did discover that they've created him and a couple colleagues have created something called Sideshow with with at least two other gamers, I believe, and that, in fact, that is now part of RoosterTeeth RoosterTeeth, let's play group. So they're now part of that stable. And as I understand it, looking at some of the threads on Reddit and whatnot. It looks like they've also hit some quite big legal challenges with the content that they're creating. Which might well clipped their wings a little bit for the moment. So yeah, I absolutely love this as my favourite of this month. So thank you Phil.
Ricky Grove 11:30
Yeah, I you know, I could talk for an hour on this fantastic film, it immediately became one of my absolute favourite machinima films. If you could take a time machine, go back the 1920s Paris, and show this to a gathering a surrealist you'd immediately the director would be hailed as a master modernist filmmaker. I was obsessed with Buster Keaton for quite a while and he made a series of films, one of which was called Steamboat Bill Jnr and it was a parody of the Disney, Mickey early Mickey Mouse film called Steamboat Willie. And in it, Mickey and Buster is faced with it, a world that seems to be completely irrational objects flying around because he gets caught up in a hurricane. And at one point, he goes through a barn and he's standing looking around while tumbleweeds and cows and everything are flying buying and turns around in the front of the barn falls down and where the little window is, he just happened to be standing firm is sin. He did I know. And this idea of this rational person in this irrational world is a modernist theme that even Kafka picks up on, where Kafka would go into a place and wants something very simple, but it becomes incredibly complex. And then the dream elements of it were incredibly appealing. I found it a unique and very funny and very disturbing film. It could not be made any other way but inside of a game, and the fact that it's a western genre, as opposed to a modern city, cityscape like, like Bunweil, and many of the other serials filmmakers use as an particular resonance to American viewers because they know all of the tropes and cliches of the Western, for example, walking down the main street to have a shootout. Well, instead of walking down the main street with a shootout, the guy has to face this enormous alligator who's coming down the street, and he sensibly steps aside, he doesn't challenge the alligator. The alligator goes on by and he continues his story, no explanation. No, his reaction is just a normal reaction to it. It's that kind of weird moment in the film that gives it such such a crazy intensity, you know, other films and other scenes that I liked was the big fight on the bridge, you know, with the kid's on the other side, and, and he eventually gets grabbed by a fishing pole around the feet and gets dragged all around and then falls down. The violence to the central character makes him empathetic. The fact that everybody's pursuing him has that dream logic and so you, you put yourself in that character's place and you say, well, God, I got a troop massive zombie group of cowboys trying to get me for no reason that I know of, and I'm just trying to get away and he ends up being able to get a little bit of relief. by taking a bath. But unfortunately while he's taking a bath, a huge bear comes into the room. He tries to avoid it, but a woman comes in and the bear attacks the woman. And rather than being the heroic person standing up to protect the woman, he leaves with the screams of the woman in the background, as he's trying to get the hell away. And then it goes into this Jules Verne mode, where they finally they just barely escaped this crowd of people and things and objects and everything up into the air balloons, and that finally takes them away, and you think you're gonna have a moment of peace. But then suddenly, the world which seemingly is this God, MAD GOD world, takes over and starts moving the balloon sideways, he can't get away from and they fall. And at one point, just before the end of it, I recall a scene in which the entire world of the game is stripped away, and they're in that space that's outside of the game, right, which is such a weird liminal place. And they fall through that is that they're falling through the game back into the solid reality again. And you think he's going to resolve the issue with his nephew by just taking him out? And then of course, he can't, because the world comes back and smacks him upside the head. And that's the ending of the film saying, well, it doesn't matter what you do this irrational world's going to going to grab you and it's going to turn you around, no matter how rational you're trying to be. So I mean, I could go on and on and on. But anyway, it's just a little masterpiece, of machinima of crazy machinima. That has a rationality to it, it keeps trying to be real, you know what I mean? But the world of the game just will not let them be real. And that conflict and that hilarious juxtaposition of sizes and characters just made an absolutely fascinating is a wonderful, wonderful film.
Damien Valentine 17:17
Well, I got to try to follow that up. But initially, when I started watching it, I was thinking, this is gonna be like one of those old school machinima films where the fan of the game and they decided, let's just go nuts and have fun. But there's so much more to it than just that. There's still elements of that with how crazy it gets as as all the way through. But there's this whole theme of the main character, he obviously feels guilty about. not treating his nephew the way he should have done. He just didn't have time for him. And the nephew wants to look up to his uncle and wants to be friends with him, and get to know him better and have fun together, you know, the way that a young child would and the uncle she said, No, sorry, busy. And he's haunted by this, and that, that has manifested itself in this nightmarish experience. And Phil I'm glad you mentioned about the dream comment, because that makes a lot more sense as well. This is a really wild, nightmare experience. And I'm kind of glad that my dreams are not quite like that. I enjoyed it all the way through, I was laughing at just how silly it was. But it's also kind of sorry for the child. Like because he just wants to connect with his uncle and his uncle and rejected him. And I feel like, Oh, I get what the uncle was haunted by experience, because obviously, he realised he'd done something wrong, and try and fix it. And when that end scene happened, I had to re watch that bit again, because I wasn't quite sure it caught that, right? Because suddenly, it comes out of nowhere. And you don't expect it and then it's over. So I had to watch that bit again, just to make sure I've seen it. And then I watched the whole thing again, because it was just so good. And so Oh yeah,
Ricky Grove 19:11
it's a movie that yields great rewards with repeated viewings, you know,
Damien Valentine 19:16
nothing. So if we finished recording, I'm gonna go and watch it again.
Ricky Grove 19:20
Hey, I have two quick questions for you guys. One is how do you think the voices and and dialogue was created? Was it just an amalgam of captures from various scenes that they were working on? And also was there? I don't recall whether there was any music in the film? I don't think there was.
Phil Rice 19:42
There was some incidental music. It was very, very subtle. The one thing that jumps out to me with incidental music is the first time that he goes into the tavern. And I think he's Oh yes, friend, Lenny. And all Lenny's start showing up and there's this tense music that just kind of builds up there. And I think that there's some underlying music throughout, but it's just so it's just so well woven together that like, unless you set out to do so I don't know that you could watch this and pick out the score as like some kind of distinct piece. It's just all all together into a soundscape. The dialogue that was going to be my one follow up comment after all you spoke is the one making up question I have is how do they do the dialogue? Particularly? Yes, is but there's there's times when the friend is going hot air ballooning with the two of them say a couple lines. They're so on point they're so relevant to the scenario that it can't just be that it was randomly captured at the time that that was filmed. You know, I say I say they just can't it's too good. Like there's there's 1000s of lines of dialogue that Arthur says that are pre recorded. The fact that he would happen to say, that thing's huge when a modded alligator goes by and takes up the whole street. I guess it's possible. But that would mean that the creators of the game had to build an awareness into the Arthur character. Yeah, not preserve a modded alligator that takes up the whole street. So no, I don't think so. But goodness gracious, there are 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of individual lines of dialogue. They're not terribly well documented or terribly easy to get your hands on, or to trigger from the character. So wow, just wow, yes. Yeah, how somebody did that, I would guess that there was some kind of machine assistance involved there. By that I mean, that if somebody was able to get hold of a data set that told you what all those lines of dialogue were, or if you got all the sound files, run them all through a speech to text thing, and then then you've got a database with that. I actually, when I was making OBIT, I thought I might have to do something like that, and was so discouraged, because it's like, Man, this is way beyond my skill set here. And I can't, I can't afford to pay somebody to do that for a quick movie. But it's, it's such a disorganised set of data, the dialogue, that's a real mystery to me how they pulled that other leg to know that to
Tracy Harwood 22:31
2020. When this was released, it was 2020. So I, I think it's unlikely that they used a generator. Yeah, I would say I
Phil Rice 22:42
capture from some other scene or something. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Maybe the person who makes it runs, uh, you know, does a Twitch stream. And they're just streaming hours and hours of content of playing through the game, then at least you've got source files, but to find those lines, so many of the lines feel like they were placed just so because they're so perfect. Yeah. So it's really an idea that
Ricky Grove 23:10
also the dialogue, the dialogue wasn't the kind of direct dialogue you have in a standard drama was almost incidental. It's all thrown away. Like one repeated phrase that I remember, which was just hilarious to me was what the hell
Phil Rice 23:25
yeah. And that incidental dialogue is built into the game. Like if you just play the game, and you're, you're controlling Arthur, and if you go to get on your horse and kind of slip off it, he will say something like that, or he will curse under his breath or something. And those are very random. But the fact that these were just so well placed, it's hard for me to believe that those were random. I think they were captured from those performances, but probably inserted with some deliberation because it's just, it's just perfect.
Ricky Grove 23:59
It's like Dali suddenly got an episode of Bonanza to direct. Yeah,
Tracy Harwood 24:07
absolutely.
Ricky Grove 24:08
And he decided, well, we're gonna make some changes here.
Phil Rice 24:15
He comes in if someone says, while you're away, we made some
Ricky Grove 24:20
great, great pick Phil. Just some wonderful wonderful film. It's gonna give me pleasure for months to come really something
Phil Rice 24:27
special. This definitely in my I don't really maintain an all time list but this is in my entire time. Great machinima. Yeah, films ever made. Just have just astounding. Yep. So I'm glad you guys enjoyed it too. Sure did. Alright, that'll do it for this episode. Be sure to join us next time. If you have feedback for us. Or if you agree or disagree with any of our opinions on these films. We'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at talk at what is it? CompletelyMachinima.com or comment on our YouTube video. or come to complain about us on Facebook wherever you want to pay attention. So thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.