And Now For Something Completely Machinima (Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine, and Phil Rice)

Whilst January's news begins with more of the same ole genAIs doing their thang, because they can, there's now evidence of more concerted effort to control the efforts of creators... because the corporates and policymakers can at least try to do that, right?  Well, maybe, but all this has achieved in the past is even more creative energy invested in jumping through the hoops, clambering over the walls and crashing through the hedges - so Happy New Year, we're looking forward to seeing what the amazing machinima creative communities of all engine persuasions around the World can achieve in 2025!  Plus, we discuss iClone's new update, a couple of interesting creative projects celebrating content creators in their own ways, as well as interesting milestones.

1:15 SORA-not SORA

6:51 Runway’s Act One

7:39 Face Depth Frame Mancer

9:00 Riot Games dishing the riot act

11:06 Fortnite’s achievements

12:53 Why was Andy Serkis not playing the horse?

14:00 JT Music’s Halo tribute

14:42 Bullet Time Agent

17:14 Reallusion’s iClone update

18:51 After Astartes: this is what happened to Syama Pedersen

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week's film is a SFM Saxxy 2017 entry from  @TipsyDucks called Mann Co: Employee Training Video. Lots of in-jokes and satire in the style of a PSA, with a fantastic voiceover by Keith Ferrell aka MrTush.

4:13 We don't pay you to think. We pay you to work.
7:07 Team Fortress 2 stylized graphics.
9:02 Phil’s sense of humour and satire.
10:31 Pushing the edge of appropriateness.
13:42 The value of safe comedy.
16:07 The difference between satire and tastelessness.
19:04 Christoph Waltz' The Consultant, based on Bentley Little novel.

Credits -
Speakers:  @zsOverman @RickyGrove @DarthAngelus @tgharwood
Producer: Phil Rice 
Editor: Damien Valentine 
Music: CreateStudio Pro Music Assets licensed. Nebular Focus by Dan Henig. Youtube audio collection

Links to the film on our website, https://completelymachinima.com/2022/10/19/s3-e49-film-review-most-precious-gift-by-shangyu-wang-oct-2022/

Credits
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: evanjones4__sleepnomore1 - Freesound.org. License CC 0

What's it like to be an in-game stuntman? This week's review is of a fun take, with a more serious undertone, on the NPC's perspective of life in the background of a game for a very average player.  The concept is hilarious, the execution needs a little work, but overall we loved this one by For Science and filmed in Star Citizen.  

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: Coast by Anno Domini Beats

A packed ep this month, key tools, what's happening roundup and some fascinating projects - links to everything on the Show Notes page of our website.

1:29 BBC Sound Archive

2:30 Auto painter AI for Blender

2:56 Google image/film search AI

5:00 Tribute to David Graham

6:05 Mouse: PI For Hire!

7:05 Azeroth politicised? Surely not!

10:13 Pigeon Bringer of Doom and Destroyer of Humanity, by Solofilms

10:50 The Flower that Never Dies, by NewGates Entertainment

11:21 Terminator and Cyberpunk 2077, by eli_handle_b.wav 

12:27 Warhammer, JT Music 

13:03 Ian Hubert’s Dynamo Dream Part 2 is finally out 

14:13 Star Citizen Con updates SC1.0

18:31 Squadron 42 gameplay reveal update

23:09 Hubnet machinima, Overclock and EE Studios

26:15 Luminaria still open!

27:00 GTA Hamlet documentary, Sam Crane

28:40 Reallusion 3D character contest results – stunning work!

31:30 Movies Tycoon out of early access

Credits -
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week, we cover three outstanding music videos, demonstrating different genres of music and different game engines - a re-imagined Simon and Garfunkel classic, a pop-tacular and a rap. We discuss the perfect match between the lyrics, the game and the images our three selected creators have demonstrated in these shorts. We suggest comparing and contrasting, but really we just mean enjoy them all for what they are.

1:41 Harry101UK’s Sound of Science, Source Filmmaker/Portal, music by Stupendium

4:49 Who I am, Blender/Minecraft/Portal by Cubical, music by CG5

6:16 Portal is darker than expected, and these beautifully illustrate it?

9:26 Why recreate Portal in Minecraft aesthetic; why?!

11:57 Why Portal and why now?

14:09 Both videos capture the creepiness in Portal well

15:57 Helldivers 2 – JT Music’s video is a mindblowing overview of this new game

17:59 No AI used in the making of by JT?

18:35 What is Helldivers 2 about: the galaxy’s last line offence!

21:11 An homage to Starship Troopers… and politics of our time

30:49 Our show: what do you think to the new format?

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Ricky's pick for the month is Let's Play Nomad X by Kristian Andrews, uploaded to Vimeo on 11 Mar 2013. The film is a 'slice of life' comedy with intriguing mix of playing a 90s style space game, Nomad X, and reflecting on losing the love of your life - a perfect antidote for those Valentine's week shenanigans!

0:10 Let’s Play Nomad X by Kristian Andrews
3:59 Let’s play, let's play 6:27 The shared consciousness of video games
9:00 Inspired by Frontier Elite Dangerous
12:02 Nostalgia factor of video games
13:35 The Halle Project
16:05 The genius of the story
17:57 The importance of good storytelling

Show notes and links: www.completelymachinima.com/

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer: Ricky Grove 
Editor: Damien Valentine 
Music: Nebular Focus by Dan Henig

This week we feature two films by Chinese artist collective studio, @Motzify Mohua. These two shorts, The Crown and Hunt, are made in Unreal Engine and show extraordinary qualities in very different ways: The Crown is a fairytale made originally for World Children's Day and illustrates traditional cultural references with gorgeous imagery; Hunt is a cyberpunk anti-hero teaser. Our main 'complaint' is that we need more detail from the artists! 

3:23 Unreal Engine is one of the best tools for making machinima. 

8:14 The crown and the sword. 

12:03 The mystique of the film - a hybridised 2D/3D animation style

16:36 What struck Tracy about the first film. 

19:55 Cthulhu, the ultimate evil. 

27:53 What is style and why is it important? 

31:58 Hidden politics. 

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer: Tracy Harwood 
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Intro: Doctor Dreamchip & Outro: Arps Solina

This week, we discuss the art of machinima filmmaking, emphasizing the importance of craftsmanship, freshness, and humor in exceptional storytelling, as evidenced in 'Lonely Episode Two: The Package Thief' by TheBizTheBiz. We analyze the efficiency and density used in delivering witty lines and twists in what is essentially a modern retelling of the Lone Ranger, using mariachi music, masks, and character development, clever use of language and a well-executed comedic setup.

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Featuring: RickAI aka AI Ricky, or Skibidi Rick
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week's film selection comprises 2 shorts, both untitled but actually worlds apart in their development. Its not often we get to comment on a first ever machinima project as the framing for a creative idea but our first film is just that, by Sydney Walker, and made in an environment we have never seen used for machinima before, Final Fantasy 14. Our second film is a psychological thriller, drawing us in from a the whole world of familiar cinematic language in a way that we struggled with in the Astartes Project.  BUT, the title needs work because "iClone shorts" just doesn't cut it for us... over to Just Art Animation Studios!  

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Rice
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Arp Solina

Tracy talks to John MacInnes, winner of the OSCARS' Nicholl Fellowship for Screenwriting in 2011, screenwriter for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (released 2014), winner of 2 Epic Unreal Megagrants for his virtual David Bowie project, founder of awarding-winning studio MacInnes Studios, and director of the 2021 Real Time Shorts Challenge.

2:53 Official trailer for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFu5qXMuaJU

13:25 Game engines as storytelling tools

23:36 Making realistic humans in game engines, David Bowie and the Epic Megagrant project and Grace the first digital popstar

31:29 Real Time Filmmakers Facebook group and the Real Time Shorts Challenge, including the winners 

42:00 One good movie? The blessing and the curse of original thinking!

50:34 Professional vs indie filmmaking

54:00 Demand for long form vs short form films and the future of machinima

Credits:
Speakers: John MacInnes, Tracy Harwood 
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: freesound.org / Intro/Outro by snapper4298

This week's ep we dedicate to a 3D animation by a French student collective made in their final year of studies, streamed through @TheRookiesCo channel. It is not technically #machinima as its made using traditional #animation tools but nonetheless we absolutely loved it - and its a recommendation by one of our channel's regular followers @3dchick. The film is a post-apocaylptic robot tale, inspired by Zaha Hadid's architectonic style. 

2:00 Ricky's intro
8:25 Benevolence vs malificence? A moral tale for bots! 
13:46 How to achieve personality in machines? This is an example reminiscent from the early days of machinima and the work of Peter Rasmussen 
16:21 Cultural references in this film were not film-based but engineering based - is this a reflection of contemporary times and the emergent use of 3D animation tools? 
18:45 A clever use of missing information to set the scene 

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood (Phil Rice MIA) 
Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine 
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week, we discuss some of the best flight sim machinima we’ve ever seen, thanks to Damien’s picks.  We couldn’t decide which was better, so we discuss two films: The Ghost and The Right Stuff by J P Ferre, made in DCS.  The first is a horror story and the other a story of one of the most influential pioneers of modern space flight today: Chuck Yeager. It is an outstanding retelling of one particularly testing flight, and is a Hollywood movie in 12 minutes!  

1:00 The Ghost intro.

3:02 Pilot’s involvement in the action. 

4:37 The role of editing to establish continuity. 

7:32 Reality vs fantasy in a high-end flight sim. 

13:12 The Right Stuff intro.

15:23 A near perfect machinima. 

22:45 Pioneers of spaceflight: a Hollywood movie in 12 minutes. 

26:00 The sound of the plane taking off. 

30:42 The soundtrack for the film. 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: Arps Solina

Completely Machinima blog post to show notes and links - https://completelymachinima.com/2022/02/17/completely-machinima-interview-with-john-gaeta/

Time Stamps -

3.32 Backstory to Matrix Awakens Experience

10.01 Game vs Experience

12.00 World building The Matrix

18.11 Why PS5 and Xbox X/S?

21.36 Bullet time – again!

26.04 Awakens as a time capsule – remaking the virtual Neo

29.03 Multi-modal storytelling is the future

33.06 Storytelling and AI

37.00 Real time vs cinema – a cross-over moment

39.39 Scalable metaverses, AR and AI – reflecting on Disney’s recent announcements

49.27 The space between bones and spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey – vis Paul Marino’s 2004 Art of Machinima book

52.10 The role of Nvidia’s Omniverse platform

54.46 NFTs and open markets

1.03.00 Advice to machinima and real-time creators: passion and knowledge!

1.08.00: Red or Blue?

Our monthly news update this month covers more genAI matters, game-related items and WoWness in the form of a 2 hour + stunning orchestral performance celebrating 20 years of musical history. Check out the news and our discussion, and do leave comments too! 

1:35 Pioneers in Machinima, published by Vernon Press, is becoming part of the genAI ecosystem + a plea to keep us up to date 
13:05 AI filmmaking studio launched aka #mAIchinima 
14:29 Silent Hill Remake 2 mod by Praydog 
15:30 Philip Rosedale back at Second Life, yay! 
21:25 Remarkable Life of Ibelin – a remarkable story 
22:50 20 years of WoW, orchestral extravaganza 
26:18 Steam Launcher update w/ machinima tools 
29:30 Dragon Age Veilguard release 
31:30 Half Life 2 20th anniversary RTX remix 
37:40 The corollary of the unfinished game… 
44:24 Mr Musk’s Diablo 4 record 

Credits - 
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice 
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Show Notes and Links:
Completely Machinima S2 Ep 35 Films & Discussion (April 2022)

Alien: The Message, a fan film by direx1974

Reallusion’s iClone 7

Alien Isolation game

Casting Call Club

The Tavern, upcoming series by Rene Jacob

Completely Machinima blog here - https://completelymachinima.com/?p=1230

Speakers:
Rene Jacob (aka direx1974)
Ricky Grove

Credits:
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: The Shining in Dubai by Unicorn Heads

This week we celebrate Nvidia's investment in machinima, discuss latest AIs and give you the heads up on some great projects we want to highlight - there are just too many for us to fully review everything we're seeing that we want to share with you these days! Do check them out, we'd love to hear your thoughts too - links and notes on our website. 

2:47 Thank you Nvidia 
7:48 Fab projects 
15:39 Latest AI genies to get your teeth into
20:28 Movie-making games
44:43 A final comment from RickyAI: If there's a man in the house, you can damn well be sure there's a lot of condoms too

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Introducing: RickyAI aka Skibidi Rick
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animno Domini Beats

A truly terrifying short for some, Horror is more like an absurd dream for others. The film is made by Yang Hyunjun, released 4 June 2023. Its creator showcases some incredible scene detail, especially at the beginning of the film, but thereafter, loses a little of the pathos and credibility in the storytelling.

Key points -
6:00 Tracy picks a horror film. 
11:52 Situating yourself with the character, facial animation and narrative. 
15:34 Men are the easiest people in the world to make fun of (according to Phil). 
21:30 Paranoia and psychosis – what was the intent of the filmmaker?
26:44 Challenge of communicating cultural differences between East and West. 

Credits -
Speakers: Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Phil Rice
Producer: Tracy Harwood
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: intro: Doctor Dreamchip, outro: Arps Solina, Otis McDonald

John MacInnes talks to Tracy about his new real-time movie contest just launched - a competition with a very interesting difference, using Unreal Engine 5.   Its all about mis-en-scene... "the skill, the challenge, is to actually reproduce a tone or a feeling and affect the audience... there's something really challenging and valuable in that exercise in itself..."

Show notes and links at https://completelymachinima.com/2022/08/08/real-time-movie-challenge-mood-scenes-announcement/

Damien's picks this week take a look at two of the first Starfield machinimas by @TheKShow and @Mod81Gameworld respectively. The first is a 'tell and show' with a neat cinematic demo invoking Starship Troopers, and the second is a slightly more original lore-based teaser for an upcoming series called The Mantis. We begin this episode with an update on Star Citizen’s new spin off game, Squadron 42, which is now ‘feature complete’ and their launch of a new contest which can be entered on TikTok, leading Tracy to speculate on their strategic response to the release of Starfield! Ricky highlight’s a recent important update to Second Life’s render system which has important implications for machinima creators. 

1:06 Star Citizen and Squadron 42 updates 
4:00 Day of the Vara 2953 Star Citizen contest
5:42 Second Life’s new PBR rendering system
11:14 Film reviews: the first is an overview of the potential for machinima in Starfield, including a cinematic screen test in the style of Starship Troopers, and the second uses a side story in the game to tease a series based on the Mantis lore and character
18:22 Tracy explores the impacts of Starfield on the Star Citizen community of machinima creators 
20:50 Our discussion returns to Barely Not Monkey’s Adrift and some of the challenges faced when creating game-based machinima
27:46 Reflection on the quality of the writing in The Mantis and Phil’s copyright free creative ideas service for our audience
31:34 We are machinima experts – Ricky says, so it must be true!
 
#starfield #machinima 

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood 
Producer: Ricky Grove 
Editor: Damien Valentine 
Music: Anno Domini Beats

We start this week's episode with a discussion about Reallusion's new facial mocap system, Accuface (which Phil and Damien have already invested in), move on to a brief contest update (being run by Pink Floyd no less), and then follow this up with our film review.  If you liked the Saw series of films, then this is for you - its a particularly sadistic let's play style machinima made in The Sims 4, called I Abducted My Entire Neighborhood in The Sims 4, by Lets Game It Out... and its also just Phil's sense of humor too!  We contrast our discussion with some older references to classic machinimas, which help us to make our point about just how talented this creator is.  

1:36 Reallusion’s Accuface release discussion

18:43 Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon call for animations

22:54 Review and discussion: I Abducted My Entire Neighborhood in The Sims 4 by Let’s Game it Out

47:09 The game is a palette: contrast the film with The Snow Witch, Phil’s OBIT or RVB (Roosterteeth), illustrating the imagination of the creator

50:32 Forcing The Sims to act – Phi’s outtake video from Male Restroom Etiquette

Credits:
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Anno Domini Beats 

This month's news omnibus covers our usual breadth of topics - from Reallusion's Character Creator contest; to a 'how to create in SL', available only in SL; to Project Odyssey's contest for genAIers; to the winners of the second AIFF; to some fabulous projects such as  @EpicSpaceman latest film, an Elden Ring band, Jennifer McKnew's Sydney and Socket project, and one dedicated to sharing with us the 'speed of animals'; to the fallout from the Prince Charles Cinema debate about showcasing an genAI film; launch of the Starfield Creation Kit; Homefield 3; and a must have tool for creating great quality 3D backbounds called Distopica. Its a must watch for anyone working in #machinima!

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week we review the winner of the 2022 Kitbash3D moving image challenge contest, based on their free Mission to Minerva asset pack.  The film is called Secret Moon by Orencloud, and what a visually stunning and ethereal representation of Minerva this is, with a clear trajectory between this piece and Orencloud's portfolio.  We discuss some of the ways in which the film works and works less well for us, and note that at least one of us missed the ending!

1:34 What was the challenge for?
4:42 The gloom of the world.
6:59 The power of content packs.
10:09 The ethereal quality.
11:24 Music and the voice.
13:17 The problem with music in film.
15:15 I would watch anything this director made in a heartbeat.

Show notes and links: https://completelymachinima.com/2023/02/23/s3-e66-film-review-secret-moon-by-orencloud-feb-2023/

Credits -
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove, Phil Rice
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Nebular Focus by Dan Henig

Ben reviews classic Quake 1 films from the machinima archives –

0.48 Diary of a Camper by The Rangers, released 26 October 1996

2.00 Torn Apart series by The Rangers, first released 6 November 1996

2.28 Apartment Huntin’ by The ILL Clan, released 17 May 1998

3.23 Escheton: Darkness Twilight by Strange Company, released 20 January 1998 (by Walking Wounded)

4.30 Blahbalicious by Avatar & Wendigo, released 9 December 1997

5.40 Devil’s Covenant by Clan Phantasm, released 2 August 1998

6.59 Operation Bayshield by Clan Undead, released 24 January 1997

8.02 Zerstorer by Nihilism Unlimited, released 27 September 1997

9.06 Seal of Nehahra by Nehahra Team, released 6 August 2000

9.46 Scourge Done Slick by Quake Done Quick Team, released 25 July 1998

The Completely Machinima blog post including show notes and links is here - https://completelymachinima.com/2022/02/24/cm-history-with-ben-grussi-quake-i/

What a fantastic short to end 2024 on... this week is yet another great creative work by GibbsonTV, released in April.  The film is based on the award-winning Roblox-inspired game Lethal Company by Zeekerss.  It's not actually machinima, being made in Blender, but in the spirit of being inspired by the game and with a original tale, it has all the right heritage for our show.  Check out our comments and add your own - and see you on the other side of the New Year for more creative tidbits.

1:04 Introduction to the film, the game and the rules of storytelling

8:16 Inspired by Alien

10:36 The tools and the craft in storytelling, at times reminiscent of RVB

15:15 Voice acting and AI, and a little disappointment

16:53 Finding a way to be a creative long-term

18:28 Realtime vs 3D animation – the benefit of thinking like a machinimator

19:35 Anachronisms… 

21:50 Sound advice?

24:26 Mocap and Damien’s approach to filmmaking

27:32 A demo reel strategy and drawing from the experiences of the early days in machinima

 
Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Links and notes on our website here

Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Ricky Grove
Edited in CreateStudio Pro. Music licensed from their collection. 

This week's film review is of [GTA5] 賽銭箱に身を投げる ロスサントス市警察, made by  @mzanku - its absurdist humor but also deeply disturbing, which hits us all in different ways around half way through watching the film. Following our discussions, we conclude the creator probably didn't intend for the work to be culturally appropriated as an interpretation of US police brutality, but that interpretation was nonetheless possible. In closing out the ep, Ricky discusses the new DLC for Elden Ring and the role cheese plays in enjoying it.

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer: Ricky Grove 
Editor: Phil Rice 
Music: Arps Solina

0:45 Unreal 1 Released – 22 May 1998

2:22 Unframed Productions formed, with James Hammer-Morton and Hugh MacDonald, and created Resident Evil themed content

3:13 Unreal Tournament 1 – 23 May 1999 and Reactor4’s Real Time Movie Studio mod

4:16 Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 which included the first edition of Matinee and further information round 12:00

5:04 Star Fury produces Sucker in 2003

5:58 2003, Epic Games launches the Make Something Unreal Contest with notable films awarded runners up by Friedrich Kirschner (The Tournament) and Unframed Productions’ Lucky Man, EG_Intro from Hongman Leung and The Showdown by Accelerated Pictures.

7:25 2004, Epic’s Make Something Unreal Contest winner was Friedrich Kirschner’s The Journey

8:18 Creators Testing concepts for Blade Runner, Lord of the Things and others

11:12 Spielberg uses Unreal Tournament 1 for pre-viz for Artificial Intelligence with ILM

14:06 First version of Epic’s Unreal Engine released in October 2003 for education and non-commercial projects

15:02 Computer website, HomeLAN, interviewed Friedrich Kirschner about his 2004 winning film The Journey and Steve Polge at Epic Games about why the film was selected – interesting comments!

Full show notes and links at https://completelymachinima.com/2022/08/18/cm-history-with-ben-grussi-unreal-engine/

17:36 Victory’s tutorials on Unreal Tournament 2004

This week, Ricky, Phil and Damien begin with an brief discussion of the roles AI is being used for to restore old machinimas, and in particular the very exciting upcoming release Phil will be doing of old Machiniplex films - more on that in due course!  

The film discussion centres on After War by RG Studios, and their approach to telling a story without moving a camera in the Half Life 2 world. 

3:19 Ethical considerations in upscaling. 

5:35 How good is the game? 

7:59 How to choose a film. 

11:43 Single camera in one place in one shot. 

16:21 The sound of the film. 

19:34 Challenging your expectations. 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine (MIA Tracy Harwood)
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Opening title sequence: Flow by MK2; Closing titles: Arp Solina

June Episode of Completely Machinima podcast  https://completelymachinima.com/2022/06/08/completely-machinima-s2-ep-39-films-june-2022/) – go to time stamp 18:57 for discussion of How to Fly

5:40 Backgrounds (released 19 February 2013), collaboration with John Blandy, father

7:08 Franz Fanon series, Finding Fanon 2 (Grand Theft Auto, released 11 September 2015), collaboration with Larry Achiampong 

14:12 Reflecting on the cultural forces represented by games, meaning in games, cultural capital and the importance of shared memories through games

23:15 Telling alternative stories in ways such as to deal with the social anxieties intertwined in them eg., Henrietta Lacks and John Edmonson

25:06 Discussing How to Fly (released 22 April 2020) and How to Live (released 21 May 2020), pandemic project – and why the cormorant?

32:14 Discussing Androids Dream and the use of a voice trained AI to create a meditative effect

35:13 Discussing Henrietta Lacks and the film A Lament for Power (released 20 July 2020), also being shown at WORLDBUILDING at the Julia Stoschek Foundation between June 2022 and December 2023 

38:49 Reflecting on different types of creative practice, objectivity, collaboration, space, happy accidents and found objects

55:53 Reflecting on future practice using machinima 

Credits:
Speakers: David Blandy, Tracy Harwood
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: Freesound.org  Intro/Outro by Snapper4298

This ep, we take a walk down memory lane to the first major peak of #machinima with a documentary produced by  @ProducerStuartBrown , released in 2003. The film is a fly on the wall documentary of the creative practice of the legendary Hugh Hancock (founder of #Machinima.com) and his @strangecompany

0:39 Introduction to the film; shock and awe: Hugh’s bravado, character, energy and enthusiasm shines through
3:09 Foundations of Machinima.com, the Strange Company, the ILL Clan and others – the first peak of machinima
6:54 Stuart Brown’s YouTube channel
7:50 Minority report: “This may be the future of filmmaking” (2003)!
8:14 Positioning machinima as previs, preproduction, and the role of remote directing
10:40 Technical challenges to filmmaking back in 2003
13:58 What happened next to Machinima.com
15:35 Fond memories
19:32 Boom and bust: the poison of the profit motive?
22:40 The hard ask of the  @roosterteethanimation #rvb model
23:41 Money as a means to an end
25:52 The team and the decisions
27:29 Frank Dellario’s humour!  @ILLClan @frankdellario7401
29:05 Remembering Peter Rasmussen 

Show notes & links: includes Tracy's notes and an interview with Hugh - see links below 

Credits - 
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine 
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice 
Music: Animo Domini Beats

The Little Limpet is an Elite Dangerous animation by CMDR Nickweb85, released in July 2024. It has shades of Disney X David Attenborough X Busby Barkley. You could say it has something for everyone then... well, assuming you enjoy a good space opera/ballet (which of course we do).  Check out our comments -

0:44 Intro to film, Elite Dangerous, Pixar-like, composited game footage using Blender

4:17 Story, Tom Cook’s music and anthropomorphic animations

6:45 Experimental work, testing emotional representations

7:59 Ep 1 vs Ep 2, a Busby Barkley space ballet

10:16 Criticism: why split the episodes where they have been?

13:37 The importance of machinima telling the stories about the side kick in an MMO

16:19 Tom Cook’s dedication to making music for ED machinimas, IP and music performance 

Credits -
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week, Ricky provokes us with a selection of shorts released on TikTok.  We discuss the usefulness of the platform for machinima and virtual production creators, as well as pass comment on the three films we take a look at, which unsurprisingly we variously struggle with. Phil's analogy to fish restaurants of different quality sums it up well for us all.

8:19 Fish restaurants
11:51 Dumpsters for paperbacks analogy
15:23 Terry Gilliam said...
19:26 Phil's profound reflection on quality kit
29:52 Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
35:05 Does Twitter make you a better script writer?

Show notes and links here

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Nebular Focus by Dan Henig

An homage and 'unofficial tribute' to the classic 90s TV series, this week's review discusses a film of a game demo created by Blue Rose Team for the PS1. The demo covers the intro and events surrounding Special Agent Cooper's arrival at Twin Peaks and his encounter with Laura Palmer and the Black Lodge. Steeped in the mythos of the virtual world that has been created, well, at least that applies to some of the CM crew more than other/s, we discuss how well it translates to contemporary times, the story portrayed and the issues that arise from this type of transformative work.

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Intro/Doctor Dreamchip Outro/Arps Solina

In all our years of involvement with machinima (and that's over 75 years between us), feature length has been something we've rarely found watchable... but with this week's pick, we were proven wrong, mostly! Emesis Blue, made in Source Filmmaker using the Team Fortress 2 characterisations by Fortress Films, is an incredibly well-made if very complex story that was crafted over many years.    

1:30 Overview of the plot, twists and the filmmaker
8:33 Ambiguity vs over-complex?
9:29 The merits of the long format for this film
10:15 Its all in the knitting
11:30 The first 20 minutes are exceptional
12:38 The importance of episodes
13:30 Its pulp
17:40 Nolan's influence?
25:30 Game lore didn't matter in appreciating the film
29:29 Entertaining who? 
30:39 An ending - never explain!
35:24 Storytelling craft
37:47 The Source engine
39:59 Gladiatorial process: being critical and giving feedback
41:46 Its a muddle in the middle... the title of Ricky's new autobiography

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

TOP GUN Maverick Intro by  @godivasl in  @secondlife , as you've never seen it before! The attention to detail in editing the scenes and character performance is outstanding - well done to all those involved.

Credits -
Speakers:  @zsOverman @tgharwood @DarthAngelus (MIA  @RickyGrove ) 
Producer: Phil Rice 
Editor: Ricky Grove 
Sound Effect: Motorcycle driveby by Severaltimes / Freesound.org

Time stamps:

1:10 Nvidia’s special address at CES, points relevant for machinima creators eg., Omniverse, AI

12:55 RDR2 images in the news!

13:40 Austin Film Festival

14:24 Adobe Project Shasta for audio recording

14:56 Kerbal Space Programme 2 impending launch

16:25 Machinima growth observations

17:28 VR growth observations

19:46 NFTs observations

23:57 Philip Rosedale and the future of Second Life for creators

40:30 Halo Xbox 360 multiplayer servers close – the end of the story for RoosterTeeth’s RVB series?

42:50 Ben Grussi’s history of machinima episodes of the Completely Machinima podcast

44:34 Matthew Loris/Zeke: what are the differences between machinima and animation discussion

1:00:48 Rockstar’s lawsuit against a modding group

1:02:21 Minecraft’s astonishing video reach

1:03:43 Pandora’s 3d Films: adapting prose to visual media formats preliminary comments

Completely Machinima blog post and show notes - https://completelymachinima.com/2022/02/03/completely-machinima-s2-ep30-news-discussion/

Not strictly machinima, but something we've named mAIchinima! This week, we discuss two films using generative AI to create narrative works.  In both cases, the techniques employed emphasize the sound - music or voice acting - but whilst one is intentional, the other is not.  We share our thoughts on these works and discuss some of the current limitations and benefits observed, which leads us into a timely discussion about style in filmmaking.  We also discuss some recent developments in AI for creatives, such as the role of Glaze masking and Nightshade corrupting tools.

1:36 Glaze and Nightshade generative AI tools discussion

12:42 New games with machinima potential

14:48 USB microphone by J Lab

14:46 Nina | Denver Pluto discussion

33:33 Prelude to Dust discussion

43:00 Style and its use in filmmaking, Waltz With Bashir and Giger

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Anno Domini Beats

Speakers:
Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove

Time stamps:
1:56 Nvidia Omniverse, Omniverse Code and Meet the Creators (Omnivores)

·       Jae Solina Filmz – Nvidia blog post

4:11 KGB in Minecraft – yes really!

3:00 Backlot – not a lot

6:44 Best games for M1 Mac by Tyler Stalman

9:10 Music and sound studio set up for machinima: Everything I use as a full-time content creator by Malinda

10:54 Nvidia AI conference, GTC 2022

13:00 Implications of games convergence into Microsoft ownership for machinima

·       BBC News article, 18 Jan 2022

15:08 Philip Rosedale & Wagner James Au on the future of Second Life and the Metaverse, podcast

17:43 Edan Mackenzie’s A Fond Farewell composition celebrating the achievements of TMUnderground which has finally gone offline 

21:30 Discussion: Second Life for machinima

Completely Machinima blog post, show notes and links here - https://completelymachinima.com/2022/03/03/completely-machinima-s2-ep-32-news-discussion/

Credits:
Producer/editor: Ricky Grove
Music:  Arps Solina - Mylar Melodies

Kicking off 2025 with a review of a classic and iconic #machinima by one of the pioneers of the movement, Paul Marino aka ILLRobinson. I'm Still Seeing Breen, made in HL2, holds a special place in our memories from those early years - not only was it a perfect 'protest piece' as the feature machinima demonstrating its potential for a 2005 Sundance Film Festival panel discussion (alongside RoosterTeeth's RVB) but was further developed for MTV2's Season 2 premiere of its Video Mods TV show later that same year. In this episode, we go over the back story, discuss how this was made and its impact on machinima in general.

1:14 Introduction to film and the Valve 20th anniversary edition of Source Filmmaker updates
5:31 Back story to its release: the snub, the support from Valve, the successes and the features (Ottawa Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, MTV2 and Tony Shiff, et al)
16:45 The genius of selecting a music video for making machinima! 
18:05 Creating the head animation in Source, editing and scene selection
23:00 Communicating and community in the early days
26:30 Why the Gman and why a close-up?
31:00 A watershed moment, a turning point, but the end/beginning of the next phase too
35:00 An inspiration
38:53 A big mistake
41:54 How the games companies robbed the machinima community
44:00 A question for Paul

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats 

Not for the first time do we discuss the gorgeous cinematic qualities of GTA5, and this week we share a beaut by @Salva.Padilla. This one has a distinct vibe to it, but it is its general ambiguity that we especially love about the machinima. We each see something a little different in it! What do you see in it?

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Little White Poney Inn by Olibith
It Lives Within the Sea by Squadron Orange (dir. Dominic Edwards)

Links and notes on our website here

Credits:
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: sclolex__a-bad-day-at-the-crypt / freesound.org

Kicking off Season 4 of the podcast, we review a Monty Python inspired film, integrating one of their greatest films with Elden Ring – Holy Grail.  The film has been made by The Escapist in collaboration with eli_handle_b.wav and is a brilliantly edited and composited mashup.  It is also a very appropriate pick for this episode since Monty Python were the inspiration for this podcast in the first place, so we reflect in the show that we’ve now been working on this podcast longer than the original Star Trek series ran + another 20 years collaborating on top of that too!

We also discuss news items: the launch of Starfield; Nexus Mods; Unity’s faux pas with the community of creators; Ricky’s attempt to install an AMD 7800T graphics card; and, the Sims Animation and Machinima Convention.

00:15 Film review and discussion

11:00 Monty Python inspiration for the podcast!

14:50 Starfield and Nexus Mods

20:18 Unity’s ball dropping episode

28:58 Installing an AMD 7800T

33:16 Sims Machinima and Animation Convention 2023

Credits –

Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine

Producer: Phil Rice

Editor: Ricky Grove

Music: Anno Domini Beats

A packed review this month, with some sad :( better :| and happy news :)

1:42 Demise of Rooster Teeth and yet RVB will outlive the corporate brand!  We reminisce about the early days of machinima and the influence Rooster Teeth had on the emerging creator community

26:30 Drax Files: World Makers comes to a close

33:37 Awards! Sam Crane’s continuing success with GTA5 Hamlet at SXSW and UE5’s use in War is Over, the Oscar winning animated short

39:00 AI updates: YouTube’s T&Cs – we discuss the notion of ‘realistic’ in the context of the guidelines – does the sound of a Wookie farting sound real to you… Phil really gets on a roll with this topic! Other AI updates include ConvAI, Hume, Runway and Stability AI’s 3D generator

1:09:00 Godzilla Minus One model release, celebrating the creator’s Oscar achievement – and a side discussion about rigging a cat in iClone

1:16:32 Blockbuster Inc release date announced!

1:19:00 Dune: Denis Villeneuve discusses the use of UE5 in the making of the film – not the typical machinima approach!

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

In this episode, Ricky, Tracy and Damien discuss some of the more interesting machinima and real-time things they’ve trawled the internet for during the last month.  Tracy gives her take on the GTA Online performance of Hamlet by Sam Crane, some interesting uses of Unreal Engine, tech tools and a fun way to simulate gravity. Damien brings Godot to the table and highlights some worrisome news about Unity, before waxing lyrical on Star Trek’s Strange New World’s use of Unreal. Ricky finds an interesting Unreal Engine Field Guide and discusses the latest updates to Nightmare Puppeteer.  

1:30 Feedback and comments from Mike Clements, 3D Chick, EE Studios, JSFilmz, TMC, Lord Krit and Chris Newell 

4:04 The Snow Witch, by Britannica Productions, reviewed on CM podcast Season 1, Episode 18

16:20 Sam Crane’s GTA Online performance of Hamlet, an interesting audience experience (live 4 July 2022)

22:41 Digital replica of co-op live music venue strikes the right chord, Unreal Engine, 23 June 2022

23:22 Christopher Nolan: How to make a good no-budget film | Christopher Nolan on Following, by Cinedome, published 28 June 2022

23:51 50 Greatest Fictional deaths, Slate.com, by Dan Kois, 20 July 2022

24:31 AI dubbing service by Papercup

25:00 Markerless hand tracking in DeepMotion Animate 3D

25:50 Rotate you monitor to simulate gravity in Unreal Engine 5 using Android orientation data, by Ayoub Attache, 12 July 2022

27:14 Godot 4 engine can now make movies – explainer, by Gamefromscratch, released 29 June 2022

29:08 Behind the scenes of Netflix’s ‘In Valuted Halls Entombed’ | Spotlight | Unreal Engine, by Unreal Engine, released 27 June 2022

32:29 Star Trek’s Strange New Worlds – a better use of Unreal than Mando?! Review in American Cinematographer, by Noah Kadner, 23 June 2022

42:04 Should we be concerned?  Unity is merging with a company who made a malware installer, by Jody Macgregor, 16 July 2022

43:48 Unreal Engine Field Guide, free download book

44:57 Updates to Nightmare Puppeteer, available on Steam

Further details on the podcast website, https://completelymachinima.com/2022/08/04/cm-s2ep42-news-august-2022/

Credits:
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: Where We Wanna Go by Patrick  Patrikios
Sount Effect: SoftBounceShowReel2 by Malcolmboye

News update: interjecting our normal weekly service for a short special - Damien discusses the latest Kitbash contest. Links in the show notes.

Credits -
Speaker/Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

0:10 Ricky introduces our new episode format – feedback welcome on the plans!

0:59 The Cloud Racer by Impossible Objects (UE5), released 15 August 2022 

21:16 The Lord Inquisitor – Prologue, by Warpgazer Animations (released 28 August 2016) 

39:15 Person2184 (UT2004 machinima), by Friedrich Kirschner released 4 April 2008 

59:09 Prazinburk Ridge by Yes, Commissioner? aka Martin Bell, Unreal Engine 4 (released 27 June 2022)

Links and show notes on our website: https://completelymachinima.com/2022/09/08/cm-s2-ep45-films-sept-2022/

Credits:
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood
Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Scott Buckley - www.scottbuckley.com.au

This week, we spend some time talking about new tools, emergent topics, AI and copyright (again), with some interesting links for you on our show notes -

2:45 New tools for machinima makers, including iClone 8 crowd sim, Kenneth MacLean’s MegaHumans WIP and Praydog’s VR mod

8:07 SAG AFTRA update on voice acting using AIs, Replica Studios

15:32 Mickey and friends, steamboating ahead without the Mothership and Princeton’s annual Public Domain Review report

18:13 Increasing the resolution of your machinima films – there’s an AI that can help with that!

20:02 Valve releases games with AI in them but also a new system for reporting emergent uses or problem uses of AI in games

22:17 Why AI is so important for the development of the games and creative industries

25:40 Google’s Video Poet, another tool for animation, AI-enabled

26:30 PCs vs consoles, indies vs AAAs, and the role of machinima and communities!

28:48 Convergence mod for Elden Ring (and any game) – a significant update

31:43 Minecrafter being sued and why this is a bigger deal than creators vs brand companies, implications for digital twin developers, but a massive overreach by the brand?

Credits
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Amino Domini Beats

This week, we discuss two stunning music videos: Children of Pain by  @VincereSylph with video created by  @TomJantol and  @tanyasubaBg ; and Firefly by  @TheEsotericaChannel in Unreal Engine. Children of Pain is a perfect example of Tom's 'anymation' approach whilst Firefly demonstrates just how far Unreal Engine has come as a creative toolset in one year alone!

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

0:14 Introduction to this episode. 

9:45 The stylized look of the film. 

11:44 How they arrived at the world of the film. 

15:43 The flaws in the story. 

21:52 Is there still a significant audience for quick and dirty machinima? 

27:26 The audience’s reaction to machinima. 

33:33 Machinima’s plight is a hidden one. 

37:57 What are your thoughts on my criticism of the story aspect of the voice in the hollow? 

40:01 Why some of the ambiguities in the film didn’t bug Ricky. 

Links for this episode on our website: https://completelymachinima.com/2023/01/05/s3-e59-film-review-the-voice-in-the-hollow-by-half-m-t-studios-jan-2023/

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: licensed from CreateStudio Pro

We have another packed news update ep this week, check out the show notes for links to our discussion points -
1:14 iClone 8 update discussion, and Phil picks the discussion up again at 34:38 on broken grass

6:30 Baldur’s Gate 3 modding tools release discussion

8:20 Starfield expansion pack discussion

10:00 Documentary machinima: focus on TF2

10:45 Hollywood is broken: enter machinima? (Andreasson Horowitz seem to have had their eyes and ears closed for a few years!)

12:27 Game Sprout’s article about gameplay becoming performance 

12:50 Denuvo’s release of Unbotify and discussion

25:00 YouTube app update discussion

27:30 Nice projects to take a look at, genAI and Metropius, an example of a deiselpunk world-based story with numerous creative treatments – worth taking a look at for its interesting monetisation strategy

32:00 Kane Pixel’s Backrooms, more ‘found footage’ fun!

37:36 Sketchfab and Epic’s Unreal Marketplace merge into FAB

45:15 YouTube AI disclosure rules – how are we complicit in a new citizen science project? We extend the discussion reflecting on the algorithm detection processes and what impact this may have on AI generated music and AI cloned voices.

1:06:50 Biggs Trek’s Forbidden Planet: Children of Krell (which we review in our ep next week) magazine article

1:07:47 Shameless plug: Phil and Damien’s channel livestreams, respectively on Sunday and Monday

Credits
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice 

Another packed episode of news items we found for machinima creators everywhere. We take a look at some games news including several that have released music albums recently and discuss why we think that is. We go through some of the latest AI matters, including Vimeo's new AI content guidelines. We found one of the best Unreal master classes we ever seen, more like a work of art than a 'how to', but since its by the amazing Luis Andrade, we'd expect nothing less. We also found some partciularly juicy tidbits we think you'll enjoy.

1:24 HELP! Can anyone PLEEASSEEEE find us a WoW machinima to celebrate Blizzard's 20 years with this stunning game??? 
2:50 Games releasing music albums - why is that? We discuss why we're expecting a lot more games to follow this trend 
18:56 Implications of this for machinima creators 
21:50 Dead games and consumer rights and why there is no real legal precident for the latest goings on, plus implications for machinima content 
37:01 Generative AIs - again! And Vimeo is on the band wagon... 
44:08 Luis Andrade's 'how to' is stunning 
45:00 ... now available on UE marketplace 
46:00 Another call out for new distribution channels for content creators 
50:00 No Man's Sky updates 
51:00 Microsoft Flight Sim... just wow, but what are the implications for brand owners' IP and haven't we seen something similar happen elsewhere? Question: are you simulating flying or what you see looking at the ground? 
1:06:28 SAG AFTRA on strike, this time in support of game actors... but GTA6 isn't covered? 

Credits - 
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood 
Producer: Damien Valentine 
Editor: Phil Rice 
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week we take a look at another stunning Team Fortress 2 short called Assault on 2Fort by JP Stevens aka Lolripk, a recommendation made to us by Dominzki (whose own TF2 short we reviewed in E135). What a great choice this is: we loved this film, a classic RED vs BLU tale but with a layer of emotion that is as beautifully portrayed as it is unexpected in SFM. These characters have real depth to them and we note how that's been achieved, even though the focal character doesn't even speak. Did we mention the fight choreography too? We reflect on the game lore, the significance of the community in the creative process, and how this story is told from an unusal perspective. We also reflect on why machinima series almost never complete... but we certainly hope Lolripk doesn't follow the pattern!

1:44 Introduction to film, its qualities: great choreography and emotional depth to characters
11:26 Why this is an unusual red vs blue story
15:27 What is the lore in TF2?
19:00 Violence portrayed: why it bothered some of us more in this than in E140, and vice versa
24:28 Little details, and why they mattered in this
35:45 The Source creator community rocks

Credits -
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood, Phil Rice
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week we compare and contrast, in a way extending that ongoing debate about whose IP is the daddy... but the ep is about much more than that too. We discuss  @solofilmmaking4857 's use of #chatgpt to generate a film's story, using the plots of 60 of his portfolio works on Batman, mixing styles and genres along the way. We don't see it as wholly successful and we discuss why. We contrast that with an unusual hobbyist technique to create 'analogue machinima', inspired by Spiderman toy figurines digitised and animated by  @MakeItMoveMedia . In the end, our conclusion is that its all Marvellous!

1:37 Vengeance Batman - bloody hell? 
4:21 Can AI ever successfully craft a story like a human? 
7:10 Analagous to Grammerly but with hilarity and glitch! 
14:49 The good parts of the film 
17:21 Batman has the biggest screen time of any character - so what's new here? 
18:42 How to be innovative with a well trodden path 
20:30 Cinematic language? ChatGPT writes dialogue like an early 1980s TV advert! 
22:00 A good experiment 
23:28 Is it time to return to the original humorous treatment of Batman? 
26:35 Marvellous time! Spiderman animations from toy model scans 
27:42 A technical exercise but a lot of fun 
28:48 The hobbyists journey is a form of 'analogue machinima' 
32:10 Creating the background with a 360 video 
33:29 The evidence of passion for craft 35:17 The challenge of video fidelity

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Welcome to our latest bonus episode.  We had the pleasure of catching up with Phil Rice aka zsOverman to talk exclusively about his latest machinima, called Being Moses.  If there's such as thing as a parody of a Let's Play, this film is it!   Check out Phil's comments and watch the film - links on our show notes web post.

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Tracy Harwood
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week's pick is a machinima run through of the female V character in Cyberpunk 2077, by Charles Liu, edited to a Johnny Cash classic, Hurt. Sound design in this is everything, and we especially like how the fade is used to emphasise the game footage vs the words of the song at different points in the film.  Check out our views -

1:14 Intro to film, music video, a perfect complement to I’m Still Seeing Breen (S5 E163)?

3:37 Music storytelling vs film storytelling – interplay and aesthetic choice

6:10 Phil’s perspective: over saturation?

10:15 Masterful editing

16:06 Sets the scene for Cyberpunk 2, let’s hope they address the narrow narrative arc of potential offshoot stories possible in the world for machinimators to hone their skills on?

22:05 Relationships with NPCs in game matter

Credits - 
Speakers: Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Tracy Harwood
Music: Animo Domini Beats 

You can view the complete show notes with links on our completelymachinima.com website page. We also have a video version of this podcast which you can view on our Completely Machinima YouTube page. 

This week’s podcast episode is our curated news omnibus for this month.  We cover lots, and enjoy reflecting on the significance of the stories we highlight for the world of machinima and virtual production.  Links and show notes on our website, as usual – skip to our highlights about each item with our timestamps here –

1:23 Learn UE5 in less than 60 minutes – and yes, it seems you really can! Its an excellent tutorial

6:50 Valve getting tough with modders and what it means for machinima

10:23 New moviemaking toolsets: Blockbuster Inc and Replikant (UE5)

12:39 Steamboat Willie update – Minecraft and an UE5 ‘official trailer’

14:25 The origins of the Wilhelm Scream

16:54 SORA text to video and the implications for studios and creators – what is the language of movement?

23:40 ElevenLabs new SUNO model rap

24:05 Reflecting on Valve’s journey and the early days of Machinima.com

35:05 Just what is the kick back on Disney and Steamboat Willie all about? … platforms, content, IP and the community – Star Wars, Marvel, et al

52:25 Taylor Swift, AI misuse, the law, and the significant role of community in protecting a brand – the future of developing morals

1:10:50 Damien’s report on his iClone crowd sim test

btw, the international internet pipes failed and microwaves fried our apps during this recording session, video corrupted and monsters ran loose among us, so enjoy the voice data we’ve managed to resurrect and video clips we’ve added – we’ll be back next week in full glory!

#machinima #realtime #virtualproduction #Disney #VR #Reallusion #iclone #SteamboatWillie #valve #Halflife #Portal #TeamFortress #TaylorSwitft #AI #SORA #WilhelmScream #BlockbusterInc #Replikant #moviemaking #games #communities #UE5 #modding #podcast

Credits –

Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine

Producer/Editor: Phil Rice

Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week, we take a look at a spectacular particle show in a machinima that has been documented and edited by Tutsy NaVaRaThNA in Second Life.  The show is called Flowers of Evil and was created by Lalie Sorbet and Chrix as an interactive installation inspired by the most scandalous literary works of Charles Baudelaire, with the support of a Second Life Endowment for the Arts.  Tutsy's documentary is accompanied by an hypnotic composition by French club DJ and musician Sahale (from his Bouddha Bar XXI album), music that takes its inspiration also from the Flowers of Evil (or Fleurs du Mal). All round, this is a mesmerizing rendition that we could well imagine being enhanced with VR as a live experience... and that's not something you hear us state all that often.

1:29 Inspired by Baudeliare

5:18 Portrayals of the complexity of life

12:51 A voyeuristic cosmic orgy

15:37 Is VR a thing in Second Life?

18:00 Demoscene

24:44 Avant garde vs realism

26:00 Artistic happenings in the 1960s

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week, we review a machinima that has taken its inspiration and cue from the original movie Forbidden Planet, released in 1956. This is the animated and stylized sequel we've all been waiting for, set immediately after the events reported in the film.  It has been written and directed by Biggs Trek, aka Philip Browne, whose creative talent shines through in this.  

1:19 Intro to the film 
6:00 Takes us back to the original film, in a very good way! 
14:52 A couple of quibbles? 
19:53 Color grading 
23:00 Clay face 
27:00 Eye movement

Credits 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week's film picks are of epic battle scenes: one made in Warhammer and the other Unreal Engine. There are similarities and contrasts between these two works, respectively created by a gamer, Game Thumb, and a CG production team, Glow Productions - and that also includes the opinions of the CM crew reviewing the works! What's your view, please do add you comments on our YT review or ep blog post.  The ep begins with an update on Ricky's take on the SAG AFTRA deal for his Army of Darkness characterisations.

1:07 the SAG AFTRA deal
5:14 Tracy's review of Northern Wars (Warhammer) and Oryctes (UE) focussing on the mood scenes
16:09 Ricky reverses the argument
18:07 Phil invokes Wittgenstein 
34:20 Damien's observes that neither film could easily be made in the other game engine! 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Anno Domini Beats

This week's episode reviews a film by Fandom Games called Half Life 3: Honest Game Trailers, released 31 March 2015.  The film is a throwback style of satire and even if you've not been following Valve's Half Life developments, you'll enjoy this.  For those less in the know, HL3 is a game that never made it beyond the hype, despite its avid fan base waiting patiently (or impatiently) to play it for 20 years!  We reflect on Fandom Games origins in Jimmy Wale's Wiki technology.  We also discuss our approach to 'healthy criticism' on the podcast.

0:14 Intro to the show
1:45 What made you like this one?
4:22 The voice of the movie trailer
8:04 Half-life 3 assets leaked
12:29 The cliffhanger ending
18:54 How to best handle internet criticism?
19:46 Praise what we like and learn from it
22:39  Discussing opinions on youtube
26:42 The value of professional criticism

Show notes and links available at https://completelymachinima.com/2023/02/09/s3-e64-film-review-half-life-3-honest-game-trailers-by-fandom-games-feb-2023/

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: Nebular Focus by Dan Henig

Despite being encouraged to create an episode of just 15 minutes duration by one of our followers, the team have this month extended their coverage – hear Tracy, Damien and Phil discuss vtubing, Ricky’s Duke Henry the Red character in the game Evil Dead, the FTC’s proposed updates to social media guidelines, Unreal’s review of the Matrix Awakens Experience, John Gaeta’s latest exploits, metaquette, Reallusion’s iClone 8 and CC4 and a number of other exciting developments relevant to the world of real-time filmmaking and machinima.  Thankfully, you can use the timestamps to jump to the bits your most interested in!

Timestamps - 
1:34 Feedback from our followers: 3DChick, Al Scotch, Spentaneous, Mike Clements, Circu Virtu, Notagamer3d 
8:14 Vtubing and Face Rig app (Steam), VTuber Studio – real time puppeteering using faceware 
17:41 Interactive video on Vimeo, branching narrative storylines 
20:23 Ukranian films of the recent war, showcased at Milan Machinima Film Festival website 
24:17 Evil Dead and the character Duke Henry the Red played by Ricky Grove and IP generally, Ricky Grove on IMDb 
39:29 FTC updating ‘disclosures 101 for social media infuencers’ guide’ discussion, the relationship between brands, platforms and influencers and see also [Company] Rulez! (Phil Rice aka zsOverman & Evan Ryan aka Krad Productions) 
54:55 Competition updates: Nvidia Omniverse Machinima promo video ‘Top Goose’ and Unreal competition, Ben Tuttle’s The Amazing Comet and William Faucher’s YouTube channel. 
58:03 Making of Unreal’s Matrix Awakens Experience, Behind the Scenes on The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, released 6 June 2022, and Tracy’s interview with John Gaeta, VFX, The Matrix films, released 17 February 2022. Living Cities is a new metaverse mirror world and Inworld AI 
1:00:16 Pooky Amsterdam’s blog on metaverse etiquette, called Metaquette 
1:00:39 Reallusion’s iClone 8 character animation processes including Character Creator 4 launch 
1:13:08 Mesh to MetaHuman in Unreal Engine by Unreal Engine, released 9 June 2022 
1:13:33 Meta’s new model allows creating photoreal avatars with an iPhone, 80.lv, 14 June 2022 and full research publication 
1:14:02 Mocap with the MoCats: Livestreaming with Multiple Actors (Faceware & Movella/Xsens) by Faceware 
1:14:29 Love, Death & Robots, Jibaro character creation Love, Death + Robots | Inside the Animation: Jibaro, Netflix, released 9 June 2022 and Art Dump 
1:16:48 Jonathon Nimmons WriteSeen.com, launched June 2022, website connecting creative writers with industry professionals (upload written content, attach a video pitch, audio clips, video clips and a link to a prototype if required) 
1:19:08 A word of thanks to our sponsors 

Credits - 
Speakers: Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine, Phil Rice
Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine 
Music: Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.au

Show Notes & Links on our website at www.completelymachinima.com/

Credits -

Speakers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood (MIA Phil Rice, courtesy of Hurricane Ian)
Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Scott Buckley - www.scottbuckley.com.au CC 00

This week's review is of  @Astartes40k aka Syama Pedersen's stunning Warhammer 40K masterpiece called Astartes Project. The film was first released two years ago and has been recommended to us by  @orencloud . It is currently hosted on  @TheChach 's channel - we explain why.

1:07 Disclaimers
4:38 Thoughts about the game
8:02 How to carry the story forward
11:39 Are they the good guys or the bad guys?
17:42 Game-based machinima and its problems
22:35 It's better for you than for them
27:11 Mansplaining the film

Credits - Speakers:  @zsOverman @tgharwood @DarthAngelus (MIA  @RickyGrove ) 
Producer: Phil Rice 
Editor: Damien Valentine 
Music: bainmack / punk rock short 31 from freesound.org

Who doesn't love a good olde Western? This week we delve into a great short by avidredeadenjoyer, released 21 Sept 2024, called The Loss. It has been made in the only engine a Western machinima can be, RDR2. We all especially liked one particular shot, which really goes to the heart of why machinima has added so much to movie-making. This week, we also talk about a second pick, a Frontier: Elite 2 short by The Mystic Mushroom accompanied by the Blue Danube: The second best space sim ever made... Enjoy!

1:15 The Western vibe

4:00 The tropes, the story and the cinematography

5:15 Mid shots vs close-ups

7:25 The sentiment portrayed

11:22 The beginning, middle and end!

13:06 Music and foley

13:30 Steam trains: down memory lane for Tracy

16:02 An outstanding shot – tell us more @avidredeadenjoyer!

21:40 Mixing with Chopin maybe not the best choice?

24:50 The second best space sim ever made…

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Backflip is a docu-style film, made over a period of three years where Nikita Diakur presents his progress using AI to teach a character to backflip.  The character is the 3D scanned artist and the learning process applied is based on a technique he read in an academic paper. To say its chaos is an understatatement, and something anyone in research could probably have told him when attempting to replicate a finding in a publication (which of course is why LLMs using text alone will never be 'intelligent').  It is also everything one would expect from a character rig with the physics of a double-jointed arachnid... but it sure is hugely entertaining to watch, and brilliantly edited together.  Backflip is a must watch for anyone using AIs for animation, not least because it serves as a reminder of just how tough this all was pre-mid 2023!

1:13 News updates: Half Life 2 celebrates 25 years, GTA6 release and Elden Ring DLCs
5:06 John McInnes connecting machinima to virtual production with Baad Viibes
7:43 Backflip review and discussion
16:10 Focussing on the glitch
25:57 How smart is AI really?
34:54 Narrative arc and the use of AI 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Coast by Anno Domini Beats

Show Notes and Links
0:27 Nvidia Omniverse Machinima Contest #madeinmachinima results, entries showreel, announcement of winners at SIGGRAPH and links to winners (via 80.lv) Simon Lavit and runners up Nicklas Lotz and Ted Saguindel

2:54 Tracy’s interview with John MacInnes on his latest Unreal Challenge contest: Mood Scene – the contest begins 1 Sept

5:44 Unreal Engine’s Better Light Than Never contest results sizzle reel and 80.lv article about winners

6:19 Jackson Wang’s Cruel video, using Unreal in his virtual production process

7:01 Also using Unreal in a music video, Sagans on Coherence using Katherine Crowson’s software Disco Fusion 

7:28 Pavel Oliva’s desert kit mod

7:48 Game Art Experiments’ tutorial on turning AI generated images from MidJourney into 3D format

8:32 Turning in3D Avatars into Reallusion’s Character Creator 4 avatars with just a quick scan using your mobile phone!

9:36 Trailer for an upcoming fan film by Unreal Cinema, made in Unreal Engine 5: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Kotor: Episode 1 – The Spire, premiered 5 August 2022

11:31 Dreamworks announces that its Moonray platform will become open source

16:22 19-20 September, remember the Nvidia GTC event is always worth following!

17:50 Film Music.io website update

23:00 Nvidia Omniverse Audio2Face update 2022.1 – using emotions

28:19 Adobe’s Premiere Pro guide for filmmakers

32:04 Lynch-land in Second Life – for all those lovers of David Lynch films

33:09 Update: changing our news episodes format – what do you think to our plans?

Website link https://completelymachinima.com/2022/09/01/completely-machinima-s2-ep-44-news-september-2022/

Credits
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Editor/Producer: Damien Valentine
Music: Scott Buckley - www.scottbuckley.com.au

WOW! Our collective adjective for this World of Warcraft / Cyberpunk 2077 mashup. This is a stunningly edited urban observational film, set in a strange new world the like of which we have never seen before - a cacophany in a good way. Shades of Blade Runner, Robocop and Mad Max run through the film, with a soundscape and accompanying music that are a perfect fit. We also loved that  @DurenMachinima has cited his inspiration, mentioning the late, great  @Phixor2000 among others. 

Credits – 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer: Phil Rice 
Editor: Damien Valentine 
Music: Anno Domini Beats

This week's review is of 12 minutes of the wackiest of Wacky Wests we could ever imagine! BedBananas has used a a whole host of mods, created by Weds_Garbageday, to devise this truly surrealist Red Dead American Dream machinima.  Seeing is believing - and its probably one of the best machinimas of all time!

8:16 Surrealist machinima at its very best. 

11:30 Buster Keaton and the Wild Wild West

14:29 The violence to the central character makes him empathetic. 

19:42 How the voices and dialogue were created. 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Coast by Anno Domini Beats

Links and notes on our website here

Credits:
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Lights in the Dark by CSP CC OO

After we first talked about this project last April 2022, we were thrilled to see what a stunning job @MartinKlekner has made in the 21 Jan release of the first episode of Heroes of Bronze. We were not disappointed: the film and work stands up to AAA Assassin's Creed Odyssey studio work, but with amazing detail of historical artefacts and storytelling, which is even evident in the way clothes move on characters. Damien couldn't put our views better when he says this work inspires him to want to do better with iClone. We're definitely looking forward to the next release - bring it on! 

5:12 The story is told through the memories of a soldier's wife. 
8:45 A beautiful and moving film. 
11:05 The historical accuracy of the film. 
16:39 Historical accuracy and technical details. 
21:04 The importance of realistic portrayals of ancient times. 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: bainmack / punk rock short 31

This week's film is a machinima that deals with pollution in the most overt way it can.  Andy Hughes' Inner Migration juxtaposes Cyberpunk 2077 against some 'found footage' taken from early 40s/60s films and General Motors corporate 'forecast' of the future of technology. We discuss how machinima is an interesting way to explore social commentary and analyze the use of video games as a medium for artistic expression and engaging young people in social responsibility. We also reflect on the potential of media and science fiction to inspire change and address social ills. Our conversation concludes with insights on how viewers can make sense of complex films and draw inspiration from multiple perspectives.

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

What is #machinima?! Good question these days, and this week we review a new video essay on tackling just that question... which is always interesting for us pioneers and vets to reflect on in this podcast. In the vid we review, Collin Aull introduces a few thoughts we've not really considered before, plus some comments we've discussed many times over the years, so its worth a listen as well as if you want to spot some of the older machinimas from those very early years in the narrative edit.

1:14 Ricky discusses his latest performance award success
8:49 Shout out for @Mr_Matt_Lee - some of the best build tuts around 
11:22 Ricky introduces Collin Aull's video essay: The Game of Video 
15:52 Damien's comments 
17:27 Phil's comments 
24:05 Tracy's comments 
our conclusions... the biggest problem today is finding good machinima (because we know it exists as evidenced in EVERY episode of this show)! 

Credits - 
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood 
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice 
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week, Ricky, Phil and Damien discuss Torn Seas – a feature made with Unreal Engine, by Richard Boisvert.  We don’t often review feature-length films on this show, not least because few are brave enough to make them, and we talk about that aspect a bit too.  Overall, we were impressed by this film but we also have a few suggestions to consider.  

5:21 Cinematic Design. 

9:35 Difference between Ricky’s tolerance for sentimental stories and your tolerance. 

11:22 The problem with Pixar and Unreal. 

15:42 The value of screenwriting and narrative. 

20:24 Voice acting and sound effects. 

24:24 The role of a script’s ambiguity. 

28:47 Learning as he goes along. 

30:44 A kind of audition for Hollywood. 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine (MIA Tracy Harwood)
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Arp Solina
 

Links and show notes: www.completelymachinima.com

Credits -
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove, Phil Rice
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: licensed from CreateStudio Pro

A performance by a camera ham, shutterbug or just a plain histrionic narcissist? This week's review discusses an older machinima that has highly contemporary themes in it: carry-on-regardless, daydreaming, whatever, so long as the virtual camera is rolling. The film is called Daydream (2009) set to the titular song by Lovin' Spoonful, created by  @Mystfit and made in  @Valve 's Half Life 2. Needless to say, we loved the humor but what makes this machinima interesting is that it was a scripted production created by running a path sequencer inside the game, harking back to the early days of how machinimas were made and so is reminiscent of how contemporary tools such as iClone and Unreal now work.

This week we also begin with  @RickyGrove talking about ultra-wide monitors, using it to play Elden Ring (a mod required) and the #SAGAFTRA strike; and,  @zsOverman gives an overview of his remastering project of the Machiniplex collection and his homage to the great Hugh Hancock, founder the #machinima movement, the upcoming showcase of Bloodspell and also his own response to some of the hoopla that Hugh created at the time of its release in 2006! 

1:38 Gigabyte and ultra-wide monitors 
4:16 The actor and writer strike, significance and implications 
10:43 Black Mirror, Futurama and the internet - prescient episodes 
15:38 The Machiniplex Collection at https://bit.ly/Machiniplex 
20:32 Hugh Hancock’s Bloodspell, John Lennon and the Overcast - releases and background 
24:48 This week's pick: Daydream, the Lovin’ Spoonful soundtrack and Mystfit 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer: Tracy Harwood 
Editor: Ricky Grove 
Music: Intro: Doctor Dreamchip & Outro: Arps Solina

Our May update on machinima and virtual production related news highlights some of the latest generative AI tools, warts and all, and brings to attention several of the latest machinima potential games, including Jaws, Jurassic World Evolution, Rise of the Hydra and Harold Halibut.  We discuss the challenges filmmakers face when developing games from their IP, why Kickstarter isn't a good strategy for raising funding for smaller studios, the [almost] final instalment of the RoosterTeeth saga and Second Life's latest film festival, Fantasy Faire.  All with our usual discursive aplomb (despite Ricky being mia, reportedly on a skinny dipping retreat) and a few non machinima related asides!

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week we review two films and again attempt to work with a rather impressive AI genie who covers things we just could not... The first film selected is a Deep Rock Galactic music video machinima called We All Lift Together, using the Futuna theme song Warframe, made by Szczebrzeszyniarz Brzeczyszczyczmosszyski (yep, that's why we needed a genie).  The second is a stunning visualisation of Helsreach made in Warhammer 40K by Richard Boylan, using a brilliant reading of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's novel by Jonathan Keeble. Whilst the graphic style presented us with some challenges, which we discuss at length, the quality of this is outstanding.  

2:15 We All Lift Together music video discussion 
17:47 Helsreach adaptation, made in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, discussion 

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine, AI genie 
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

A love letter to Cyberpunk 2077?  In this week's episode, the CM crew discuss a cinematic music video that perfectly captures a uniquely human feeling of people watching... and reflects on the phenomenal creativity of procedurally generated character content in the Cyberpunk world. The film is called Don't Fall Down by Puttefnask and the song it accompanies is Pray by Haelos - it is perhaps a more fitting video than the original.

6:10 The first person perspective in Cyberpunk

11:01 Wowed by the variety of the NPC characters and procedurally generated art

13:00 Black Mirror is today's Twilight Zone 

15:24 This movie is a feeling

18:05 A love letter to the world of the game

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Arps Solina

This week, we review a pretender for a new Disney show called Forlorn, by @projectforlorn (aka Alex St Pierre). Well, it may well be at some point in the near future! Starting life as a tech demo, this short has an interesting back story and has evolved into something even more interesting. Check out our review and add your own thoughts!

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

In this ep, we discuss The Nomad | Cyberpunk 2077, a Lifepath cinematic by Zero-Sum Story, and Ian Hubert's Lazy Tutorials, which are not for the feinthearted yet somehow full of the very best machinima advice, such as "... just drag it to a place where you don't think it looks stupid" and "... imagine doing all this and actually putting in some effort - its something to think about" - yep, it sure is.  Enjoy the discussions.

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week we present a critique of two very contrasting machinima productions - one took literally months to make and the other just a few days.  In our first pick, the creator has asked: just how big are the maps in games these days?  Well, vast actually - and quite frankly it blows our minds to think that so much effort has gone into answering the question.  The film is called Longest Walkable Distances in a Video Game, by How Big is the Map.  Our second film is a review of a creative experiment in Unreal Engine, called The Alchemist's Confession by Cory Williams - it was inspired by a found marketplace asset and is experimental in a number of ways, not least in the five days it took to make it. Ricky highlights the  weakness in the writing albeit the film is technically masterfully produced and acted, using mocap and LinkedIn (yep, you heard that correctly!).  We also start this episode with some links we hope you enjoy and a discussion about the voice characterisation of G Man in the Half Life series.

2:03 The unmistakable character of G Man and his speeches in the Half Life series
6:12 Longest Walkable Distances in a Video Game discussion
25:05 The Alchemist's Confession discussion

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Anno Domini Beats

A Star Citizen extravaganza: this week, we discuss a brilliant re-creation of Erik Wernquist's epic short, Wanderers, released by one of its creators Mr Hasgaha. Whilst this is a faithful scene-by-scene depiction of the original, its actually so much more than that too. We comment once again on the incredible qualities of the game, and how the fact it is an open world reflects the original inspiration for Wernquist's film: the artwork of Chesley Bonestell, whose paintings were partly the reason that NASA exists today. The machinima also pays homage to Carl Sagan in the only way it can, to his words in the iconic book Pale Blue Dot. If you have only particles of space nerd in you, we think you'll absolutely love this week's film, certainly we all do. 

2:21 Based on Eric Wernquist's original, We Were Wanderers - film vs game and why cinematic machinimas like this matter for conveying director intent
4:45 How to pay homage to Carl Sagan without actually using his voice? Check this film out!
15:55 Making machinima in Star Citizen, what are the challenges?

Credits - 
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer: Damien Valentine 
Editor: Phil Rice 
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Not an actual comparison but a review of two shorts: The Internet is for Porn by Evilhoof & Flayed, originally released way back in 2005 and The Marstons Celebrate Christmas, But Things Get Out of Hand, by Paradise385 released 22 Dec 2023.  Lots of lampoonery in both our reviews, but we especially hope you enjoy watching them. Happy Christmas from the crew here at Completely Machinima.

1:45 The Internet is for Porn - porn, pawn or pwn?!
26:35 The Marstons Celebrate Christmas - a flaw fest, perfect for a glass in hand viewing, right after Miracle on 34th
39:50 Ricky's bonus update... HL2

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Show Notes and Time Stamps
 

1:21 If Top Gun Was a British Film Part 2, by Square (released 31 March 2022)

6:49 DCS World Movie | Top Gun: Maverick Intro by Phenom (released 16 June 2022) 

13:05 Discussion: Why recreate scenes from big budget films, such as Top Gun Maverick?

20:00 Hired Steel: A Mech Machinima – Episode Two, by TMC (released 25 February 2022) and the review of Episode One in Completely Machinima S1 Ep 16 Films (August 2021) 

27:40 Star Citizen – News – RED LINE Episode 2 (Elite Expeditionary), by EE Studios (released 13 April 2022)

35:57 Unreal Engine 5 Concept Short Film by JSFilmz (released 17 June 2022)

See also: https://completelymachinima.com/2022/07/14/cm-s2-ep41-films-july-2022/ 

In this ep, we discuss two machinima films dealing with thematically similar issues, albeit presented with different treatments: Vigilante is made in GTA5 and tells the shocking story of how the lead character became cyberpunk.  The second is a futuristic yet somehow more traditional gender-based story made in UE5.  It is presented as a proof of concept for a proprietary tool made by its creator, who is none other than the VFX Oscar-winner Tim Webber in his directorial debut.

1:36 Vigilante discussion
19:39 Flite discussion - its so good, how do we talk Phil out of quitting machinima filmmaking?!

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

0:48 VIDEO GAME Maps Size Comparison | 2021 by MrRanker (Blender, Adobe After Effects & Premiere Pro) released 19 Sept 2020

19:05 Blu x @Teflon Sega meta-saga!! Ep4 by Xanadu (Unreal 4.27) released 9 Mar 2022

32:26 Star Trek Pike – Fan Made Opening | Made in Star Trek Online by ZEFilms Productions released 1 July 2019 and the possibilities for using machinima as a pre-market concept testing tool

41:36 It just a virtual kiss by Juan Poyuan (World of Warcraft) released 19 Nov 2021

53:00 Discussion: What is experimental machinima and why do it?

Website: 

Credits:
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Til I Hear'em Say (Instrumental) - NEFFEX

Show Notes and Links: https://completelymachinima.com/2023/01/19/s3-e61-film-review-interloper-half-life-2s-greatest-unsolved-mystery-jan-2023/

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music:  licensed from CreateStudio Pro

The Dog Days is an unusual machinima that combines the glitchiness of AI generated content composited with a Second Life avatar. Whilst not realtime, the performative aspect of this work is evident and we reflect on the fit of the current state of generative AI with the Fluxus art movement. We discuss what The Dog Days means, metaphorically and literally, and how we interpret this film concluding it is not a happy outcome for the focal character. The Dog Days evokes memories of a long-ago childhood spent with a much loved pet but the non-sense words and images are of something far more sinister, contextualized by the current general media coverage of wars in Eastern Europe, Middle East and elsewhere. We also discuss our interpretations of the fragility represented in the avatar, including the role of generative AI in becoming cyborg.

0:20 Introduction to the film, created by Fau Ferdinand

6:00 Performance art context

7:23 Dog days… in other media

11:00 The significance of AI glitch in this film and generally in artwork

27:26 More about Fau Ferdinand and the Second Front movement

30:00 Fluxus and the role of chance

32:30 Interpreting the dreamscape

36:40 How we are becoming cyborg

39:30 The images plus me!

42:56 Performance art and female empowerment

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

In this ep, we reflect on the key trends in #machinima we've observed during Season 4 of the Completely Machinima podcast. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the year too, so do add comments below. 

During the past year, we have reviewed over 22 hours of content, and presented detailed analysis of over 50 films on this channel. As vets of the original community practices (that's pre YouTube and the M.com/Inc days), one of the great pleasures we take in this podcast is that we get to look at machinima and virtual production across the breadth of genres and engines, by creators from anywhere in the world, and reflect on where its come from, how its evolved and is developing. 

This year, we have seen amazing quality films made in popular games such as Half-Life, World of Warcraft, Elden Ring, Star Citizen, Warhammer 40K and Team Fortress 2; have had the pleasure of exploring work made in entirely new games, like BeamNG and Deep Rock Galactic; and others made using engines in their base form such as Unreal, iClone and Source. We've also started to see #genAIs become integrated into processes and works. What a year for creatives and creativity! 

Our main observation is that we have noted a resurgence of interest in machinima as a terms for the creative form, and we feel creators are at long last focussing on creative practices rather than their channel return. Of course its great when these things collide but it was never what machinima was about originally: it was the passion for great storytelling, using novel processes to achieve a desired outcome and to share that with a community of equally passionate others. Other observations are why we are not seeing as many traditional short stories as we used to...

We hope you enjoy this ep as much as we have making it. 

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice 
Music: Animo Domini Beats

Time Stamps
0:57 The Folklore of Phasmophobia | Modern Mythology, by The Digital Dream Club (released 9 January 2021)

9:51 NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Path Tracing Test, by JSFilmz (21 June 2022) 

17:33 Tiny Elden Ring | Tilt Shift, by Flurdeh (11 April 2022) 

27:27 What a typical project Zomboid Run looks like, by Pathoze (26 Jan 2022)

31:45 Discussion: using live action with machinima footage in films, what are the challenges?

For show notes and links, see https://completelymachinima.com/2022/08/11/cm-s2ep43-films-aug-2022/

Credits:
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: tosha73 Distortion Guitar Power Chord
            snapper4298 Intro/Outro
            freesound.org

A well-trodden path in alien encounters, this week’s short is Genesis by Edy Recendez, filmed in Unreal Engine. From the very beginning the film is such fun, with great editing and sound design – right up to and including the ending ‘rap slash dance’ credits.  Ricky, Phil and Damien also talk about the upcoming Diablo 4 release. 

0:08 Introduction

3:56 The detail is important to the director

7:15 An archetypical story concept

8:45 Sound design and foley

11:22 The ending credits – a rap slash dance!

17:01 Diablo 4… releases 6 June

20:00 Elden Ring, again

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine (MIA Tracy Harwood)
Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Arps Solina

This week we discuss two very different films, both reflecting a bygone era of classic entertainment.  Firstly, an interpretation of the 1954 Japanese classic Godzilla, made in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Its unusual for a couple of reasons: its been made on a handheld Nintendo Switch in a game not really known for its creative application, and its been released only on X (Twitter). Its timing is perfect to capitalize on all the film and TV series hype at the moment so it was always going to find an appreciative audience - definitely one to check out.  Secondly, Phil has created an iClone and AI-based video to the Tom Lehrer song, Lobachevsky - its the ultimate accompaniment to this well-known political satire.  Phil discusses his creative process in its making and we also discuss how the original song came to be made at a time when Lehrer was walking a tightrope for a few reasons, so we reflect on its timing and impact.

1:37 Shinto Ritual by Sumoguri discussion (Godzilla), made in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
20:27 Lobachevsky by Phil Rice, made in iClone and with AI tools; Phil discusses the challenges of using public domain content and learning a new toolset through a creative process

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Anno Domini Beats

This week Damien has picked two space exploration shorts for us to review: one is made in UE called Terra by  @j.thomaswilson3543 and the other is an ED film called Into Black by  @indigointoblack . The film sequencing of the craft in flight in Into Black shows the competence of the creator whereas the human element encapsulated by the robot in Terra is particularly engaging and adds a different dimension to the storytelling. We discuss the similarities and differences of these approaches to space operas in general, and also how it contrasts to the Pixar approach of building in cuteness and sentimentality. In the end, however, we agree (with the exception of Tracy's perspective) that these are great cinematic examples of machinima... but maybe you settle on Tracy's side of the discussion? 

2:38 Damien's intro 
4:56 Ricky's comments 
6:52 Phil's comments 
10:29 Tracy's comments 
18:16 What do you think?!

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine 
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Intro: Phil Rice 
Music: Intro - Doctor Dreamchip/Outro - Arps Solina

0:47 May 1999, Steve Jobs (Apple) and Macintosh presentation reveal for Halo 

1:57 2000, Halo promo for NVIDIA Geforce2 GTS 

3:16 15 November 2001 Halo for Xbox released

3:40 First machinima for Halo, released 6 June 2002, Warthog Jump by Randall Glass  

5:04 Red vs Blue premieres, 1 April 2003, by Rooster Teeth Productions

7:04 Halo released for PC on 30 September 2003

7:31 Fire Team Charlie starts up in 2003

7:56 Halo PC Custom Edition released on 6 May 2004 and a recently made Halo PC Custom Edition Fan Documentary by Subpixel, released 17 April 2020

8:57 On 6 June 2004, the seed of Sponsors Vs Freeloaders is planted –

·      First Episode  

·      Flame War Saga

12:09 HaloTV.net was launched on 10 July 2004 – this channel (pre-YouTube) offered 24/7 Halo machinima primarily of clan matches with commentary plus had a dedicated Red Vs Blue channel 

13:10 The Matrix (Halo Remix) by Halo1007 released (Halo Footage – Matrix Voice-Overs, released on 5 September 2004

14:01 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Dave Anderson, released 13 October 2004 

14:55 Halo 2 released 9 November 2004 and Burnie Burns reports from Camp Bungie on the secret machinima test they doing in the game 

16:26 The Codex series ran for 21 Episodes with an average run time 3-5 minutes and it’s prequel The Heretic, by Edgeworks Entertainment, released in 2005

17:39 This Spartan Life by Damien Lacedaemon aka Chris Burke premiered in May 2005 

19:07 iGod... Holy Halo series by Fuzion Church, Crossroads Baptist Church and Chi-Ro Ministries, a Halo-based machinima to promote a Christian weekend retreat and to promote Christian principles in general – the episodes are covered on Halo.Bungie’s fan website (see Purple and Pink Mirrored), released 12 April 2005 

20:55 First green screening machinima by AmandaJ3162, merging Sims 2 and Halo in You’re Fired, released 10 July 2005 

24:41 Company Rulz by Z-Studios and Krad Productions, a Microsoft game usage rules explainer, released in 2007  

0:47 Ricky highlights some of the news items we’re released in a series of blogs this month, being released on Mondays, starting with out Tech Update on 3 Oct, then Projects Update on 10 Oct, Fests & Contests Update on 17 Oct and finally a Report on Creative AI Generators on 24 Oct. You can find these on https://CompletelyMachinima.com/Blog
2:19 Feedback on previous episodes
6:51 How I learned Unity without following tutorials (Developing 1) by Mark Brown on his Game Maker’s Toolkit channel, released 28 September 2021 – discussion, learning by rote vs learning concepts, different learning styles and role of prototyping in machinima and virtual production.
Q: What are your favourite tutorials on machinima making?

Credits:
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Ricky Grove
Music: evanjones4__sleepnomore1, freesound.org, Creative Commons License 0
Sound Effect: newagesoup__queens-sting, freesound.org,  Creative Commons License 0

In this ep, we discuss a film by Patrick Zeugirdor, which uses the game BeamNG to simulate realistic freeway crashes. The game features advanced physics and modding capabilities, allowing for detailed crash simulations. The film shows various crash scenarios, each with multiple camera perspectives, highlighting the game's recamming feature. We debate the film's educational value, its potential to encourage poor driving behavior, and its popularity due to morbid curiosity - a good combination? Suffice to say, it evokes some strong emotions from us! We also discuss the game's potential for use in narrative storytelling and its realistic portrayal of accidents.

2:33 Phil introduces the film 
8:33 Ricky’s comments: crash test dummies; machinima as spectacle; is this educational? 
14:13 Damien’s comments: it’s not a comedy! and limitations of the game 
18:16 Tracy’s comments: from a nice driving vid to a compete horror story to has this just gone too far? 
30:13 We discuss the pros and cons of the film and its effects 

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

In this ep, Phil introduces the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection, a curated selection of machinimas from the early years. Machiniplex was a site created to host classic machinimas at the point that Machinima [dot] com began to assert its energies over the community as a corporate entity.  The site was a community endeavour, with both Ricky and Phil playing a pivitol role in managing the project to preserve the original content the community had contributed to the early original Machinima website... until such time as it ran its course.  Phil and Ricky reminisce about the origins of Machiniplex and its contributors.

To celebrate the release of the curated collection, which you can find over on Phil's Vimeo channel (links in the show notes), the Completely Machinima crew have each selected a film they recall with particular fondness and discuss its significance. Phil has remastered each of the films using AI, not always a perfect process, so we also discuss his approach and techniques in bringing the original works up to 4K standard.

We encourage machinima fans everywhere to check out these films, not only were they brilliant in their day but in terms of storytelling, remain some of our favourite creative works against which we often draw comparisons when reviewing latest films.

0:10 Intro and background to the Machiniplex site
6:06 Blahbalicious by Wendigo and Avatar, 1997
10:01 BOT by Digital Yoke, 2005?
18:09 Edge of Remorse by Riot Films, 2006
26:56 The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams, 2006

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Producer: Phil Rice
Editor: Ricky Grove
Music: Anno domini beats

Machinima veterans Phil Rice and Ricky Grove along with their machinima pals Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine are creating a brand-new podcast devoted to machinima (the art of making movies with games), real-time technology and a bit of virtual reality. Their premiere episode will start on February 4, 2021, and will feature news, films, interviews, discussion and satiric comedy all focused on machinima and machinima filmmakers

This teaser/trailer will give you and idea of the style of the Completely Machinima podcast - fun, free wheeling with sharp discussion and a heavy dose of satire.

Join Phil, Ricky, Tracy and Damien on the first Thursday of every month for an hour-long show that will entertain and enlighten you!

You can find out more detailed information along with a blog at the completelymachinima.com website. Note that in the coming weeks the Completely Machinima Podcast will be available on major podcast sites like Apple and Google podcasts.