Podcast Episodes

S3 E89 Half Life 2: Daydream (August 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 9, 2023 Leave a reply

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 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 but so is reminiscent of how contemporary tools such as iClone and Unreal now work.

This week we also begin with Ricky talking about ultra-wide monitors, using it to play Elden Ring (a mod required) and the #SAGAFTRA strike; and, Phil 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!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Film, Daydream by Mystfit, released 6 January 2009

Gigabyte ultra-wide screen and Elden Ring mod, by Nexus Mods

Machiniplex Collection, remastered by Phil Rice – https://bitly/Machiniplex

Bloodspell trailer for Phil’s showcase channel –

S3 E88 Minecraft: Wither Storm War (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 2, 2023 Leave a reply

This week’s film review focusses on a story made with building blocks and without voice acting… and yet, what a spectacular story! The game world is Minecraft of course, and the story is based on Telltale Games’ episodic release called Story Mode. Made by  @SquaredMediaAnimations , we discuss the production values emcompassed within the film, why we think adding voice acting would have enhanced the film and a number of other things we nit-picked but conclude that its really no wonder Squared Media are one of the top machinima producers in Minecraft.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Links and Notes

Film, by Squared Media Animations, released 6 May 2023 –

Bloopers reel for the film –

S3 Special: Machiniplex Intro

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 28, 2023 Leave a reply

In this episode, 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. In this ep, Phil and Ricky reminisce about the origins of Machiniplex and its contributors.

To celebrate the release of the curated collection, we have each selected a film we 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.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Blahbalicious by Wendigo and Avatar, 1997 –

BOT by Digital Yoke, 2005? –

Edge of Remorse by Riot Films, 2006 –

The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams, 2006 –

Phil’s trailer for the Machiniplex [Remastered] Channel –

Go to the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection on Phil’s Vimeo channel here – website https://bit.ly/machiniplex or access the playlist here –

S3 E87 Cyberpunk 2077: Don’t Fall Down, Cinematic Machinima Music Video (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 26, 2023 Leave a reply

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.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Film, by Puttefnask, released 23 February 2023 –

Made using Cyberpunk 2077 Photo Mode mod v 1.0.20 by Otis_Inf, link here

Original music video, Haelos – Pray, released 26 Oct 2015 –

Falling Down (1993), analysis of meaning

Bruegel the Elder, painter, a discussion of his work here –

A useful link on street photography here

S3 E86 RDR2: The MODDED Wacky West (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 20, 2023 Leave a reply

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!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Film, by BedBananas, released 10 June 2020 –

Mods creator, Glynn JKW – link to his Github page here and his Twitter here

Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr, available as a public domain movie here –

Link to critique of Dali and discussion of the meaning of his work here

Lainy Voom’s Push on Phil’s Machiniplex Remastered collection channel (Vimeo) here –

and Tracy’s discussion of surrealist machinima in the Journal of Visual Culture (2011) here