Podcast Episodes Archives - Page 3 of 40

S4 E147 BeamNG Drive: Realistic Freeway Crashes #10 (Sept 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 18, 2024 2 Comments

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.

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Film by Patrick Zeugirdor, released 14 May 2024

S4 E146 Machinima News Omnibus (Sept 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 11, 2024 Leave a reply

This week is our monthly news ep. We discuss various developments in the machinima and virtual production community. Tracy mentions the Reallusions 2024 3D Character Contest, highlighting Stefan Dufour’s entry. Phil and Tracy discuss the potential of AI in character creation. Damien reports on Activision shutting down a Call of Duty mod and the impact of AI on modding. We also cover the Dragon Age: The Veil Guard game, the Secret Level series on Amazon Prime, and the new game inZOI. Phil introduces Daz AI Studio, a generative AI platform for DAZ Studio, and reflects on the impact of AI on the music industry, sharing the story of composer Sasha transitioning to AI-generated music.

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Reallusion’s 3D Character Creator Contest entries link here.

Skibidi Toilet being made into a Michael Bay movie? Reported in Eurogamer here.

Sandbox game launched –

Celebrating Team Fortress 2 creators – check this out, by MrEditsMan –

Activision shuts down CoD mod, as reported in GamesRadar here.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard trailer (feature image for this post), here –

Secret Level teaser trailer here –

inZOI on Steam here and intro trailer here –

DAZ AI Studio link here

Filmmusic.io link here

S4 E145 Video Essay: The Game of Video (Sept 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 4, 2024 Leave a reply

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.

YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

The Game of Video – Machinima Video Essay by Collin Aull, released 9 April 2024

Other machinima videos about machinime we’ve seen over the years…

Machinima with Officer Dan (2006) by Amorphous Blog Productions…

Street Talkin’ (2006) by Amorphous Blob Productions…

S4 E144 Assault on 2Fort (Aug 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 28, 2024 Leave a reply

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!

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Assault on 2Fort by Lolripk, released 9 July 2022 –

Trailer for part 2 –

About the TF2 game lore, wiki link here

S4 E143 We Were Wanderers (Aug 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 21, 2024 Leave a reply

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.

YouTube Version of this Episode