Britannica Dreams Archives - Completely Machinima

S4 112 Machinima Class of 2006 | Sims 2: The Fixer – (Jan 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 18, 2024 Leave a reply

We take a look at one of the best machinima series we’ve ever seen this week… from the annals of history. The Fixer series was a crime drama created by Todd Stallkamp (aka Burnt Coffee Productions aka TodNYC28) made in Sims 2 and originally released in 2006. Todd was part of the first brain drain from the world of machinima, and shortly after the release of this series was snapped up by EA Games as a content creator where he still is, ironically now in charge of the Sims amongst other games in its portfolio. We revisit the series in our review, discuss how well its stacked up against contemporary machinima and why its still one of the greatest machinima series we’ve ever seen! Ricky concludes, if Todd hadn’t gone to EA, he’d now be making TV shows and films: ‘… you could take this series, make it live action, use all of the shots that Todd made and put it on Amazon as a series.’

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

The Fixer, Chapters 1, 2 and 3, by Burnt Coffee Productions (Todd Stallkamp) – remastered versions on Phil’s Vimeo channel for the Machiniplex classics –

The Fixer, Ep 1 – Fat Men Run

The Fixer, Ep 2 – Guns, Ghandi and Getting Some

The Fixer, Chapt 3 – One Digit Off

Todd Stallkamp talking about the importance of machinima –

An example of Todd’s machinima projects for EA expansion packs –

The first part of the ITV Westcountry news documentary filmed by Todd and Trace Sanderson –

S4 E106 The Sims 4: I Abducted My Entire Neighborhood (Dec 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes December 7, 2023 Leave a reply

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.

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Reallusion’s Accuface release here.

Film, by Lets Game It Out, released 18 January 2020

Comparison films discussed –

OBIT (by Phil Rice / zsOverman, released 2022, RDR2) –

The Snow Witch (by Britannica Dreams, released 2006, Sims 2) –

RVB (Rooster Teeth, episode 1 originally released in 2003) –

Phil’s out takes video from Male Restroom Etiquette (released 2006) –

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 –

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 42 News (August 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 3, 2022 Leave a reply

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.

YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

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

Completely Machinima S1 Ep 18 Films (September 2021)

Ricky Grove Podcast Episodes September 9, 2021 1 Comment

The theme of this month’s film selections is based on a question one of us had last month: How has machinima adapted classic texts? Tracy, Damien, Phil, and Ricky set out to learn about the history of the classics in machinima and came up with so many interesting films it was hard to choose a reasonable amount for the podcast. Phil couldn’t make it this month, but we did include his pick (Haunter of the Dark).