Halo

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi: Halo Machinima

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 23, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Ben reviews notable releases from the first days of Halo, including Steve Jobs reveal, the promotion of Nvidia’s GeForce2 GTS, Randall Glass’ classic Warthog Jump, the legendary Red Vs Blue release and others. See show notes and links on the CM website.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

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

Steve Jobs reveals Halo game, 1999

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 –

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

Matrix (Remix)

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

This Spartan Life

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

You’re Fired

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

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 30 News & Discussion (February 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 3, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Tracy, Ricky, Phil and Damien cover the relevance of Nvidia’s special address at CES for machinima creators, Adobe’s Project Shasta, Kerbal Space Programme, the uptake in VR kit over the Christmas period, growth in machinima, NFTs, Philip Rosedale’s return to the Second Life fold, the nail in RoosterTeeth’s RVB saga, Minecraft’s and Rockstar’s astonishing achievements, Ben Grussi’s history episodes and discuss two great questions posed by our followers: what’s the difference between machinima and animation and what’s the advice for adapting prose to visual media formats.



YouTube version of podcast

Show Links

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

Kerbal Space Programme 2 screencap

16:25 Machinima growth observations

17:28 VR growth observations

19:46 NFTs observations – Peter Molyneux and John Gaeta

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 Rooster Teeth’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; Completely Machinima interview with Mr Anymation, Tom Jantol

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 History with Ben Grussi (November)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes November 25, 2021 Leave a reply

Ben reviews some of the major happenings during November in the early days of machinima, including Phil and Damien’s first contributions; release of legendary machinima games Halo 2, HalfLife 2, World of Warcraft & GTA San Andreas.  Red vs Blue Season 1 went gold and Second Life’s release of copyright statement are highlighted during this month, plus Hugh Hancock and Paul Marino made it to British TV Channel 4’s ‘The Toon Commandments’. Also a notable mention to Nvidia, whose GeForce FX series of graphics cards was launched in November 2002, signaling the dawn of cinematic computing.  Listen up and follow the links on our blog post.

[buzzsprout episode=’9587827′ player=’true’]

Machinima Gold: Strange Company (L-R: Sally Brewer, James Payne, Hugh Hancock, Steve Wallace, a descendant of William Wallace (Braveheart), and Gordon McDonald) & Paul Marino on Channel 4’s The Toon Commandments (2000)

Show Note Links –

Torn Apart (1) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN_kpxctijA

Quake 2 (Standing in for original trailer the RTX upgrade trailer instead) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unGtBbhaPeU

Half-Life – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wavn29LMrs

Unreal Tournament 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIJU9oSSPDs

ILL Robinson (Paul Marino) and Hugh ‘Nomad’ Hancock are interviewed on National UK TV Channel 4’s “The Toon Commandments” – https://archive.org/details/channel-4-machinima-toon-commandments

Halo: Combat Evolved (Halo 1) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0kHiEME0Vk

IL-2 Sturmovik – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EttVIq9Pig

ILL Clan teaser trailer for their upcoming episode series Lenny and Larry on the Campaign Trail – https://archive.org/details/illclan-Lennyandlarrycampaigntrailer

Jason Choi’s Max Payne tribute video – https://vimeo.com/63995463

Halo 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ycOwVPqbxA

Half-Life 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID1dWN3n7q4

World of Warcraft – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlVSJ0AvZe0

Tristan Pope (The Godfather), I Surrender, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVUoVVNnFc

GTA: San Andreas soundtrack to be released December 7th 2004 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daw8xhaGj2s&t=172s

Matt Kelland, Dave Morris & Dave Lloyd’s book

Completely Machinima in History with Ben Grussi (September)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 30, 2021 Leave a reply

Ben gives us the rundown on notable highlights from the beginnings of machinima that happened during September between 1997 and 2006.



Show Notes & Links

Phil Rice’s Male Restroom Etiquette

Zerstorer (Quake Total Conversion with in-game cinematics) in-game trailer by Nihilism Unlimited https://archive.org/details/zerdem_202109 

Circus Life-Part 1 for Quake 2 by Donnovan http://www.archive.org/details/ciruslife202109/ 

Apartment Huntin’ by ILL Clan https://archive.org/details/apt_hunting/

Rendezvous released by Peter Rasmussen, Nanoflix https://vimeo.com/89817936/

Discreet’s Gmax free modeling package for games first edition release https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dgCObbUr5s/

EA’s Battlefield 1942 release https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0npQ6sdbqw/ – Foundation for creating No Licsense and other notables, Ours Again, Blabberfield 1999 series and Soldats San Merci, see Internet Archive Search: collection:”animationandcartoons” AND (mediatype:movies AND subject:”Battlefield 1942″) 

Fake Science by Dead On Que https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmyUALJZoBQ/ 

Halo PC release https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9kdq7r3JcI/

Unreal Tournament 2003 release https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjyPbtlIs04/

Red Vs Blue: PSA #4 Microsoft Professional Development Conference (PDC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMcuxW6QzBM/

Swiss Army Bot Part 1 by Nabih Saliba  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgxhZUrRQZ8/

Swiss Army Bot Part 2 by Nabih Saliba https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euzd_5WEJb0/

Unreal Technology Demo by Epic Games release (shown at Game Developers Conference https://youtu.be/gfGNClgwk8M/

Scourge Done Quick Toon Edition by QDQ https://archive.org/details/sd-stoon-web-smooth-div-x/

Halo Matrix “Film” (Halo re-enactment with sound from the movie) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi_6oDYUpmM

First Doom 3 machinima cinematic released is ‘Last Ten’ created by ‘Oneofthe8devilz’ https://archive.org/details/last-ten-machinima-doom-3/ 

Artemis Software releases Nesmut via Machinima.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4OUNJ8ZlnM  (official selection of the 2005 Machinima Film Festival) 

The second Doom3 ‘scripted” machinima, cinematic example for a scripting tutorial at Doom3World.org! by ‘indianajonesilm’  https://modwiki.dhewm3.org/doom3world/index.php?thread_id=6176/

P.A.N.I.C.S by Rooster Teeth Productions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsAcF1s4Pr4

A Different Song by Britannica Dreams  https://archive.org/details/BritannicaDreamsProductions_21

Stolen Life trailer by Peter Rasmussen, Nanoflix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umtuFToCzrI/

Interview with Frank Dellario and Matt Dominiani on This Spartan life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umtuFToCzrI

The Awakening Atlas Productions final episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr2mR3-zbTQ/

MTV.com presents a feature about Rooster Teeth entitled “Machinima Pros Make a Living Playing Halo with their feet” https://www.mtv.com/news/1510551/machinima-pros-make-a-living-playing-halo-with-their-feet/

Male Restroom Etiquette by ZS Oveman aka Phil Rice https://archive.org/details/Male_Restroom_Etiquette/

Paul Marino interview with Steve Sullivan (ILM ZVis) for VFXWorld by Barbara Robertson https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/zviz-ilm-goes-interactive-previs/