machinima podcast Archives - Page 9 of 38

S4 E121 Cosmic: Flowers of Evil (Mar 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 21, 2024 Leave a reply

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.

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes and Links

Flowers of Evil by Tutsy NaVaRaThNA, released on 29 Jan 2024 –

Full recording of the show by Lalie Sorbet and Chrix here –

Fleurs du Mal Second Life map reference – https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLEA6/90/143/1001

Project Gutenburg ebook, open access https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36098/36098-h/36098-h.htm, originally released on 13 May 2011

A website dedicated to Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal https://fleursdumal.org/ which includes links to the various editions, the first of which do not include the censored works – those you can find the 1866 Les Epaves (the scraps)

More about ‘happenings’ here

S4 E120 Machinima News Omnibus (Mar 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 14, 2024 Leave a reply

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.

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!

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Fan communities under pressure?

Valve’s Steam policy and recent take downs for Team Fortress 2 and Portal fan projects – article on Games Radar here

Half Life 3 aka Entropy Zero (and 2) projects – Fandom.com overview here and video –

New Moviemaking Toolsets

Blockbuster Inc, Prologue version now on Steam here

Demo by Orbital Potato here –

Replikant now in free beta on the Unreal Marketplace.

Replikant has a Youtube channel with plenty of tutorials on it already, and there’s a great demo of it which gives you a sense of the animation quality it produces –

And for those wanting a quick and dirty tutorial on UE5, check this out –

Steamboatin’ Along!

Minecraft Steamboat Willie which is a fun take on it, made by Red and Blue –

Fewture Studios’ trailer for The Return of Steamboat Willie, made in Unreal Engine –

Screams

The origins and impact of the Wilhelm Scream – BBC shorts here

More about Sheb Wooley here

And another video about it here –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNvZYzg7o68

AI Genies Rising

Community action against deepfakes of Taylor Swift – link to story on BBC site here

Jae Solina has done a nice overview of OpenAI’s SORA here –

and this is a link to RunwayML’s video controller toolset (and our feature image for this post) –

The Suno model, released by ElevenLabs, for music composition – here is a fun example on X –

The new Suno model is a 10x leap forward for AI music.

Prompt: "Rap battle between GPT-4 and Gemini"

Stop whatever you're doing and listen.

AI music is coming. pic.twitter.com/mnZsaNkZvt
— Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_) March 1, 2024

S4 E119 Feature Length: Emesis Blue (Mar 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 7, 2024 Leave a reply

In all our years of involvement with machinima (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.

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes and Links

Film, by Fortress Films, released 21 Feb 2023 –

Another review here, by Durham College Chronicle.

Ricky discusses pulp fiction, not the Tarantino film, but the style – here’s a useful source to find out more

Phil compares the film to Nolan’s style of filmmaking – more on that here

S4 E118 Slapstick: 100 Ways to Die in Starfield (Feb 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 29, 2024 Leave a reply

100 Ways to Die in Starfield is wonderful stuff – whether you are 15 or 50! For all those who have distant memories of seeing classic slapstick comedy featuring Charlie Chaplin in B&W, well now you can see a contemporary interpretation in the incredible Starfield universe – and enjoy it with the grandkids! @mans1ay3r has a rich stream of work to his name – others in the ‘ways to die’ series include RDR2 and Star Wars. Importantly, given the game environment in which this has been made has been less well received than expected, the success of this short exemplifies the role #machinima plays for publishers in keeping it at the forefront of players’ imaginations. Great job all around!

YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Film, by Mans1ay3r, released 23 December 2023 –

What is slapstick comedy? History, examples and advice – check out this link

Starfield updates mentioned in our discussion are here

S4 E117 DC vs Marvel + Unreal Engine vs Action Man + AI (Feb 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 22, 2024 Leave a reply

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!

YouTube Version of This Episode