Milan Machinima Film Festival

S4 E111 Machinima News + GTA5 Cinematic (Jan 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 11, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we discuss the critical turn we witnessed in 2023 towards machinima among creative industries professionals. We highlight why it is high time there is a major rethink on the role of indie creatives and fan fiction in general. We also review a beautiful cinematic made in GTA5, and also reflect on some of the challenges with a particular camera technique.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

European Film Awards, Best Short – Hardly Working, a machinima made in RDR2 by Austrian collective Total Refusal. Announcement of winner here and link to Milan Machinima Film Festival’s earlier presentation of their work here. Many congratulations to Total Refusal on this landmark achievement!

Back story notes links –

Sam Crane’s Stage award for his live production of Hamlet in GTA5

Tracy’s review of Oberhausen International Film Festival and links to our discussion –

and interview with the curators at Oberhausen –

Warhammer 40K partnering with Amazon for new shows and movies, with Amazon being given ‘exclusive rights to make content’ based on the Games Workshop brand. Announcement on the BBC news website here and the Games Workshop website here.

Lord of the Rings legal case between a fan book writer, their publisher vs Amazon and Tolkein’s estate – announcement on the BBC news website here and further details of the copyright infringement case here.

Cyberpunk Ultimate Edition Official Booklet – link here.

John MacInnes also recently released an overview of the legal issues, similarities and differences between realtime creative works and film production which you’ll find a very useful summary –

Damien’s film pick for this week –

Cinematic experience – GTA V Machinima by Syed, released 10 Nov 2023

Completely Machinima Interview: Vladimir Nadein & Dmitry Frolov, curators (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 7, 2023 Leave a reply

In this bonus episode, Tracy talks to the curators of the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Vladimir Nadein and Dmitry Frolov.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Tracy’s blog post about the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, including links to newspaper reviews about the festival’s machinima programme, Against Gravity

CM team discuss Oberhausen –

Sam Crane’s article: ‘Making movies in video games: why the film world is finally ready to take ‘machinima’ seriously’ in The Conversation, 16 May

Chris Marker’s machinima on Second Life –

Visions du Reel Swiss Film Festival 2023 special jury prize winner, Knit’s Island by Square Eyes –

Against Gravity showcase at Norway Film Festival link

Milan Machinima Film Festival link

Phil’s project to restore Machiniplex films starts with the release of his own Male Restroom Etiquette (originally released in 2006), with a hosted premiere of the HD remastered version on 11 June. The film was listed in the Guinness Book of Record’s Gamer’s Edition in 2009 as the most viewed machinima on YouTube at the time. Link here –

Projects Update (Jan 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog January 23, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, we have some more interesting project updates to share with you.

Recognition

We were thrilled to hear that Sam Crane’s GTA Online version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been recognized, being shortlisted for an award for innovation at the The Stage Awards 2023 – we love that they spelled Auto incorrectly too (Audio)! Awards are announced on 30 January and hopefully Sam (aka Rustic Mascara) will keep us posted on his Twitter feed during the event. All the best, Sam! You can still find the performance on YouTube, link here –

Unreal

Using Unreal Engine, this short is another example of how beautiful this toolset is. This short by The Blender Bender team (Thomas Thielemann and Alexander Korabelnikov), released 26 Sept 2022, was inspired by David Attenborough’s Our Planet series, and with an even more stark message than the original series –

Also using Unreal Engine, we were interested to see that Sava Zivkovic, who’s film Irradiation we reviewed back in October 2021, is working on a new project, this one called Beckoning. He’s also just been awarded an Epic Megagrant to support development of the project – well deserved for sure. Here’s the link to the trailer for the new project – must say, very much looking forward to seeing the finished work.

Not Unreal but seriously unreal, this is an ‘insane battle’ scene demonstrating the astonishing simulation capability of the Epic Battle Simulator 2 engine. This one, SPECIAL FORCES ARE LANDING ON THE ISLAND OCCUPIED BY SAURON, was released 5 November 2022, by the Battle Simulator Center team –

Virtual Production

A short film, called Goliath by DonBittersil (screencap is our featured image for this post), has showcased virtual production tools using Unreal Engine, having been shot at LA’s Orbital Virtual Studios. For those advancing from purely screen based production techniques, this is an interesting insight into scaled-up processes – check out the film and the ‘making of’ videos here –

You may remember we shared Jackson Wang’s beautifully choreographed music video called Cruel a few weeks back, well this is another one from his Magic Man album, using virtual production techniques. Its also a stunning example of his creative work and the usefulness of the VP process –

Avant Garde?

An interesting article appeared on MUBI’s website about a cutscene collective, called Total Refusal. This team of gamers do what machinima creators have done for 25+ years, that is, use the game for some other creative purpose. Its nice to see that MUBI is keeping up with the times of course, and they would certainly do well to follow our friends at the Milan Machinima Film Festival to keep up to date with this particular ‘Avant Garde’ scene format. In the meantime, this is an example of Total’s Refusal’s creative works, a trailer for Hardly Working (RDR2) –

S2 Ep 46: Film Review – Facing the Wolf

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 15, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, we focus our discussion on Facing the Wolf, a series of films by Iain Douglas and Mark Coverdale, submitted to the Milan Machinima Film Festival 2022.  The film presents a series of provocative ideas which provoke Ricky, Phil, Tracy and Damien to have a deep discussion on the role of information, ambiguity and audience investment.  What are your thoughts on the film series?



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Facing the Wolf, by Iain Douglas and Mark Coverdale, released 2021

Poem, Coverdale – https://www.artschoolmodpoet.com/facing-the-wolf-poems

A trilogy of poetic machinima –

Facing the Wolf: i, Douglas and Coverdale, released 16 July 2021

Facing the Wolf I

Facing the Wolf: ii, Douglas and Coverdale, released 16 July 2021

Facing the Wolf II

Facing the Wolf: iii, Douglas and Coverdale, released 16 July 2021

Facing the Wolf III

1:35 Interview with Matteo Bittanti, Milan Machinima Film Festival

5:00 Ricky poses an interesting question: is machinima an animation style or a form of art that ideas can dominate, as opposed to feelings?

27:56 Discussion: for idea films, do you have to have more information than the film provides to appreciate the work?  What is the role of ambiguity in filmmaking?  How much time should audience invest in understanding a film?

Useful lnks

Luis Bunuel’s An Andalusian Dog (1929)

An Andalusian Dog

Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effect

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 38 News (June 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 2, 2022 2 Comments

In this episode, Damien, Ricky and Tracy discuss the release of Reallusion’s iClone 8 and Character Creator 4, the use of OpenAI for generating machinima scripts, legalese and Star Citizen’s users rules update, latest contests and challenges for machinima creators, technical notes and project updates, including Pooky Amsterdam’s announcement of her latest project, the world’s first Metaverse musical



YouTube Version of this Episode

minus the copyright problems!

Show Notes and Links

0:35 Feedback from our listeners, thanks Ben Tuttle, 3DChick, Mike Clements, CD and Pooky Amsterdam

6:40 Getting started with Nvidia Omniverse Machinima, ostensibly for the Make Something with Nvidia Machinima contest but also really useful to just learn about the toolset

9:17 Using machinima techniques for the new Batman film

Virtual production set up on Batman

11:29 Damien compares the fan-made Star Trek Pike to the release of Star Trek Strange New Worlds

13:34 Release of iClone 8 and Character Creator 4 discussion

21:48 Milan Machinima Film Festival update and using OpenAI to generate scripts for machinima

24:12 Fair use and transformative use and the case of Star Citizens’ updated machinima and fan film content rules and guidelines and its relationship to Squardron 42 (maybe?)

34:10 No excuses: Nvidia Omniverse Machinima competition closes 27 June 2022 – and here’s the link to Ricky’s interview with Dane Johnston as the Machinima app was being launched last year

36:09 Reallusion’s Pitch and Produce competitive support programme

37:14 Showreel of 100 3D renders of ‘infinite journeys’ and the weekly CG challenge by Clinton Jones aka Pwnisher (paid subscription on Patreon channel)

38:40 2nd Annual Film Festival for Fantasy Faire in Second Life, organized by Saffia Widdeshins and Chantal Harvey.  Congratulations to winners – links are HERE and Pryda Parx epic fly through the Fantasy Faire sim is HERE

Award (Wafflie) winner at 2nd Annual Film Festival for Fantasy Faire

41:19 Especially for Ricky: Elden Ring’s new VR mod by Luke Ross (Patreon channel)

VR mod for Elden Ring by Luke Ross

47:30 Facial motion capture in Roblox coming and using BHaptics for immersive storytelling

48:43 Review of best software for video editing via Shopify website

49:06 FSFilmz Cyberpunk short tutorial

49:36 Pooky Amsterdam’s new project stage play, Mambo Motel update and website HERE, the world’s first Metaverse Musical!

screencap Pooky Amsterdam’s metaverse musical, Mambo Motel