Show Notes for Season 1 Episode 1
And Now For Something Completely Machinima  is a monthly, hour-long podcast devoted to machinima (movies made in game engines), real-time technologies and virtual reality.

Podcast Hosts
This podcast was produced by Ricky Grove. He is joined by hosts Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine.  More detailed bios are available at our podcast website www.completelymachinima.com

Podcast 1 Summary
Our first podcast features four main sections along with a short satirical skit. We’ve created time-stamps for each section  and links for topics discussed are in the description.

*Disclosure: This podcast and blog is listener/reader supported. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, may earn us a small commission to help cover the costs of producing the show. Read full disclaimer here.

Machinima News 

• Ricky shares his discovery of a new Epic/Unreal Engine course for machinima filmmakers: Independent Filmmaking in the Unreal Engine. 
• Phil updates us on the NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima feature which was announced in October 2021, but has yet to appear. 
• Tracy tells us about the sale of Second Life and the incredible virtual production Tomorrowland: Around the World and the supporting After Movie machinima. 
• And finally, Damien shares his research into film festivals around the world that accept machinima films like FantaSci Short Film Festival and the New Media Film Festival

Machinima Films of the Month

• Damien tells us about the Cyberpunk 2077 (paid link) trailer remade in World of Warcraft called “World of Cyberpunk Trailer“
• Tracy goes retro with her choice of an amazing machinima film “Beast” by Leo Lucien-Bay. 
• Phil chooses a very contemporary film, “Sugar” by Evan Ryan shot in the brand-new machinima/animation tool “Nightmare Puppeteer” created by M dot Strange.
• Ricky shares his love of “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” trailer by David Vann which was shot in Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2. 

Aside: The original “The Town that Dreaded Sundown” is available at Amazon on Blu-Ray/DVD and also (at this time) on Amazon Prime.

Machinima Filmmaker Interview – David Vann

• Ricky contacted the director of the “Town That Dreaded Sundown” trailer (David Vann) by phone and spoke with him about his background as a filmmaker and how he created his film in RDR2. David also spoke about his stop-motion Lego films which are hilarious and satirical. 

Machinima Group Discussion

• Ricky posed two questions to his other three hosts 1, What is the difference between the terms “machinima”, “real-time animation” and “virtual cinema?” and 2, What is the status of machinima in 2021? Is machinima in decline or are we advancing?  The answers were diverse and  ranged through machinima films/filmmakers past and present.

Note:  Uncut version of our Machinima News is available here