Paul Marino

S4 E116 GTA5: Danser Encore | Escape Game (Feb 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 14, 2024 Leave a reply

This week’s review is of a self-contained excerpt from a larger film, called Escape Game by  @CrisUberman. This part of the film is the final chapter of the story, Danser Encore, voiced by  @lionelmazari1990 with a song by  @hksaltimbank. We delve into the inspiration for the themes in the film, which draws on the philosophy of Empedocles and Rosset, although we perhaps lower the tone a little with reference to Oscar Wilde! 



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Excerpt of full film, Danser Encore by Cris Uberman –

Full film, released 28 Nov 2023, featuring Louis Fouche –

Artist website and blog link here

I’m Still Seeing Breen by Paul Marino, originally released in 2004

Journey into the Metaverse by Tutsy NAvArAthnA, released 2011

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 –

S3 E83 Half Life: HEV Suit (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 29, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, Phil has selected a short that will make all those H&S and Half Lifers smile equally… HEV Suit by  @Zapper770 … because we all need more head crabs in our lives. The film is an example of great comedy timing.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Film, by Zapper770, released 26 April 2021

Paul Marino, director of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences and author of one of the first books written on how to make machinima, called The Art of Machinima (2009) (actually its pretty outdated in terms of advice, but good for ‘ole’ time’s sake’!

Completely Machinima Interview: John Gaeta, The Matrix

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 17, 2022 2 Comments

In this episode, Tracy talks to John Gaeta about his interests in machinima and real time filmmaking, The Matrix Awakens Experience, the influence of the bullet time shot, building the metaverse, future of storytelling in immersive environments, the potential of NFTs and his advice for indie creators.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

John Gaeta on IMDb

screencap: Matrix Resurrections (l-r Donald Mustard, Kim Libreri, John Gaeta, Keanu Reeves)

Pioneers in Machinima, Prologue by Kim Libreri, CTO Epic Games

SIGGRAPH 2000

The Matrix Awakens Experience video (UE5)

bullet time

UE5 Nanite

News coverage of Disney’s AR patent application

3D Game-Based Filmmaking: Art of Machinima (book published 2004) by Paul Marino

Time Stamps and Themes

3.32 Backstory to Matrix Awakens Experience

10.01 Game vs Experience

12.00 World building The Matrix

18.11 Why PS5 and Xbox X/S?

21.36 Bullet time – again!

26.04 Awakens as a time capsule – remaking the virtual Neo

29.03 Multi-modal storytelling is the future

33.06 Storytelling and AI

37.00 Real time vs cinema – a cross-over moment

39.39 Scalable metaverses, AR and AI – reflecting on Disney’s recent announcements

49.27 The space between bones and spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey – vis Paul Marino’s 2004 Art of Machinima book

52.10 The role of Nvidia’s Omniverse platform

54.46 NFTs and open markets

1.03.00 Advice to machinima and real-time creators: passion and knowledge!

1.08.00: Red or Blue?

Credits

Producer/Editor: Ricky Grove

Music credits: frankum’s Nebua Techno House. freesound.org Creative Commons

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