Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And sitting next to me, as usual, is senior writer
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, Crispy, and hey there to all
Speaker 1: of you at home. Very nice, thank you. What if
Speaker 1: they're not at home? Hey there, to all of you
Speaker 1: not at home. I don't want to leave anyone out,
Speaker 1: all of you, all of you at work who should
Speaker 1: be working. But instead of listening to us, thank you
Speaker 1: very much, why don't we get started? Okay, So to
Speaker 1: start this off, I thought we would go to our
Speaker 1: tried and trusted method of reading a little a listener mail.
Speaker 1: And this a listener mail comes from Mori. Mori says, Hey, guys, lately,
Speaker 1: I've become obsessed with the Machinima web series Red Versus
Speaker 1: Blue and was wondering where Machinima started and how it's made.
Speaker 1: I'm sure many others have suggested this to you, but
Speaker 1: I think it would make a great topic for you
Speaker 1: guys to talk about your dedicated listener morey Well, Mari,
Speaker 1: actually you're the first person to bring this one up. Yep. Ever, no,
Speaker 1: I mean for us, But I actually wrote how machinima works.
Speaker 1: And I too, am a fan of Red Versus Blue.
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to let you talk because up
Speaker 1: until today when we were doing research for the podcast,
Speaker 1: I hadn't even never even seen an episode of Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue. But you had at least seen some machinima, right,
Speaker 1: like maybe a code Monkey video or something. Well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't thinking of that. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: let's define what maschinima is before we get started. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: massinema is essentially using an existing computer generated world and
Speaker 1: sometimes characters to create stories. Yes, machine animation, machinema, yep.
Speaker 1: But it's not like regular you know, computer animation. No,
Speaker 1: because all the work for building that world and building
Speaker 1: the graphics has been done for you. You are actually
Speaker 1: using a pre existing product to create your stories. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's almost like, uh, you know, using one of those
Speaker 1: kits that you might find in uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: piece of movie making software. You know, you've already got
Speaker 1: the pieces you already get the camera angles and the
Speaker 1: and the characters and and those things, but rather than
Speaker 1: using the toolbox that comes with that kind of software,
Speaker 1: you're actually using games. And uh, it actually can take
Speaker 1: a couple different forms, right, I mean it could be
Speaker 1: basically your recording of the actions, uh, you know in
Speaker 1: the games that permit it, um, you know, recording of
Speaker 1: the the actions of the characters, and then basically making
Speaker 1: up a story to go with that, or actually taking
Speaker 1: uh those pieces and making your own from scratch, which
Speaker 1: it seems would be a bit harder. It might be
Speaker 1: a bit harder, but in my experience, those tend to
Speaker 1: be the most enjoyable ones to watch, because it's not like, uh,
Speaker 1: you're trying to force words to fit the action. You've
Speaker 1: already created the action and now you're or you already
Speaker 1: created the words, and now you're you're creating the action
Speaker 1: around it. Um. It's a lot like a puppet show.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is most similar to puppetry because
Speaker 1: you have players who are manipulating or actors if you prefer,
Speaker 1: manipulating characters on the screen using controls, and the characters
Speaker 1: are responding appropriately, and then by doing that you can
Speaker 1: create scenes, and by stringing scenes together, you can actually
Speaker 1: tell a story. Now the recording of video games, that's
Speaker 1: not new. A lot of people have been doing that
Speaker 1: for quite some time. There were people who would videotape,
Speaker 1: say a speed run through a video game, like let's
Speaker 1: say someone is really really good at super Mare Brothers
Speaker 1: and wants to videotape ah, an attempt to complete the
Speaker 1: game as fast as humanly possible and uh and would
Speaker 1: you know, videotape that upload it to YouTube or some
Speaker 1: other service, and that would be that. So that's one step. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are tons and tons of walkthroughs for
Speaker 1: all kinds of games, not not you know, not just
Speaker 1: the kinds that you would make machinim out of. I
Speaker 1: mean there are you know, this is how you play
Speaker 1: Level six, you know, all kinds of stuff. There's actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: even more now that you have things like achievements in
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty and you've got you've got entire websites.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Rooster Teeth, the company that produces Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue, they have a separate product they call Achievement Hunter,
Speaker 1: where they show how to achieve certain achievements in Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixty games so you can go and watch a
Speaker 1: video and that they explain it that way. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the these which are instructional. They're not telling
Speaker 1: a story, and they're not using the game in any
Speaker 1: way that it wasn't meant to be used before. And
Speaker 1: in fact, several games even include the ability to record
Speaker 1: footage within the game itself, like Quake. That would be
Speaker 1: the example that actually that's kind of what started machinima
Speaker 1: off in the first place. So let you have the
Speaker 1: game Quake that allowed you to to record short snippets
Speaker 1: of gameplay, usually so you could brag it to people about, Hey,
Speaker 1: look how many people I sniped in this game or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: But then you had a group of people who got
Speaker 1: very clever and they said, hey, how about we use
Speaker 1: Quake this. You know, we can record stuff. Let's record
Speaker 1: um a little story. And they did, and that was
Speaker 1: the beginning of what became machinima. People said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: that's an idea. We can actually create what looks to
Speaker 1: be a computer generated animated film, but we don't have
Speaker 1: to develop any of the environments or characters. We don't
Speaker 1: have to create any of the animations. All we have
Speaker 1: to do is write the story and acted out and
Speaker 1: then we're done. The game will do everything else for us.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean it sounds easy when you put
Speaker 1: it like that. There a lot of different barriers you
Speaker 1: have to get through while you're creating it. I could
Speaker 1: think of a major one. What's that Basically you can't
Speaker 1: shoot anything as part of your movie that doesn't actually
Speaker 1: already exist in the game. Yeah, that's um without without
Speaker 1: any post production. That is true. If you are going
Speaker 1: to shoot your story using a game, you are relying
Speaker 1: upon the uh the environments and the objects and the
Speaker 1: characters that the the game developers have provided to you. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some games that have very big communities where
Speaker 1: the communities actually are allowed to submit new items for
Speaker 1: the game. The SIMS does that. Several other games do
Speaker 1: that as well, where you can actually develop and build
Speaker 1: an object and then imported into the game and even
Speaker 1: offer it to other people. So there are ways around it.
Speaker 1: Sorry I didn't go ahead. I was going to point
Speaker 1: out that actually a lot of it uh e A
Speaker 1: stuff like especially along the Maxis line, like the sims
Speaker 1: UM you know, spore basically spores one giant uh community
Speaker 1: as part of the game, you have to basically have
Speaker 1: an Internet connection, and um, you can find other people's
Speaker 1: creations as you play, as you run into other species. Basically,
Speaker 1: the chances really great that you're going to run into
Speaker 1: something that somebody else created as part of the you know,
Speaker 1: the startup of the game when you're creating new creatures,
Speaker 1: and uh, I remember back in some City days when
Speaker 1: I used to play the game that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: later versions of the game would let users create new
Speaker 1: buildings and you can import those into the game, which
Speaker 1: was kind of cool. Um, So, I mean, it just
Speaker 1: sort of seems like machinima is just sort of a
Speaker 1: a logical next step where you would, you know, build
Speaker 1: on the community. Yeah, and a lot of games do
Speaker 1: support that, not all of them, of course, Just like
Speaker 1: several games have the ability to to set a camera
Speaker 1: anywhere in the game. Here's some other cool things about
Speaker 1: machinima that you know, you can't do in the real world. Okay,
Speaker 1: with a lot of games, you can break the laws
Speaker 1: of physics, right, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You can. You can have you can set a camera
Speaker 1: on the ceiling and you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: securing it. There it just it'll stay there because you
Speaker 1: told it that's where it belongs. With a camera on
Speaker 1: the ceiling. Oh oh that hurts, I'm having a video flashback.
Speaker 1: Or you can put it in a corner. Nobody puts
Speaker 1: baby in the corner, but you could put a camera there. Um,
Speaker 1: so you can. But the new thing is you can
Speaker 1: put the camera anywhere. You can put it in the
Speaker 1: middle of the sky and it's gonna be fine because
Speaker 1: you know, if you tell it that's where it needs
Speaker 1: to be, that's where it's gonna be. No, no, not
Speaker 1: every game supports this, I should add some games do,
Speaker 1: some games don't. But for a game that does, it
Speaker 1: gives you unlimited options of where you set your camera.
Speaker 1: You can do as many different angles as you like,
Speaker 1: and you can get some really cool effects. Now, other
Speaker 1: games you have to obey whatever the game's rules are.
Speaker 1: You can't ness necessarily create a camera, and you may
Speaker 1: actually have to have one player act as the camera,
Speaker 1: capture that player's view and use that as the main view. Now,
Speaker 1: that's how Red Versus Blue works. One of the characters
Speaker 1: that's in the game that you never see is the camera.
Speaker 1: The camera's looking around and the point of view of
Speaker 1: that character becomes your view into the world. Now. It
Speaker 1: also means that when they want to do things like
Speaker 1: crane shots or aerial shots, they have to come up
Speaker 1: with really clever ways of doing it. For example, for
Speaker 1: a crane shot, they would have the camera man jump
Speaker 1: on the end of the tanks turret and they would
Speaker 1: have someone sit in the tank and then slowly raise
Speaker 1: the tourret to the right level, and there's your crane shot.
Speaker 1: For the aerial shot, they would have someone jump on
Speaker 1: a bansheet. They'd fly the banshee up into the air
Speaker 1: and the cameraman would very carefully perch there and capture
Speaker 1: the footage. And of course this could cause some problems
Speaker 1: down the line if you if you just accidentally twitched
Speaker 1: the controller just a little bit, you fall off and
Speaker 1: then your shots ruined. Um. But the nice thing is
Speaker 1: if your cameraman dies, he responds in thirty seconds, so
Speaker 1: unlike real life, where you know it takes longer than that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't respond at all. Uh So you
Speaker 1: know there's no report of you know, six people died
Speaker 1: during the shooting of this, but hey, they're all back
Speaker 1: alive now. No, it's more like the report from mashinimas
Speaker 1: this one guy died six times while doing that, right
Speaker 1: as opposed to six people die. You know, I got
Speaker 1: a question for you, Um, so are they playing as
Speaker 1: as in the case of Red Worst Blue, where they're
Speaker 1: actually playing the game. Are they playing online with you know,
Speaker 1: where anybody could run into them, because that would mean
Speaker 1: that it would be very difficult to control the action
Speaker 1: that you're seeing in the film. Point But how but
Speaker 1: they're playing together with multiple people. What what they're doing
Speaker 1: is they've set up a land. They've yeah, they've hooked
Speaker 1: up multiple Xbox machines, and so that puts a limit
Speaker 1: on how many people you can have in a scene
Speaker 1: right there. Um, if they do any network stuff, it
Speaker 1: would have to be a completely closed party system, because
Speaker 1: otherwise you would have all these people just randomly pop
Speaker 1: up and you would have all these different little messages
Speaker 1: popping up on the screen. That would be that would
Speaker 1: ruin your shot. So life where you know, somebody stumbles
Speaker 1: into the show like, oh my gosh, it's you guys,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I think it'd be more like he'd
Speaker 1: stumble into the shot and then be like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna snipe Sarge, and then I'm gonna snipe Caboose, and
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna snipe Church because boy, he deserves it.
Speaker 1: And uh, these are all characters from Red Versus Blue,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I think, um, my experience with people
Speaker 1: online pretty much means that instead of being silly, they're
Speaker 1: gonna first they're gonna kill you. Then they're gonna be
Speaker 1: silly so you get you get shot first, and then
Speaker 1: they do whatever their little victory dance happens to be,
Speaker 1: which usually is involves them crouching right over your face,
Speaker 1: sadly and simply. I think they do that in real
Speaker 1: life too, crouching over your face. I don't want to
Speaker 1: know what you're doing this weekend, Chris. Let's just move on.
Speaker 1: So again, Missinema is another way of telling stories. And
Speaker 1: the important thing here to remember is that, I think
Speaker 1: for for the most successful missinema folks out there, the
Speaker 1: thing that comes first is the story. And uh that
Speaker 1: means that you know, if you have a story and
Speaker 1: it's worth telling, it doesn't really matter how you tell that,
Speaker 1: it just matters that it gets told. And massinema is
Speaker 1: just one tool that's available to you. And then the
Speaker 1: cool thing about missinema is it's a tool that allows
Speaker 1: you to go to places, to have sets, and to
Speaker 1: have special effects that you could never do in practical terms,
Speaker 1: you know, things that you know, the average movie maker,
Speaker 1: amateur movie maker, i should say, has no hope of
Speaker 1: achieving on his or her own without such a tool.
Speaker 1: But with mishinima, you can go into other space. You
Speaker 1: can you know, have all these cartoonish characters. You can
Speaker 1: have these huge routes that you would never are actually
Speaker 1: see in real life, all interacting in different ways. So
Speaker 1: it really opens up a huge number of options for
Speaker 1: you as a filmmaker. Well, Um, one of the things
Speaker 1: that as I was reading your article, Um, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I found really compelling was the legal
Speaker 1: issues behind all of this, because you know, you are
Speaker 1: using someone else's art, and uh, you know, it seems
Speaker 1: like in one way it might be good for the
Speaker 1: gaming companies because it's drawing a lot of attention to
Speaker 1: the game. You might say, Hey, those characters look interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder what game they're from, and you know, it
Speaker 1: looks like a lot of fun. I might check that out.
Speaker 1: Versus the need to protect copyright and intellectual property and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's one thing to keep in mind if you
Speaker 1: ever decide to take on a machinima project for yourself,
Speaker 1: it's good to find out if the company has any
Speaker 1: sort of the company that makes the game, if they
Speaker 1: have any sort of policy on that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Some companies are totally cool about it, and like Bungee
Speaker 1: that makes Halo or used to anyway before the whole
Speaker 1: Microsoft thing. Um, Bungee was incredibly supportive of the roost
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth people when they were making Red Versus Blue,
Speaker 1: and they could have gone the other way. They could
Speaker 1: have said, hey, you know, that's our intellectual property that
Speaker 1: you're messing with there, and yeah, your your jokes are
Speaker 1: all funny and everything, but um, please stop because that's
Speaker 1: our work. But they didn't. They said this is great, um,
Speaker 1: have fun, and they even got behind it. They even
Speaker 1: contracted the Rooster Teeth people to make official Halo videos
Speaker 1: as promotional tools for things like when Halo two and
Speaker 1: Halo three came out. So it pays to do your
Speaker 1: research before you go and start making your project, because
Speaker 1: the one thing you don't want to have happen is
Speaker 1: to create something that people love and is genuinely getting
Speaker 1: some success and then get penalized for it, right, And
Speaker 1: that's that's just terrible when you poured your heart and
Speaker 1: soul into a project and then you're told by a company, Hey,
Speaker 1: you can't do that, and if you keep doing that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to sue you for X amount of dollars. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't count how many times? Never mind, um so
Speaker 1: at least three since Wednesday. So what would you recommend
Speaker 1: for someone who wants to start doing this? They say,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm willingly give this a try, you know,
Speaker 1: at least to see how complicated it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you need? Do you need basically just the
Speaker 1: game console and and and a computer? Said that you
Speaker 1: can dump the stuff into the computer and do some editing,
Speaker 1: or I mean, does this need a really complex expensive rig.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on what games you're using, and
Speaker 1: it depends on what your ultimate um goal is, and
Speaker 1: also depends on how high your standards are. Frankly for
Speaker 1: a production. Uh, if you're using a game that has
Speaker 1: an in game capture system where you can create you know, cameras,
Speaker 1: third person cameras and capture the the images there, you
Speaker 1: may not need anything other than and the computer, a
Speaker 1: few copies of the game so that everyone who's participating
Speaker 1: can you know, essentially act on the scene, and probably
Speaker 1: I would say, some video editing software so that you
Speaker 1: can add audio tracks in later. In my experience, trying
Speaker 1: to capture audio while doing these things doesn't work very well.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't imagine so well for one and for one thing,
Speaker 1: it's just hard to concentrate on, oh, this is my line,
Speaker 1: and then I have to move over here, and I
Speaker 1: have to waive the gun, and if you're doing all
Speaker 1: of that all at the same time, it gets it
Speaker 1: gets pretty complicated. If, however, you do what a lot
Speaker 1: of what practically every animator does, which is you record
Speaker 1: the vocal tracks first, and then you have those to
Speaker 1: work off of while you're creating the scene, it makes
Speaker 1: it a lot easier. So you need some software to
Speaker 1: capture the vocal tracks. You'll need some microphones obviously um
Speaker 1: so microphones and the software to capture the vocal tracks.
Speaker 1: You'll need the copy of the game. If it does
Speaker 1: not have in game video capture software included, you will
Speaker 1: need to find a tool to allow you to do that,
Speaker 1: something to record the video output from that, right, and
Speaker 1: in all, if it's a console system, you're gonna probably
Speaker 1: need something so that you can hook the console up
Speaker 1: to your computer to capture that footage, because most console
Speaker 1: games don't have the the record feature built in, at
Speaker 1: least not until fairly recently. Um, since the achievement Hunter
Speaker 1: stuff has really taken off, there have been some a
Speaker 1: lot of games to include some sort of recording software
Speaker 1: so that you can record particularly spectacular wipeouts or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then upload dumps so that people can enjoy watching
Speaker 1: your character catch fire as these flipping through the air
Speaker 1: screaming um, which I find endlessly entertaining by the way. Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a huge variety. I mean, it goes
Speaker 1: from as simple as you can get with if you
Speaker 1: wanted to record everything in game and you're happy with
Speaker 1: that quality, there's that level, and then there's the whole
Speaker 1: all right, I need video and audio editing soft where
Speaker 1: I need microphones, I need maybe even creating a little
Speaker 1: sound studio. The Red versus Blue guys, they started off
Speaker 1: by setting aside a closet, coding it in foam, and
Speaker 1: shutting the voice actors into the closet to record their
Speaker 1: lines and they're done that. Yeah, yeah, I have been there.
Speaker 1: I am looking at one of those right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In our podcast studio, we have a little corner set
Speaker 1: aside for sound booth stuff. And the sound booth is
Speaker 1: is really not much more than a glorified closet. It's
Speaker 1: it's comfortable and safe in there, actual custom built it
Speaker 1: is I have. I've actually stood in a you know,
Speaker 1: an actual cultural class like the egg carton foam. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's how the Red versus Blue guys started. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can start with a pretty small investment. But if
Speaker 1: you want something that's gonna really be snazzy and and
Speaker 1: have you know, nice titles and things like that, you're
Speaker 1: gonna want some video software, video editing software, and some
Speaker 1: audio editing software. Um. For those people who think I
Speaker 1: have an anti Mac bias, I actually recommend Max for
Speaker 1: this kind of work. I think that Max, I think
Speaker 1: I think Max are great machines for editing media. Um.
Speaker 1: I edit all my media for all of my personal projects.
Speaker 1: I do all of that editing on a Mac. So
Speaker 1: you're admitting that your anti Mac bias is just a
Speaker 1: faux anti Mac bias for now, but I'll bring it
Speaker 1: up again later some other podcasts, you know it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll never die. Well, Um, the audio equipment and I've
Speaker 1: always worked with UM. Now I don't own a whole
Speaker 1: lot of it myself, um, but I do have access
Speaker 1: to studios and just about everybody I know he uses
Speaker 1: a Mac. But um, you can use PCs for it.
Speaker 1: Certainly you're playing a complications out there for it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just can get a little expensive, you know, getting all
Speaker 1: the getting the soundboard and the mics and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Probably want to start small, and it seems like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't exactly be looking to put these in Hollywood anyway, probably.
Speaker 1: I mean. The strange thing is is that for the
Speaker 1: really popular ones, some of them have been shown at
Speaker 1: at film festivals or at at other big events. So
Speaker 1: there have been some cases where stuff that was made
Speaker 1: on an Xbox with some guys who just thought of
Speaker 1: some funny jokes while they were playing some some video
Speaker 1: games have been shown to a full, full theater audience,
Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive when you think about But that's
Speaker 1: the other nice thing about machinima is it's another way
Speaker 1: for the average person to really break into a creative
Speaker 1: industry that traditionally was really closed off. I mean, you
Speaker 1: had to have phenomenal luck to get into the entertainment industry. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: connections or luck or some combination thereof. But if you
Speaker 1: have enough talent, patients and and some you know, good
Speaker 1: old fashioned effort to put together a really good machinema project,
Speaker 1: you can get a lot of attention and and even
Speaker 1: make a living off of it. Yeah. And uh, I
Speaker 1: mean especially considering the amount of money that you might
Speaker 1: have to spend. Again. And the underneat thing is that
Speaker 1: Mishinima has introduced me to a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: I never would have really found out about otherwise. What
Speaker 1: Jonathan Colton, Uh yeah, Well, so when I was writing
Speaker 1: how Massinima works, um, one of our fellow writers, Tracy Wilson,
Speaker 1: wrote to me and said, Hey, have you seen this
Speaker 1: music video. It's a Mishinima music video. And it was
Speaker 1: a Mishinima music video to Jonathan Coulton's song Code Monkey,
Speaker 1: and it used the world of Warcraft right, And so
Speaker 1: I watched the music video. I was immediately enchanted by
Speaker 1: to use a world of warcraft kind of term. I
Speaker 1: was immediately enchanted by the the both the song and
Speaker 1: the video itself. The video was just really cute. It
Speaker 1: was really well done and sweet, and so is the song.
Speaker 1: And um, without it, I never would have found out
Speaker 1: who Jonathan Coulton was. And now I'm a huge Jonathan
Speaker 1: Culton fans. So um, that's, you know, another one of
Speaker 1: those things where I'm like, well, I'm glad that I
Speaker 1: found out about machinema. Of course, I had already watched
Speaker 1: Red Versus Blue up up to that point. Um, so
Speaker 1: I was somewhat familiar with mishinima already, but I had
Speaker 1: never seen the music video. Yeah, I learned about Jonathan
Speaker 1: Colton through John Hodgman because I right, yes, and I
Speaker 1: listened to the Hobo names and he played the song
Speaker 1: and he played the song over and over again without
Speaker 1: stopping for like, and that's how that was my introduction.
Speaker 1: Two minutes after minutes after minutes, a very very long clip,
Speaker 1: but but that was my first That video was my
Speaker 1: first introduction to machina and I didn't even know I
Speaker 1: was being introduced to it. And even even videos where
Speaker 1: you might think, oh, this is video capture footage, this
Speaker 1: isn't mashinema, sometimes it turns out it actually is maschinema.
Speaker 1: For example, the Leroy Jenkins video from World of Warcraft.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about? Okay, it's a
Speaker 1: famous goofy video on YouTube. If you guys have never
Speaker 1: seen it, go to YouTube and type in le Roy Jenkins.
Speaker 1: And it shows this group of adventurers as they're about
Speaker 1: to go into a very dangerous area and as the
Speaker 1: leader is explaining what their tactics are, one guy's like,
Speaker 1: let's do this, hero Jenkins, and he just runs into
Speaker 1: the room without helping, you know, without stopping to listen
Speaker 1: to the strategy, which results in everybody dying, and every
Speaker 1: someone yells out something along the lines of like, Leroy,
Speaker 1: you idiot, and you hear him say, well, at least
Speaker 1: I got chicken, and that's the end of it. This,
Speaker 1: this is goofy little thing. So of course the video
Speaker 1: makes the rounds as Leroy Jenkins totally screws up this
Speaker 1: raid that everyone had planned. And I'm probably using the
Speaker 1: wrong terminology, please forgive me. I'm not a World of
Speaker 1: Warcraft player, but anyway, he messed up the plan. It
Speaker 1: turned out later that this was all just it was
Speaker 1: all staged, so it actually was machinima you know, Um,
Speaker 1: I had my notes on computer this time for I mean,
Speaker 1: Jonathan knows that, but you all don't. And now that
Speaker 1: I look it up, there are about four thousand six
Speaker 1: nine videos with Leroy Jenkins. Yeah, that's one of the first,
Speaker 1: very first couple. Look like they're the ones he's talking about.
Speaker 1: Everything else apparently has been applied to, uh, Star Wars,
Speaker 1: paper Mario, and all kinds of other things. I've got
Speaker 1: a friend who has a band and they have a
Speaker 1: song about Leroy Jenkins. And to investigate this tenpenny Travelers,
Speaker 1: so you guys do a Google search on them. They're awesome.
Speaker 1: We're going off on a tangent and unfen some of
Speaker 1: our listeners. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah that's right. UM, let's
Speaker 1: get back on task. So do we have anything else
Speaker 1: you want to talk about as far as mashinima goes.
Speaker 1: I mean, we talked about music videos, we talked about
Speaker 1: making stories, we talked about how you do it? Yes,
Speaker 1: I do, all right, go for it. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the best games to use for this. I notice you
Speaker 1: list some in your in your article, but you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like the the shooter games Third person Shooter
Speaker 1: seems to work well, third person or first person first
Speaker 1: person shooters usually because you're using the point of view
Speaker 1: of the shooter. Yeah, well, I guess, I guess I
Speaker 1: keep thinking of Halo is a third person you're actual person? Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think it all depends on what you
Speaker 1: want to do. Like the world of Warcraft, music video
Speaker 1: stuff is awesome, it works really well for that. Um
Speaker 1: it's a little harder to tell a story now that
Speaker 1: that stop people. I mean South Park did it, but uh,
Speaker 1: I think the difficulty there is creating a story where
Speaker 1: random people aren't walking into frame and screwing up what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do. So I would say avoid online
Speaker 1: games unless you are able to do a localized instance exactly.
Speaker 1: If you could do a localized instance of an online game,
Speaker 1: that's fine, But otherwise you're gonna have random people just
Speaker 1: show up and like can I group And you're like, dude,
Speaker 1: we're totally like shooting a movie right now, can you
Speaker 1: like not be here? Um? I get that all the
Speaker 1: time in real life. Actually, dude, like, can we have
Speaker 1: you across the street because we're like shooting something. Um,
Speaker 1: So it would just happen to me online as well.
Speaker 1: So localized rather than online. Uh. The shooters work really
Speaker 1: well in the sense that it gives you a really
Speaker 1: good cameraman. It's easy to control the camera angle, it's
Speaker 1: easy to point at different stuff. You know, it's and
Speaker 1: you have an active person there as a camera as
Speaker 1: opposed to just a stationary camera and every all the
Speaker 1: actions moving around it. So you can do things like
Speaker 1: running towards someone as a zoom or you can uh
Speaker 1: you know, turn to the left or right as a
Speaker 1: pan um and you don't have to worry about stationary camera. Uh.
Speaker 1: The flip side of that, of course, is you may
Speaker 1: be limited by the physics of the world, like the
Speaker 1: Red versus Blue guys work, but you can find ways
Speaker 1: around that. Um. So really, I say, first of all,
Speaker 1: pick a story that you like, then think about the
Speaker 1: environment that it would most it would be the best in,
Speaker 1: and then find a way to use that environment in
Speaker 1: your storytelling. I think if you if you look at
Speaker 1: the story first, that's what's really going to make a
Speaker 1: good product. I think instead of saying, hey, I really
Speaker 1: like Halo, let's find let's make make a fun the
Speaker 1: story for Halo, it works better if you say, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got this funny story it would be even funnier
Speaker 1: if we said it in a universe with futuristic soldiers.
Speaker 1: Why don't we use Halo? I think that's the best
Speaker 1: way to go about it. Okay, See, I had this
Speaker 1: problem because I was I was trying to make a
Speaker 1: machine Emmo with a solitaire game, and it really didn't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. No, it really wasn't working out. I tried
Speaker 1: to make one using the game of Tron, and then
Speaker 1: I found out they already did that, saying so yeah
Speaker 1: that I think that was it for my question. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: then that wraps up this discussion on machinima. But that
Speaker 1: does lead me to our second instance of a listener mail. Excellent.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from JT from Joplin, Missouri, and
Speaker 1: JT says, Hello, I just found your podcast last week
Speaker 1: and really enjoy them. With my job, I do a
Speaker 1: lot of driving all over the US. Your podcasts are
Speaker 1: great to listen to while driving. This traveling also brings
Speaker 1: up a question. I was listening to your podcast about
Speaker 1: to J three G and fog Networks, and I received
Speaker 1: a text. When I went to reply, I had no
Speaker 1: signal on my BlackBerry Bold World phone from a T
Speaker 1: and T, but I still had good signal on the
Speaker 1: Sprint phone. My company issue to me, I see this
Speaker 1: a lot both ways. Some areas the Sprint phone works,
Speaker 1: and some areas a T and T phone works better.
Speaker 1: And of course some areas both are good. I expect
Speaker 1: the Sprint phone to do to go in and out
Speaker 1: as is not a world phone. My question is, can
Speaker 1: you really call it a world phone when it doesn't
Speaker 1: even work all over the US? Thanks and keep up
Speaker 1: the great work, j T. All right now, JT, Yes,
Speaker 1: you can call it a world phone because the world
Speaker 1: phone does not mean it's going to work everywhere. What
Speaker 1: the world phone means is that it works on the
Speaker 1: frequencies used in the United States as well as in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world. Ye. Yeah, I mean otherwise, well,
Speaker 1: I mean for marketing reasons. Uh, some places phone just
Speaker 1: doesn't sound as cool, right, Yeah. The the issue we
Speaker 1: have here is that it's not that the end Hanna.
Speaker 1: You know, a world phone doesn't necessarily have a more
Speaker 1: powerful antenna, doesn't necessarily receive signals better than any other
Speaker 1: phone working on any particular frequency. No, But frequency is
Speaker 1: the key here, because there are frequencies of all of
Speaker 1: all genres chres. There are all kinds of frequency, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a better one. Um, I'm thinking on the fly here. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are frequencies in all different ranges all over
Speaker 1: the world, depending on the governmental regulations of the country
Speaker 1: you happen to be using your phone in. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in the United States, we have two different kinds of
Speaker 1: phone technologies, basic phone technologies. They get more complicated, but
Speaker 1: basically we have C D M A and G s M.
Speaker 1: G s M is the more popular one throughout the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: but even G S G S M has four different
Speaker 1: frequencies upon which it operates throughout the world. There is,
Speaker 1: um there's the eight fifty and the nineteen hundred bands,
Speaker 1: which the United States uses, but Europe uses nine hundred
Speaker 1: and eighteen hundred bands. So you have two different sets
Speaker 1: of bands, and phones that run on one will not
Speaker 1: work on the other. But if you get a phone
Speaker 1: that is capable of running on any of those four,
Speaker 1: it's called a quad band phone, that would be a
Speaker 1: world phone. It would be It means that you can
Speaker 1: go to Europe and it will still work on Europe's system.
Speaker 1: It does not mean, however, that if you go around
Speaker 1: the corner to that dead zone that affects your other
Speaker 1: a T and T phone, that your phone will still work.
Speaker 1: It could still very well be dead. So I hope
Speaker 1: the answers your question. Jt Uh. Thank you for writing
Speaker 1: in greatly appreciate it. That was a great question, And
Speaker 1: it'll all work out fine until four G comes along. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to buy new phones. That's okay. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that iPhone will come out with a new phone as
Speaker 1: soon as four ghaits you know, any minute now, probably
Speaker 1: pretty much. September is right around the corner. That's when
Speaker 1: the big announcements come. If any of you have any questions, comments, suggestions,
Speaker 1: anything like that you want to shoot our way, you
Speaker 1: can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuck works dot com. You can read how Machinima
Speaker 1: works at how suff works dot com. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: darn good article, if I do say so myself. It's
Speaker 1: been a long time since I've read it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wrote it ages ago, so to read it now,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, hey, you know, I actually did a
Speaker 1: pretty good job with that, and I wasn't even in
Speaker 1: your editor at that time, and not Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's you know an excellent art right. I think Julie
Speaker 1: edited this one. Well that was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: so anyway, check that out guys, and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and be sure to check out the new tech
Speaker 1: stuff blog now on the house Stuff Works homepage, brought
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you