And Now For Something Completely Machinima

03/04/2025

In our podcast review this week, we discuss a series made in Red Faction Guerilla called Optimism Bias plus, for a bonus ep, Tracy caught up with its director, Andrew Good Knight. What a treat to hear about the series, some of the challenges they faced, including the fascinating way they actually filmed this, and Andrew's plans for future work.

Catch both eps on our YT channel, link to the review here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvdZGdgMt84&t and link to the interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp2j6Dcy6xk&t

w/ Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

A viewer nominated series, this week's ep is another great example of brilliant writing. Optimism Bias was directed by and originally rele...

20/03/2025

In this week's ep of the podcast, we review one of the most original uses of we've seen to date - its a talking heads absurdist series focussing on a post-human race called the by . Our ep focusses on one particular episode reflecting on the role of exercise (p**n x-er-keys), described as the strange behaviour of 'hoomans trying to mystically transform their bodies through motion alchemy and strain worship'. Yes, well, that's obviously a truism! Link to our ep here >>>

Ricky Grove Phil Rice Tracy Harwood Damien Valentine Midjourney Ai

One of the most extraordinary picks we've made, probably ever, on the show! This week, we review an emergent absurdist talk show, focussing on the life of th...

13/03/2025

This month's news omnibus on all things is out - we take a look at some great projects > Phil Rice's Chuck Norris vs 50K Cavemen is hilarious, Esoterica's latest release and their amazing world building (in UE), celebrate 's win at the Oscars (made with Blender, a bit more about challenges and a fab mod that places on the map (in ). Check out the ep here >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCqDohG-USw&t


Ricky Grove Tracy Harwood Damien Valentine Reallusion Second Life Valve Unreal Engine

Our regular monthly news update about all things machinima, and some other items we enjoyed discussing -1:19 Projects: latest release, D...

06/03/2025

This week's film was a prescient tale about a post-pandemic world - its a 2006 pick from the 'golden age' of , featuring performances by Ricky Grove and Ingrid Moon, and music by Phil Rice. Made in San Andreas, The Days After by Andre Pesch won a bunch of awards at the time, but probably only now realises its full impact. Check out our review and link to the film here >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8WA77vNiUU&t


Ricky Grove Ingrid Moon Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

Rockstar Games

This week we review a 'golden age' machinima, starring none other than Ricky Grove playing 'Bogart', and Ingrid Moon playing err, 'Ingrid', with Phil having ...

14/02/2025

This week's ep of our is a walk down memory lane - a documentary fly-on-the-wall style of the founder of [.com], Hugh Hancock by Stuart Brown (2003). Hugh's vision, alongside that of notable others in the community at the time, was nothing if not prescient - although it took a global pandemic to change the view of certain key folks and The Force! Check out our discussion here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT0YL-Dy5sUand do also take a look at the interview Tracy did with Hugh back in 2014 on the blog linked in the vid.

Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood Benjamin L Grussi Frank R Dellario

This ep, we take a walk down memory lane to the first major peak of with a documentary produced by , released in 2003. The fil...

02/01/2025

New year, starting our podcasts with a celebratory milestone - 20 years since I'm Still Seeing Breen was first exposed to the world! Here's our review of Paul Marino's classic music vid - enjoy the memories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeJe7px2oT0

Valve Rooster Teeth Half Life
Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood Paul Marino

Kicking off 2025 with a review of a classic and iconic by one of the pioneers of the movement, Paul Marino aka - and its almost 20 ye...

24/10/2024

Who remembers Forbidden Planet? I guess you need to be a certain age or a fan of old scifis, but what's great is that machinima has been used to create the next episode of the 1956 original film. Its actually made with Reallusion's iClone and has an almost Anderson marionette style to it - wonderful stuff! Check out our review and discussion about the technical aspects here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlYj318erR0 - and then go watch the original. Chapt 2 is also on its way, by

w/ Ricky Grove Tracy Harwood Phil Rice Damien Valentine

Official Gerry Anderson

05/10/2024

Blast from the past, check out this week's ep, Fake Science, by the amazing Dead on Cue folks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCFCXu3-nP8

Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

This week, we take a deep dive into a film from one of the original machinima creator studios, Dead on Cue. This comprised the duo Mike Holochwost and Brian ...

30/09/2024

Wrapping Season 4 of the podcast, we released our year in review of all things over the w/e, alongside a skit Ricky did for us on generativeAI that we incorporated into a couple of eps during the year. You can check out the eps here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T92vwmt2_yA&t
and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hijbpoIiEI

w/ Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

26/09/2024

This week's film reviews on the Completely Machinima podcast are eclectic to say the least... one is a music video demonstrating the impact of game-based compositions, with visuals created in a new game called Deep Rock Galactic. The other is an interpretation of an actor-narrated game publication, Helsreach (Black Library), made in Warhammer 40K, with a post-production treatment we've rarely seen used. Check the ep out here, with links to show notes and the films -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj3csXwsOBE&t

w/ Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

This week we review two films and again attempt to work with a rather impressive AI genie who covers things we just could not... The first film selected is a...

19/09/2024

In this week's ep of the podcast we discuss a controversial film, made with a new driving sim game BeamNG in which the filmmaker has recreated realistic car crashes which we see through its inbuilt recamming tool. Whilst we can see an educational value to this type of content and game, we can also see a more disturbing side to it. Tracy certainly felt this has gone too far. Check out our discussion here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XVZOb8winw

Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

In this ep, we discuss a film by , which uses the game to simulate realistic freeway crashes. The game features advanced physics and...

29/08/2024

This week's film review is out, made using Team Fortress 2 assets, and it highlights a classic dilemma for talented creators when making series... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ik2sj71wE&t

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Valve

This week we take a look at another stunning Team Fortress 2 short called Assault on 2Fort by JP Stevens aka , a recommendation made to us by Dominzk...

23/08/2024

Invoking Chesley Bonestall and Carl Sagan with this , reimagining Erik Wernquist's cinematic with Star Citizen. Check out our review of this short, by Mr. Hasgaha here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9w9Z_N2nSs&t

w/ Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood



Star Citizen
Erik Wernquist

A Star Citizen extravaganza: this week, we discuss a brilliant re-creation of 's epic short, Wanderers, released by one of the ma...

16/08/2024

We had a lot of fun reviewing this week's cinematic short, called HL: Overworld, by a creator called Unknown Dino. Its about the future Valve's Half Life... check out the review here - https://youtu.be/MlpFGIyIhPY

w/ Ricky Grove Zarathustra Studios Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

This week's selection is a stunning cinematic imaginary by , focussing on the next version of Half Life (soon to be released... er, well, possibl...

08/08/2024

This week's news ep of the podcast is out: we talk about the albums of games music recently released and discuss why we think more publishers are going this route. We go through some of the latest AI updates, including Vimeo's new AI content guidelines. We talk about consumer rights and dead games, Microsoft Flight Sim's stunning city updates and the latest SAG AFTRA strike... as it relates to machinima and content creators.

w/ Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood



Check out the ep here -

Another packed episode of news items we found for machinima creators everywhere. We take a look at some games news including several that have released music...

01/08/2024

Ep 140 of the is out now! This week, we discuss a machinima slasher/horror music vid w/ a unique aesthetic to **SE & BRING ME THE HORIZON Code Mistake by Toaster2210. The quality of its production/editing is noteworthy

w/ Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood
Rockstar Games

Crazy, it is certainly that - and more. If you enjoy slasher horror, we think you'll love this - and its definitely not for U18s! The film is by ...

29/07/2024

We recorded our weekly And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast last night with the invisible men Phil Rice and Ricky Grove making their best points yet! Fab discussions w/ Damien Valentine, and this week's film pick is one of the craziest I've ever seen. Ep 140 out this Thurs - here's a taster, we're just so good with this tech...!

Catch up with previous eps on our YT channel www.youtube.com/

13/06/2024

This week's episode of is our monthly news omnibus. We extend our thanks to NVIDIA for their support of , highlight some fantastic projects by Dark Machine Studios, J.P. Ferré, Anomidae, JT Music and others, and discuss latest generative AIs and their use in machinima and virtual production. We reveal where the images originally came from, courtesy of internet sleuths, and speculate the next big project for this highly influential . Plus, we reflect on the legacy of The Movies game evidenced in the new generation of games just releasing and how is also its own best solution to the creator problem. And, we also introduce which maybe will task us all to rethink the usefulness of generative AI. We'd love your views on the discussion too! Here's the link to our video with show notes on our website -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eMXTRi-jqY

w/ Ricky Grove Phil Rice Damien Valentine Tracy Harwood

This week we celebrate Nvidia's investment in machinima, discuss latest AIs and give you the heads up on some great projects we want to highlight - there are...