Daemon reviews The Virtual Flicks Open Machinima Contest

Well, the deadline for the Virtual Flicks contest has come and gone, leaving us with a whopping twelve machinima entries to look over! Some were dramas, some were comedies (intentional or otherwise). Some were good, some were bad (and a lot more were just average). We've got twelve videos to review and I'm barely staying conscious so let's get to critiquing before my eyeballs turn to ash.


Rich Barlowe: Private Eye

Man, do I miss the day where machinimas didn't need extraneous color correction. When it's done well, it looks amazing. When it's not, you get this. It's almost impossible to pick out any of the details in the video because it's so dark, and what you can't see is all brown. I get that the video is a homage to the old noir crime thrillers, and that the extreme darkness was probably intentionally done in order to match that art style, but even when half the frame is shrouded in darkness you could still make out important visual details in the old noir flicks. That's not the case here.

The story itself has all the trademarks of the crime thriller, and it's here that the line between homage and knockoff begins to blur. See, homages tend to take the source material they're referencing and use it to tell their own unique story (Sin City is a perfect example of this). With this short you've got the monologue-spewing narrator whose entire vocabulary is cynical observations and similes, and the hard-assed police chief who never gives the narrator a break (the Chief in particular should be commended for trying his best hand at pulling off a Joe Pesci impersonation. He didn't do a good job at it, but he tried so hard I feel that he should at least be commended for trying). Watching Barlowe analyze the crime scene made me yearn for the realism of CSI Miami. Say what you will about the awful puns on that show, but trust me, they're not nearly as bad as the similes. Oh god, oh god the similes.


Second Chance

A film with average to pretty good cinematography and production values undone by poor directing choices, an awkward script and lazy voice acting. I could just leave the review at that but I guess I'm obligated to explain things a bit more.

There's a scene at the beginning of the film that shows a flashback to a war scene. The sequence is about one minute long and consists of two sides exchanging machine gun fire behind sandbags, with no music or spoken dialogue for the entire time. That entire sequence could have been cut and it wouldn't have changed anything. Then the two war buddies started talking and I yearned for the silence again. I don't believe that every soldier should sound like a gruff badass, but they also shouldn't sound like they should still be in high school.

Also, I must ask...why did they cast a guy doing a falsetto voice for the protag's wife? Did the guy lose a bet or something? It took every ounce of will power in my being to keep watching after hearing that falsetto voice say 'Hi honey, how was work'.

It's kinda hard to rate this on its story since it's supposedly a part one rather then a standalone work. I have no idea how the three murders play into the story or all the details behind the guy's execution. I do know that modern executions are usually done via lethal injection and not lethal drugs, though. In case it wasn't obvious I probably won't be giving this a second chance.


Curiosity

Already covered this.


Deluge

Deluge (or 'Delgue' according to the video title) is baffling to me. I remember watching several key parts and wondering, 'was I supposed to find that funny?'

There's a sequence where one of the Spartans runs in front of his team mate, shoves him aside, and sprays the hallway with bullets for no adequately explained reason. This is done with CGI (again, for no real reason), and it looks absolutely absurd. Combined with the soldier's exclamation of 'clear' I almost felt like I'd just watched a really bad outtake from Red vs Blue.

The voice acting is also pretty weak. I remember one line where a soldier discusses how they need to move fast in order to avoid being disemboweled, and the delivery is as if the guy was telling his friend to hurry to the cafeteria before all the chicken fingers were eaten.

The whole thing is just messy. The CGI's lackluster, the story's off, the cinematography rarely rises above average, and the voice actors just didn't care. So why should I?


One Bad Situation

You starting to see what I mean about the overuse of visual filters?

Visual filters are fine so long as we can still see the characters clearly. I don't even think it's the visual filters, I think it's just people not knowing when to leave the brightness and contrast settings alone. Whatever the cause, the visual quality isn't very good, though the focus effects looked pretty promising. The score was good too, for all the difference that makes.

The voice acting isn't good, both in acting and in overall audio quality. There were more pops in the voices then when I crack my knuckles in the mornings. The voice of the Recon spartan was particularly guilty of this. It really shouldn't be that hard to find convincing voice talent, especially here of all places.

The story is your usual tale of heroic sacrifice by a spec ops sniper who's the best at what he does (and what he does ain't nice), with an ending slapped on that plays out like Inferno, only with all the humor sucked out.


The Real Gassy Mexican

Yeah it's pretty good.

Not much else to say about it really. It made me laugh a few times. Dan did a good Gassy impression. There were a few nits to pick (the Joker wasn't in Batman Begins), and I am curious as to why Dan's logo appeared before the VF logo (Dan must be pretty hardcore to get top billing in front of the site that's hosting his work), but it's pretty good. I'm not entirely familiar with the use of Minecraft in machinima, but I've seen enough to know that the filming was above average so...yeah. On to the next video.


Fall of City 8

I have literally no idea what the hell is going on at any point during this video. I feel like I just watched a segment of Half Life: Full Life Consequences without the narration and captions. What is going on here? Am I dead?


The Evil Banana

Riddle me this: why would a machinima that's centered around a 'tripped on a banana' gag take place on a darkened city set with dark Half Life 2 music playing in the background? The tonal whiplash is so extreme in this video that I feel like I should be in traction.

The voice acting comes off as underwhelming (the way the character says 'aw man that's a classic' doesn't match his body movements), and I have no idea why that one Combine was wearing a dress.

If the tone had been a bit more consistent this probably would have done a lot better.


Doctor's Orders Episode 2

This is probably one of my favorite up-and-coming comedy shows. Its humor is inventive, the characters likable, it has great CGI and visual effects in general, a good voice cast, music and cinematography. Not much more to ask for, really.

One problem I have with a lot of comedy machinimas is that they all have really similar styles as far as dialogue is written. We've all seen this setup before: Character A says something, Character B then refutes it by pointing out an extreme scenario, and Character A then replies with a comment that confirms the exaggeration and drives home the punchline. While this show uses that format as well, it works a lot better here. For instance, there's a segment when the Surgeon General pays a visit to the hospital and does an examination. The Surgeon General tells him that according to her record, 188 out of 189 of his patients have died. The head doctor then replies, 'Well at least one of them is still alive', leading the Surgeon General to point out that he was fully paralyzed with no hope of recovery. The doctor's response? 'Quitter'.

It's a very creative, well-written show. Its gags are fresh and it flows along at a brisk pace. Hopefully as time goes by it'll become more popular with M.com.


Super Space Gordon and the Robot Ninjas

As soon as I saw that TGO GMBH had submitted an entry I gave up any hopes of winning the contest. The man's a legend and it's no secret that I'm a really huge fan of his work. He has a unique art style reminiscent of the Scott Pilgrim movie (and Quentin Tarantino in his earlier works), and his sound design is some of the best in the business. The whole video plays out like a retro video game parody, which have been done before but not nearly as well as this.

I'm really at a loss for words so far as describing this video. It's so inventive and good that I'm finding myself with little to say as far as criticism goes. The soundtrack was really good, and as usual in a TGO video, the cinematography was absolutely dazzling both in its framing and quality.

TGO deserves a lot more then what he's getting, and it's good to see him in a position where he can benefit from being so talented. That said, his entry wasn't my personal favorite. That honor goes to...


2 Ghosts 1

This is one of the most beautiful machinimas I have ever seen in my entire life. Scratch that, it is the most beautiful, in every single way. This is art, ladies and gentlemen. Plain and simple.

This isn't the first machinima to make use of the Nine Inch Nails track, but it does a really good job at using the track in a unique way. The animation easily trumps Martyrs. Frankly I didn't think I'd ever see animation this good in a machinima.

From both the music and visuals there's a distinct sense of underlying insanity mixed with sublime beauty. While we never know for sure what happened on the ship (though the reference to Lovecraft's novella 'At the Mountains of Madness' suggests that the crew simply went insane), it doesn't really matter. It's not about why things happen, but what things are happening. It's about creating a distinct, breath-taking beautiful experience. The ending shot of the astronaut screaming in the vacuum of space while the explosive decompression of his helmet sends a stream of blood and broken glass trailing through the void is one of the most haunting and beautiful images I've ever seen. If you had framed that shot and put it in a museum, it would not have looked out of place. A very good entry and a sure-fire 1st place winner.


So that's that, my thoughts on the entries in the contest. It was enjoyable watching the majority of them and it's good to finally see Virtual Flicks hosting more events like this. If nothing else it introduced me to what's now one of my new favorite machinimas.

Now if you excuse me I have several hours of sleep that I need to catch up on. Toodles.