S5 E163 20 Years on HL2: I'm Still Seeing Breen (Jan 2025)

And Now For Something Completely Machinima

Kicking off 2025 with a review of a classic and iconic #machinima by one of the pioneers of the movement, Paul Marino aka ILLRobinson. I'm Still Seeing Breen, made in HL2, holds a special place in our memories from those early years - not only was it a perfect 'protest piece' as the feature machinima demonstrating its potential for a 2005 Sundance Film Festival panel discussion (alongside RoosterTeeth's RVB) but was further developed for MTV2's Season 2 premiere of its Video Mods TV show later that same year. In this episode, we go over the back story, discuss how this was made and its impact on machinima in general.

1:14 Introduction to film and the Valve 20th anniversary edition of Source Filmmaker updates
5:31 Back story to its release: the snub, the support from Valve, the successes and the features (Ottawa Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, MTV2 and Tony Shiff, et al)
16:45 The genius of selecting a music video for making machinima!
18:05 Creating the head animation in Source, editing and scene selection
23:00 Communicating and community in the early days
26:30 Why the Gman and why a close-up?
31:00 A watershed moment, a turning point, but the end/beginning of the next phase too
35:00 An inspiration
38:53 A big mistake
41:54 How the games companies robbed the machinima community
44:00 A question for Paul

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats