Morgan Quaid joins Sizzle this week to chat to Dan Macarthur about himself and his comic Metropius. This is no ordinary comic it is interactive with the use of a mobile phone. Very cool.
TRANSCRIPTION (there may be errors in the following text)
Morgan Quaid (00:12):
Hey,
Sizzle (00:12):
Welcome to the comic show, another Wednesday. And this Wednesday we have Morgan with us. Oh, other way. Hello Morgan.
Morgan Quaid (00:21):
No.
Sizzle (00:22):
Say how. Yep, that’s the way. And today our guest is Dan MacArthur. He is the creator of this beauty here, metropolis. Mero. Sorry. And yeah, so let’s get on with the show so we can have a chat with him.
Morgan Quaid (00:39):
Sweet.
Dan Macarthur (01:02):
Hey.
Morgan Quaid (01:05):
Hey
Dan Macarthur (01:06):
Guys. Yeah. Awesome mate. Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Morgan Quaid (01:11):
It’s a pleasure to have you here, sir. And we have Goodday Spy, we have bucket loads of questions because not only do we have someone that is a recent convert to comics, we’re going to talk about what’s it called, the robots, the ai. No, the thing, augmented reality. We’re going to talk about augmented reality and we’re going to talk about all that sort of stuff. But to begin with, I think it’s probably important we delve back a little bit, give people a bit of an introduction to yourself and where your creative journey started and all that sort of stuff. So talk to us about cinematography and where you first got interested in film and that sort of stuff. Where did it start for you?
Dan Macarthur (01:55):
Absolutely. Morgan. Look well look as a school boy and as a young person, I was like obviously enthralled by the obvious things like Star Wars and all the great filmmakers from the early days, special effects had a massive effect on me as a young person, blade Runner and all the rest of it. So just coming out from that era, I was building models, I was making spaceships, all that sort of stuff. And then from there I just went. So I had this whole big interest in film from a very early age. And I was getting out with the old Super CBRA camera and I was buzzing away doing stop motion stuff. And then I was lucky enough to get a job straight away in the film business when I left school as a camera assistant. And this is back in the expo 88 days, which is back in the <laugh>.
Morgan Quaid (02:40):
Oh wow. Back in.
Dan Macarthur (02:44):
So here I am at Fresh out of school, didn’t know the front end of a camera from the back and off I went working for this company doing documentaries and corporate videos and all these other things. So anyway, that was the beginning of my career and cut to 10, 15 years later and I was shooting away, making lots of short films and working for a lot of people. And then I started doing once I branched actually into cinematography, I was doing a lot of music videos. So in the two thousands I was working with a couple of guys and we did a lot of big music videos that some of you might have seen from powdering clips to Regurgitator. Right. To blow up the pokies with the Whis and just a whole string of did. Yeah. Which was kind of my fuel, what do you call my advancement in my career through to the next level.
(03:40):
Then, so in the early two thousands then I started to do feature films. So I went on and did my first low budget action feature thingy and then that got me in my next job and that’s how it goes. One thing leads to another. So yeah. Yeah, cutting forward. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, once I got to a certain stage and of understanding cinematography and being a director of photography the next jobs came along and off I went. So yeah, this ended up doing quite a big action film called Blood Money, which was just this crazy Australian action movie we did in Hong Kong and Miami and all sort stuff. And that then led me on to actually head over to India. So I went to India doing Bollywood movies for about three years.
Morgan Quaid (04:25):
Wow.
Dan Macarthur (04:26):
Shooting big movies over there. So yeah.
Morgan Quaid (04:28):
So Bollywood then, what are the big differences you’re seeing in that sort of setting versus what you were used to shooting over here?
Dan Macarthur (04:40):
Oh, for sure. Well, I mean the budgets just were crazy beg, and that’s why I went. I was like, it’s so hard in Australia to sort of advance forwards into decent budget movies here in Australia. So that’s why I was like, ah, this opportunity came up to go to India. So I went over to Bombay and I did it was this film called Go Gone. It was the first zombie comedy film in India at the time. So that was about 2011 or something, or maybe, yeah. So the Indian film industry is like, this is nuts. You know what I mean? You’re just talking about thousands of people and you’re dealing with the most chaotic situations and it’s just, it’s such a mind blowing culture shock situation compared to the way we work and all the rest of it. And I sort of hooked up and I hooked up with this director there and then in China, which is Madrak, the old Madras, which is the east southern tumble area.
(05:38):
So I hooked up with a big director there and we did three big massive films down there, which of the films went for nine months? So just, you can imagine a film as long shit that goes for nine months. And so most of it’s song and dance, that’s the hilarious thing. You’re just doing all these massive video music videos cause <laugh> and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, it’s classic material. Just the stories are just off the charts and the whole experience was amazing. It was just, they’re beautiful people and it was just such a lovely experience all over. It’s always a spiritual thing when you go to India and <laugh> dive in there.
(06:20):
But we came back to Australia and we sort of picked things back up here. So continuing on, and obviously the whole Ronna hit thingy, but at the time, just before that all started, I was just kicking off this new idea that I had. Cause we’ve been writing scripts and my partner Mel, she’s a producer director as well. So anyway, we are toying around with these ideas and I sort of come up with this idea of, oh, I want to was in Melbourne and I heard the train coming in and at the middle of the night down the street, I was like, yeah, that sound this crazy tram coming down. I thought, let’s do a horror movie about a tram sort of thing, like a ghost tram thing that comes along. And we work really closely with this writer called Ali Burnham. She’s a, she’s based in Sydney now.
(07:13):
We, we’ve been doing a lot of work with her over the years. And so I said to her, oh look, let’s make a ghost story thingy about this tram. We call it the Death Express. So anyway, she writes this bit of a treatment and then I’m looking at it and I’m like, and in the back of my mind, I’ve always wanted to do a much bigger idea. I wanted, always wanted to create a bigger franchise thing. I’ve been working on concepts like that in the past. Anyway, so I was like, and then someone introduced me to these ideas. Have you heard of Diesel Punk? And I hadn’t really heard of Diesel Punk, but I’ve heard of Steam Punk, heard of Cyber Punk. And in the meantime I’ve been collecting Art de going crazy about Art De, I’ve always loved the sort of industrial stuff and all these aesthetics about it that and I realize, I was like, oh, hang on.
(08:00):
Diesel punk is this genre that I’ve actually been into all my life without realizing it. So then, yeah, I just basically converted that and I said, I went back to Ali that I just said, I think we need to make this whole thing a giant city. This needs to be a big city that’s a diesel punk world. We’re going to cars do the whole deal and let’s just write this massive world surrounding that. You know what I mean? And so that’s how it all sort of started. And originally it was a Crole as well was a different title, the project. And then we ran into dramas with that name. So then we went through a name change. So in the meantime, so this what’s been building up, and I was going crazy, and Mel, my partners just going, you are mad. What’s wrong with you? <laugh> mad. The madness thing is you’re dreaming big and you’re going, I’m going to make this big crazy world.
(08:56):
So I was paying for this concept art from quite big name artists from around the world and doing all this beautiful artwork. There’s a lot of, it’s on the website, you can see it there in at the back section or whatever, but if you dig deep you’ll find stuff. But yeah, I was getting all this great artwork done, including the post that we did. And I was contacting these great artists from o l and trying to build this picture. And then I built the website, sorry guys, Nelly there. <laugh> built this website. And then luckily we went for the grant for screen Queensland for a proof of concept to do an animator for a show, right? Because someone said, us, why don’t you do an animation? It sounds like a perfect animated sort of scenario to do so then that was when and then luckily on it was winning a lotto.
(09:45):
Next one, you get the phone call. Congratulations, you’ve won the grant for a hundred grand to make your animation. So I was like, oh my God, this is actually happening. Wow. All of this time we’ve always been in the background. Let’s make a comic, let’s make this a board game. Let’s do all these different multifaceted areas with this project. Cause it’s a big world. We can keep telling stories and all different sections and all this of it. So that was when we cooked, hooked all that up. And that meant that we had enough money to then bring on an artist, which was David Thor for jk, who’s our, who was a artist. And we just went through months and months of design work and costume design work and all the stuff that we did and we could finance to do all that sort of stuff. So yeah, we made the 20 minute animation out of all that and learned so much about Unreal Engine and everything to do with it. And I’ve dabbled in modeling and animation before, but so yeah, it was a massive great learning episode and it was just, we were able to build so much infrastructure out of all that. So that was great. Yeah, so that’s the story.
Morgan Quaid (10:54):
All right. So let’s dig into the story a little bit then with the, so Troia Maros I’ve
Dan Macarthur (11:04):
Got, yeah,
Morgan Quaid (11:05):
Maros <laugh> is the title. So tell us a little bit about the story, the current story as it is, or the part of it that you’re able to tell us without giving too much away.
Dan Macarthur (11:19):
Sure, sure. Yeah. Well Maros is built into three different levels in the world. There’s a lower section called The Roots, and down there is there’s the Roots Rebels, and there’s a colony of rebels that live down below. And because of a class of structure society in MetroBus, so is the greatest industrial city ever built. And it’s a retro future concept. So it could even be the 1950s and 1960s in the timeline because the idea retro feature is you take diesel, punk is like, we went on this trajectory and technology kept going. So anyway, and then the whole world is the whole world revolves around a bunch of corporations that rule the world so that they govern everything that goes on. And then part of that is the Roses. And The Roses are a faction of female law enforcers who basically govern the world and set up what you can do and what you can’t do, and based down on the laws and what’s going on in immigration and where people can go and all this sort.
(12:29):
So it’s quite a strict world. And within that is our main character, Goodall. He’s a detective and hi. Hey. So just along with the story of Maro, so our main character is detect Detective Goodall, and he was originally from The Roots and he’s come up into the filament and become a detective and became quite successful as a semi political figure. And so he is quite involved in the whole scheme of things. And then the storylines basically delve down where he has to go back into the roots to meet up with his older self. And he was with her wife and she gets murdered and <laugh> all these different stories. So we’re, the comic stories are like some were said in the past, and then it doesn’t actually interfere with our main story, but because the animation’s going to pick up in the present. And so there’s all these different involving areas, but if you picture our characters who live in this world that are stuck between two different major forces. So the rebels are all doing all of the wheeling and dealing and the illegal activities, and then the Roses are creating this very totalitarian society on top of all that. So yeah, we’re delving into a lot of modern themes as far as security and being people being watched and controlled mean, you’ve got those sort of all that what’s the 1984 syndromes and all that sort of
Morgan Quaid (14:03):
Stuff. Yeah.
Dan Macarthur (14:04):
So that’s our world. And then within that, our characters of to survive and their battle and against the greater faction. So yeah, that’s kind of where we’re at with the, yeah.
Morgan Quaid (14:17):
Oh yeah. Great. Okay. So we have comic book, we have animation, we have, we’re going to get into the augmented reality stuff in a tick because that is super exciting. The robots are taking over people. I wanted to ask you though, there it is, there’s the comic. There you go. Nice. I wanted to ask you about moving from cinema to comic book. Both have a script, both have sort of story boarding, both have art and all that sort of stuff. And how was that different for you from what you would normally do or how you would normally, or was it different or did you just approach it the same sort of way that you would do any sort of shoot?
Dan Macarthur (14:59):
I think that the beauty of comic books is where it connects with what we’ve traditionally been doing for a long time is that comics are just a great storytelling tool that are done so simply, you know, don’t have the luxury of a million different shots like you do in a film, but just the fundamental roots of a story with a comic book. And the connection is like, we do a lot of story boarding and that sort of thing. So we do do a lot of panels with the way we create things and show the story. And then all that pre-production effort is all about storyboarding and coming up with a plan of how the film works. So yeah, I just think it was, it’s such a great art form and it just obviously lends itself so well to this genre that we’re doing, and it was only natural that we wanted to do a comic and all the rest of it.
(15:50):
But yeah, it’s just something I love. I mean, I always love comics and it’s just so gratifying to have our own comic of course, and <laugh> build our world. So I think, to answer your question, I think it’s, it’s been a great little journey because what we try and do as much as possible is always working with different artists as well. And David thought he’s such a natural comic artist, so Allie was sort of writing, wrote a nice script and everything to go with it all. And because we’re always all working together on everything and the scripts are being approved and we’re going through everything like that. And then he goes over to Dave and he’s creating such a great comic and all that sort of stuff. So it’s just a great rewarding thing to be working with people that come up with such beautiful work like that. Yeah. Mean for me, it’s always a pleasure to be working with so many different people and artists. And that’s the whole objective of the whole project is to employ people and keep creating more awesome stuff. So that’s what we love about it and the future, it’s designing more vehicles and more modelers and creators and everything. So yeah, welcome
Morgan Quaid (16:59):
To the studio and a tabletop game. Did I hear that correctly? You you’re looking at that as well.
Dan Macarthur (17:05):
Yep. We’ve right, we’ve been in production with the board game. So yeah, we’ve got board designers and everything who are working on and been workshopping a whole board game, which is basically the city that’s the board. And then, you know, come in as a character and we’ve built in as many mechanics as of the world as we have can into the board game very so the roses can come along a PSU and all these different things can go wrong. And I don’t know if you’ve seen any pictures from the board game, but if you go on, discord is our main area where we chat with everything on Discord the Maros Discord, which find on the Twitter as well. There’s a link on the Twitter as well. There’s a link on the back of the comic if you get a chance to get one of those.
(17:50):
We’re on the website, there’s a link anyway to the Discord, but on there you’ll see all the images of what’s going on and everything that’s happening. So that’s just in testing phase right now. And then we going to, once we’ve got it all locked down with the mechanics and we’ll start the artwork, but that’ll involve a Kickstarter at some point to keep rolling and get there, I think because it’s great to have the Kickstarter anyway because it just brings another audience. There’s an audience sitting there around Kickstarter looking for cool projects and they’ll go, oh, haven’t, I’ve never heard of Maros. So it’ll be another avenue of people that bring into the project. So that’s why we’re excited about that. Yeah,
Morgan Quaid (18:28):
And you’ll have it you’ll be going to Kickstarter with already with a bunch of stuff already in the pipe and already done and everything, so it’s not like, Hey, here’s a little glimpse and if you give us some money, eventually you’ll get a thing, you know, are already coming in with a body of work on the project.
Dan Macarthur (18:45):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, we definitely wanted to have, we’ve been test playing the game a lot with different people and I mean, we are keen to just really have it quite locked down and sort of succinct about what the game is. And then, yeah, we’ll do some test prints and then send those out for review and all the rest of it. And really the Kickstarter I think is about manufacturing and getting it out to the masses to be able to get a certain amount of copies done and people can pre-order and all those of it. Yeah, that’s our strategy for that one. So no, that’s exciting stuff. So people love board games and everything so what else? Yeah, well
Morgan Quaid (19:30):
So let’s talk about the augmented reality, because I’ve not come across a comic that’s doing this yet. This is the first one. And so everyone go to maros.com and you can find out about the animation, you can find out about the comic, you can find out about everything in there. But you can also, I just did it before on my phone, Noles you can click on the little thingy and you can see amazing things that aren’t there but are really there, but they’re not because of the wonder of augmented reality. So yeah, what was the impetus for that? How did you figure out that
Dan Macarthur (20:06):
Record? Well it’s all part of the idea that with Mavis, we want to be in front of all the technology that’s around and what’s available because we’ve been using Unreal Engine, that’s another part of it is to use the augmented reality. So yeah, it was just more like a natural progression and I always thought that it would be a part of the comic and everything to do it. And then, yeah, it was quite an interesting process to actually get it made to be honest. But it was great to get it done because yeah, I, it did surprise me to be honest that cause I’m not massively in the comic scene or anything that I have to admit, but I had seen the augmented reality stuff happening overseas. I think people I’ve seen, it’s not the first time that it’s been seen. So I, I idea did come through, I was like, oh yeah, that’d be great to have something exciting for our audiences to do the augmented reality.
(21:03):
So basically you scan this one here on your phone and it’ll bring it up through a html. So you don’t need an app and all lots of stuff. And then you point at the front page or the logo and train comes out. So yeah, it’s just exciting to be able to bring that technology to the audience. And that’s just a really basic idea what automatic reality can do. By the way, you can actually put a quite a lot of animation and sound effects and particles and all sorts of things. So obviously we want to step it up as we go. The next comic’s going to have a bit more going on with the augmented reality so that we’ve got something more off every time can, these sorts of things. You can have objects moving around and particle effects going on and side effects and can have a lot of fun doing all that stuff, which is pretty cool. So yeah, it’s amazing. We’ve had an incredible response with the augment reality. Cause we went to ComicCon and Supernova we took it there, we set up our whole stand and we were showing people augment reality and they were just losing it. So it’s pretty exciting stuff there. Great tech
Morgan Quaid (22:15):
<laugh>. The next step is to somehow get into the second issue. Something that sort of hints to the third or giving away something or whatever. Or maybe a death or a murder that you can only solve if you look through the thing. And
Dan Macarthur (22:31):
Yeah, that’d be amazing thing to do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean definitely it’d be great. Get to the point where you’re like, exactly, you put your phone on there and you get extra information, you know, don’t see it on the page, but then when you bring it out you’re like, oh, okay, there’s something hidden in the page when you use it. So things like that, it’d be a lot of fun to bring to the audience and everything. There’s a lot of things you can do. So it’s exciting stuff. And have you guys heard of the Tilt five as well? That’s another board game. The Tilt five, which is an augmented reality board Game one. It’s about, it’s out for sound, the goggles, and it’s like a board and the whole board just turns into a full 3D 3D thing. Wow. With augment reality. Yeah, tilt five, it’s a check it out.
(23:16):
But that’s a really, really cool application that’s becoming more and more affordable. So we’re actually building the board game to be, so we’ll work in Tilt five and then it’ll be basically then a printed version of that 3D World platform and everything. So that’s one of the thing things that we’re constructing at the moment as well. So that’s a really exciting thing. So yeah, lots of cool stuff happening. We’re trying to push the boundaries as much as possible with everything that we can do. <laugh> with technology and everything. So we’ve built all that stuff that we did in the animation’s, all been built in Unreal Engine and we’ve actually got the whole city we can run around now as if it’s a game. So we’re setting up for the gaming side of it as well. Yeah. So yeah,
Morgan Quaid (24:05):
That was going to be my next question. If you’re using the other Unreal engine already, is that the next iteration? Yeah. Wow.
Dan Macarthur (24:12):
Exactly. Yeah, definitely a lot of I mean, virtual reality is having a struggle and Metaverse is kind of almost a dirty word at the moment because of Meta and her. And it’s just a funny little floaty, floaty thing going on at the moment with all of that scheme of things. But definitely eventually Theros will be the thing, you’ll enter the world and you’ll about to go play different games, including the cart game and go and chat the people and then go see a band and do all these really cool things all in the world. So that’s the end goal with what we’re doing including yeah, that’s quite a huge tech thing world that’s like blowing our minds every week basically when we are talking to people about the scope of things. So <laugh> definitely happening a lot of doors, doors for us. Cause they’re like, yeah, so it’s interesting, really interesting stuff.
Morgan Quaid (25:10):
And so you’ve gone to Comicon Supernova, a few of those sorts of things at the moment you’re just selling directly and at the comics, I mean you’re just selling them directly over the internet and it shows and that sort of thing. Are you thinking that you’ll run crowdfunding for that later on or just keep that as a sort of ongoing thing? And are you also thinking, because I think there’s what, six, seven issues or something or five issues? Are you thinking of a collected edition or hearing what you’re go, you’re doing, you’re probably thinking of all of this and much <laugh> I suppose. What’s the plan for the comic? Yeah,
Dan Macarthur (25:51):
Yeah. Well this is SE series one, which is four comics, which will make up the whole story. So this is episode one or four that we’re trying to get, we we’re trying to get to the end of, and that’ll become a graphic novel hard copy as well. And at the moment we’ve got it installs around Australia, so there’s Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. We’ve got it in the shops selling on the shops. And I think once we get into the graphic novel, that’s when we’ll have a better chance of getting overseas distribution with it. Because I think just got the one comic that’s not really enough for them to really sink their teeth. So it’s a long term process of as far as getting the whole package together. And then that, that’ll just be episode one more or less. And then we’re going, which is sort of based on the ground level of troia.
(26:40):
So that’s that storyline. And then we want to start another series which will be down in the underground. So it’s like all to do with that world and there’ll be connections between them and all the rest of it. So you’ll be able to follow a storyline, that’ll be another series of comics that’ll exist in another part of the world and there’ll be connections through the storylines to each and all the rest of it. So we’re sort of slowly building the world up and we’re saving storylines in the past and in the future and all the rest of it for future for future storytelling. So it’s a very long term thing and like how these things go, it’s tricky just to get things done quickly, but we’re in for the long haul and a lot of audience around the world and a loving maros and sticking with us, so we’re not going anywhere. So we’ll get there eventually. So yeah.
Morgan Quaid (27:27):
Very cool. That’s exciting. So you heard it here, people get out and support Petros, grab yourself the comic, get involved with the augmented reality. I keep wanting to go AI instead of augmented reality, but sort thing get involved. It looks absolutely amazing. Susan, I’m just giving you a warning I’m going to throw to you for a question soon to show. Oh, some time I forgot. Yeah, it’s not all it’s me, bro. It’s not all me. Let’s take a little bit of a side, a side thing and I might throw in a couple of quick rapid fire questions for you. And then yeah, I’ll throw the sizzle when he’s had ample time to think of a question. Oh, steal before he gets a chance to, alright, so first question. No worries. Yeah you have one choice, you have to choose Star Wars, star Trek, what is
Dan Macarthur (28:28):
Your choice? Star Wars.
Morgan Quaid (28:30):
So no hesitation. I think it’s very, very common with you, you spinner photographer types to go towards the Star Wars side of things and I can kind of see why that
Dan Macarthur (28:41):
I do love Star Trek back. Star Wars was my first love was for me. So I mean I saw Star Wars on the big screen when I was seven years old in Papua New Guinea where I grew up in the, you know what I mean?
Morgan Quaid (28:56):
Oh, drive. Wow. Yeah, I saw in the drive
Dan Macarthur (29:00):
And it was actually released. Wow. Yeah, I do love Star Trek. But yeah, that’s how that goes.
Morgan Quaid (29:09):
That’s fair enough. Next. That’s fair enough. Alright, so in the future let’s say the far, far future, 2026 Um-huh. All ink ink is removed from everyone’s body and it is mandated that everyone must get one single tattoo that is unique to them. What is that tattoo that you get and where do you get it on your person?
Dan Macarthur (29:32):
Well it’s funny to say that actually, because I’ve been wanting to get this little symbol tattooed on me somewhere. It’s actually Aous symbol. I know it sounds corny, but see that little tiny little thing there? Oh, you can see it in the front of the logo. It’s like I’ve been wanting to get that circle thing on my arm arm right there. There you go for quite a while. And then have it augmented the alley so you can point your point phone at it and some crazy cool car will come out of out of my arm. So <laugh>.
Morgan Quaid (30:04):
Fantastic. Well that works on a few levels because then you’re also marketing, which is what you got to do, people
Dan Macarthur (30:09):
<laugh>.
Morgan Quaid (30:10):
Alright, so
Dan Macarthur (30:12):
Definitely don’t want to be marketing. Yeah.
Morgan Quaid (30:17):
So you’re allowed to pass on one toy from your youth to your children and future generations. What is that toy that you pass
Dan Macarthur (30:26):
On? Oh, good point. I was going to say he man there for a second. <laugh>
Morgan Quaid (30:35):
Excellent choice. The twisty one. The one with the thing that twist.
Dan Macarthur (30:41):
Yeah, but it might have to that old kiss. God, I dunno if we got any figurines from Kiss, but yeah, toys wise, but man, I was a big Kiss fan when now out in the early days. But yeah, he was a pretty cool one. You got me there. I’m not sure that one, but yeah there’s a swagger toys there somewhere in my brain.
Morgan Quaid (31:03):
Alright, so some sort of muscular figurine with either a twisting action or action, man, something else going. I dunno if
Dan Macarthur (31:11):
You have the action man, with the rope and everything, <laugh> was
Morgan Quaid (31:18):
All right. So this is probably a good one. Given your background, you have to invent a new color. What is it and why?
Dan Macarthur (31:26):
Ooh, that’s a good one. <laugh>. That’s a weird one. Fluro. Yeah, Fluro Aqua with a shade of purple. It’s funny because when you work in Unreal Engine, you can actually make these crazy colors because you can layer a multilayer with layer colors so that as the object moves around, it’s like that metallic paint, something other sweet. But it’s definitely for some crazy roller skating ring. There’s got to be some really cool colors and neons in this crazy semi purple red color <laugh>.
Morgan Quaid (32:00):
All right, good. Good luck. Good luck naming whatever that is.
Dan Macarthur (32:07):
No
Morgan Quaid (32:08):
Idea. Here’s what it’s, couple
Dan Macarthur (32:09):
More things and I’ll probably have a good answer there. Hey Addie.
Morgan Quaid (32:14):
Hey guy. Alright, so what is one of the hardest fictional deaths and so sizzle, I’m coming to you next fyi. No, what is one of the hardest fictional deaths that you’ve had to deal with? It can be film, books, tv, anything fictional deaths that really hit you. Yeah
Dan Macarthur (32:39):
I’m trying to think. Well, yeah, A one Canadian was a bit of a shock, isn’t it? That’s for sure. But
Morgan Quaid (32:46):
Yeah,
Dan Macarthur (32:47):
I was going to say I’m trying to remember. It’s hard one to answer that one. <laugh> Fiction. That’s
Morgan Quaid (32:55):
Right. I’ll tell you what, we’ll
Dan Macarthur (32:57):
Tips
Morgan Quaid (32:59):
Come back to it. You could go Bambi, but Bambi’s, that old chestnut. We, we’ll go to Sizzle then and you, we can come back to that one later on. So you
Sizzle (33:14):
We’re getting answers for it over here,
Dan Macarthur (33:20):
Optus, right?
Morgan Quaid (33:21):
That’s a good one. Wait a minute, what do you mean? Is he dead? Well, hang on, hang.
Sizzle (33:31):
Okay well my question will be going back to augmented reality, I don’t know if you answered this, but where exactly did you get that idea? Was it from other comics overseas?
Dan Macarthur (33:44):
Remember that? I saw the Black Eye Peas did one, they did a comic with an augmented reality. Okay. Yeah, there’s a couple things I looked up and I remember seeing it on YouTube videos and all stuff and they were using it and that was kind of more directed towards having an app and everything. And once we came to the crunch with the technology using an app as they all pain in the butt and everything, because everyone has to update their app and all that stuff. But anyway, but yeah, so to answer the question, yeah, it was definitely something on the nad and I mean that was why I was kind of surprised when everyone was coming along going, oh my God, I haven’t seen this. And I was like, I thought everyone was doing this to make it interesting. But it was definitely something that we wanted to do because we were so close to the technology anyway, so we could just check. I
Sizzle (34:35):
Was really surprised when I used it that it wasn’t an app. I was really surprised by, I was expecting it to download an app and I’m going, okay, we go download an app and then it just started working. I’m like, holy crap.
Dan Macarthur (34:46):
Yeah, it doesn’t work brilliantly. And that’s the reason an app will actually use your phone tech to know where it is in space and all the rest of it. Whereas, because it’s just using a visual, it has to track the page. So it’s doing a lot of brain tech with limited amount of resource to do it with because early on we were using the app and it was amazing. That’s next level with an app because the whole room can fill up with augmented reality. That whole tram was just in your room, you were just moving around the whole tram. It didn’t have to look at the page. Whereas this stuff, this tech has to see the page and that’s how it tracks, you know, got to keep pointing, but you can, so you got to keep it pointing at the page, but you can tilt it up and down and move the book around and move the object quite a lot because it’ll track with the page so you don’t have to be fixed. You can actually see it from all different angles as long as you’re looking at the page. But yeah. Yeah, it’s avoiding the whole app fiasco. So it’s good luck. Good. That way. Cool.
(35:49):
Alright.
Morgan Quaid (35:53):
I don’t know how you would’ve ever had a chance to think of another fictional death in that you’ve just been answering another question, but so we We’ll keep going. Yeah, that’s right. Are you OK if I do do something I do in my other podcast? If I just bring it in here? Is that all right? You don’t even know what it is, so I don’t even know what it is, so I’ll risk it. All right, let’s do it then. We’re going to do a little segment. I like to call the worst pitch. It’s a very simple idea. Basically we come up we separately come up with a truly awful pitch for a film or book or comic book or anything like that. And then we just see which one is the worstest. And it’s surprisingly hard to do because our brains are trained to try and come up with good ideas, but also whatever you come up with that you end up finding something good.
(36:42):
So I’m happy to go first because I have a long list of bad ideas ready to go at any moment <laugh>, right. So that way you can time think through it. Yeah. Alright. And says completely up to you if you want to join in as well, dude because I’m throwing this on you without warning <laugh>. All right, so haven’t got a title for this. So working title is whatever you want it to be. It’s about not surprisingly augmented reality. So there’s a detective that is investigating some sort of nefarious murder and using high-tech augmented reality to see beyond the normal realm to see what’s happening. And as he’s doing this, within the first two minutes of the film, he solves the crime and then he takes home his phone, which has this augmented sort of component as part of it permanently. And then he notices that when he looks through the window in his kitchen, at his neighbor’s studio apartment, he can see on the bench the food that will be on that bench the following day.
(37:44):
So he can see into the future. But he can only see food on the bench of his neighbor’s kitchen the following day. It’s of no use whatsoever. But he becomes obsessed with this thing and he kind of invites himself around the next day, but lo and behold, there’s a Kesh that was exactly what he saw, and it smells the same as the other. So he is trying to think, what does this mean? And as you’re watching the film, you’re thinking, oh, there’s going to be a murder and he’s going to use this knowledge of future foods to somehow no two 10 minutes the first murder gets solved. And then two hours of just him looking through this thing and seeing different, yeah, no resolution, no
Dan Macarthur (38:28):
Nothing resolved, nothing.
Morgan Quaid (38:30):
And we’ll call it F Food Futures. There we go. There’s your title. It’s
Dan Macarthur (38:37):
Terrible. Pretty inventive. I mean, I’ve got to say it’s terrible. Yeah, very great job of making something pretty bad there. This is really tricky. Yeah.
Morgan Quaid (38:51):
All right, so do you want to go?
Sizzle (38:56):
I don’t know if I can, I’m not really a storyteller.
Dan Macarthur (39:00):
<laugh>,
Sizzle (39:01):
Everything I come up with is a bad idea. So I guess anything
Dan Macarthur (39:06):
Guy walks down the shop, he goes to the news agent he does every day and pulls out at the front and he is looking at his favorite newspaper wondering what’s going on in the world. When all of a sudden a dog pees on his foot, he thinks to himself, that’s that bloody neighbor’s dog. I’m going to get that thing when I get home and I have no idea where I’m going with this story.
Morgan Quaid (39:30):
It,
Dan Macarthur (39:31):
That’s it, that’s it. Well, I was like, choose your own adventure. Someone else takes over. I dunno.
Morgan Quaid (39:40):
I like it. Also, if you do a really long, drawn out, suspenseful, brooding kind of dark night sort of thing, and it’s just this dude going to the shop and then getting peed on by the dog and then the camera sort of turns in and he’s, no, all that sort of stuff.
Dan Macarthur (40:01):
He knows, we know all instantly which dog it is. <laugh> like, no, what
Morgan Quaid (40:06):
You could do if you wanted to make it really, really terrible. So that’s your first five minutes is the set up and that whole thing and the ping on the leg and the I’ll get you dog and then the dog leaves and the camera just follows the dog for the rest of the film. But the dog isn’t doing anything. The dog is just peeing on someone. The dog just goes and pees on different legs around the town and he does eats some vomits. Eats the vomit. Yeah. The rest of the film you’re just following the dog and then, yeah, nothing,
Dan Macarthur (40:40):
You think it’s great, his story and then all of a sudden you go to the dog and you’re like, where’s this film going? He’s like, oh, actually we’re just going to follow the damn dog,
Morgan Quaid (40:47):
The dog part of me. If I had an endless source of money and didn’t have to work and everything. I think part of my, what I would do is pitch to studios, <laugh>, just the dumbest ideas and just see what reaction I can get with these truly stupid ideas. That would be so much fun.
Dan Macarthur (41:07):
You could get those on TikTok. No problems whatsoever. I tell you what. Yeah. Yeah.
Morgan Quaid (41:13):
Maybe
Dan Macarthur (41:13):
That’s the dumbest crap on TikTok and man, he goes off, I love that Pissing on feet thing with dogs. Like that’s some grand entertainment right there. Holy
Morgan Quaid (41:26):
Shout out to shout to Alex Major and the farting girl. What’s the thing that he does sizzle the cartoons of the little girl? It’s a little girl. No, no,
Sizzle (41:39):
It’s a woman. Sorry. It’s a woman dressed as a girl who farts from eating too many strawberries. That’s all I remember. I forget
Morgan Quaid (41:45):
The name. Huge. And he’s an amazing artist and it’s animated and everything. It’s just amazing stuff. But <laugh> huge. That’s all they want to see. They just want to see this chick farting on different things, what they want. You got to give ’em what they want. Wow, friend.
Dan Macarthur (42:02):
Yeah, no, you’re right.
Morgan Quaid (42:04):
Cool. Oh, sorry. You go, what were we going to say?
Dan Macarthur (42:06):
Oh no, I was just going to talk about a cartoon called Lucky Luke. Can you remember that one? Cowboy guy, lucky
Morgan Quaid (42:13):
Luke. I do remember Lucky Luke. I do.
Dan Macarthur (42:15):
Yeah. Yeah, apparently it’s still a big thing in France. He was watching it and it was all dubbed in Fran in French and it’s an American cartoon cowboy thingy. But anyway, I don’t know why I mentioned that, but I was just something that you I thought was quite interesting because it was pretty funny and not that I could understand France about he was telling me in reiterating all of the crazy dialogue and everything. It seemed pretty cool. Yeah, so I think they do a lot of great stuff for French, but thank you. Yeah,
Morgan Quaid (42:41):
Awesome. Lucky Luke. Although over there it would be L U C instead of ae and it would be pronounced Lucky Luke. I don’t know. Lucky
Dan Macarthur (42:50):
French.
Morgan Quaid (42:52):
Lucky [inaudible]. So Sarah, I will give you one more chance to answer the question of questions and then I’ll have one more question for you and then we will do the big plug, the Shameless promotion to get as many people as we can to support Mero. So before we do that, the hardest fictional death that you’ve had to deal with, has anything come to you?
Dan Macarthur (43:20):
Let’s trying to think. I mean was ITing the stone when Danny DeVito? Did he <laugh>, trying to think of the things. Was that
Morgan Quaid (43:36):
Really traumatic romance, the stone? I don’t remember being terribly moving in that way. That is the first anyone has brought Uping the stone in any context on any podcast. I mean that’s amazing on its own. That’s fantastic. That reference is gold.
Dan Macarthur (43:59):
<laugh> Flash, Gordon <laugh>. I have weird things in my brain. I dunno. It just strange things go around. I wouldn’t have a clue.
Morgan Quaid (44:07):
Well, we’ll say
Dan Macarthur (44:09):
Someone
Morgan Quaid (44:09):
Or something died in romance. I think that’s a good enough answer. That’s that’s a classic film that I have.
Dan Macarthur (44:17):
What? I’ll go away in like 20 minutes. I’ll like, ah, straight away Dyna
Morgan Quaid (44:21):
<laugh>. Straightaway. Straightaway. All right, so the final question, and this one has a little bit of a, you’re
Dan Macarthur (44:32):
Not throwing more the
Morgan Quaid (44:34):
It is what is it? It has stakes to it. So it is it’s not just an answer question. If you answer the question the wrong way it will go one way or the other. And I’m trying to undo, so incidentally young Zack sent me a whole bunch of Bronwyn stuff and one of the things that I got was a little Vivian badge thing. So this is what is going to decide our fate. I will flip this and see the question is, in the far far future humanity lives life of luxury because we have a new sort of servant class that looks after the stuff we don’t want to do. They service, they cook, they clean, they look after our kids, all that sort of stuff. You as the decider of all things for humanity get to decide which class or which group of beings are that servant class. They are either shackled, demonic creatures, so creatures that have been pulled up from hell and sort of shackled with magic and all that sort of stuff or mm-hmm robots, ai, self-aware robots. Which would you choose? And then we will find out whether it is our doom or our salvation.
Dan Macarthur (45:45):
I’m going to shackle demons and dragons,
Morgan Quaid (45:49):
Right? Excellent choice. Most people go the ai, but you’ve gone the other way. Alright, so yeah, here we go. I’m flipping
Dan Macarthur (45:58):
That sound like way more time.
Morgan Quaid (46:01):
Alright, so you make the decision. Demons are now the servant class of humanity. It lasts approximately as long as your rain does over humanity, which is just a bit over a week because they find a way to get out of that magic and they devour our children and give born, give birth to hell, spawn that then devour the rest of us and we just become effectively farmed meat for the rest of these demonn hoards to eat for the rest of eternity. So
Dan Macarthur (46:35):
One bad it wasn’t, it really <laugh>,
Morgan Quaid (46:37):
It didn’t, didn’t go well. It didn’t go well. No, but who knows? AI might not have been better. The robots might not have treated well.
Dan Macarthur (46:44):
Robot we would’ve turned into the matrix was the
Morgan Quaid (46:50):
Robots
Dan Macarthur (46:51):
Things out of the back of our neck enjoying laugh somehow
Morgan Quaid (46:55):
It was just the wrong flip of the coin. Alright, so thank you very much Dan for joining us and talking us through your creative journey. Introducing us to Mero people. You can go to maros.com, you can find everything there. You Canu. Oh, look at that. Ah, just fantastic. He’s right on the, you can order the comic book, you can get involved in the whole project. It sounds like there’s so much going on. So thank you very much, sir. Is there anything that you would like to say as your final word on the comic show?
Dan Macarthur (47:29):
Oh, thanks so much guys. It’s been great chatting and I just love delving in as world and we’re getting so many fans that are loving the diesel pump thing as well. We just can’t wait to bring more to the audience and just stay tuned and there’ll be more coming from a TRO in the future.
Morgan Quaid (47:46):
Fantastic. Thank you guys. You heard people get out and support. All right. Awesome. Thanks
Dan Macarthur (47:52):
So much guys.
Morgan Quaid (47:53):
Thank you sir. You have a good night. I dunno how to end sizzle because it’s been so long since we’ve done it.
Sizzle (47:59):
Okay, well first we’ve got to tell people to like the video.
Morgan Quaid (48:03):
Oh, like subscribe, share with your friends.
Sizzle (48:09):
Subscribe as
Morgan Quaid (48:09):
Well. Yes. And still bouncing
Dan Macarthur (48:14):
<laugh>. Yep.
Morgan Quaid (48:17):
It’s going to do it until you subscribe. Yep.
Dan Macarthur (48:20):
<laugh>. So hang on.
Sizzle (48:24):
Oh, we got a thank you guys. Yep. Not a problem.
Morgan Quaid (48:27):
Cheers Nathan. Thanks guys.
Sizzle (48:28):
Nathan, well that’s the show for the night. Thank you very much. Thank you to Dan. Thank you to everyone who watched. Thank you to Morgan and I’ve got to get on the right screen to be able to do this.
Morgan Quaid (48:42):
<laugh>, you can’t same time. That’s the problem you need, blah blah. A
Dan Macarthur (48:49):
You a bit of space music out, throw the music. Outro, applauding or something. <laugh>. That’s it guys. Good to see
Sizzle (48:56):
Ya. Good night all. See, thank you very much. You guys have a great time.
Morgan Quaid (48:59):
See
Dan Macarthur (49:00):
You. Bye Jill.
Voice Over (49:01):
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