'The Casting of Frank Stone', Composers, Boxed Ape

0:00Guest 2It's a, it's a crazy score and I think it was, because of the nature of the game, it just has to have the layer thing is so integral. Again, without spoiling it for everyone, but it's very like, l… layers is kind of a theme.

0:14Guest 1Yeah, certainly. Certainly. It has, it has to, at the same time, have a, this extraordinary breadth of styles, just again because of the demands of the s… the story. The various settings really demand quite, sort of quite drastically different styles of music. So again, when the, when the soundtrack comes out, people will be able to see just the sheer, like, crazy differences that there are between the different settings, but also the through lines like you say. But yeah, layering up all of these various things and making sure that we could, you know, condense that down into a soundtrack that feels good.

0:51Guest 2Yeah. And it's weird. It's very weird…

0:53Guest 1Very weird

0:53Guest 2... Music.

1:02Jawad MirYou know, I speak to a lot of animators and whether they're supervising animators, directors, or music composers in that, in that world, which I feel somewhat has similar process with the video game world, I would imagine. When you guys come in on board on the, on this part… particular project or in general, is it from the beginning or is it when most of the work has been done? If you can just run that through me, that'd be really good to hear.

1:32Guest 1Good question. Good question.

1:34Guest 2Yeah. I mean, so for this one, we were, fortunately, we were brought on board, like, quite early on in the process. Which is sometimes the case, sometimes not the case. But with Supermassive, they have, the way that they generally work means that with this particular project we were on early, but we a… we were actually able to work to picture pretty early on in the, in the project. So it was kind of refreshing. It was qui… quite a weird picture we were working to initially. Not quite finished yet.

2:06Guest 1Yeah.

2:07Guest 2But yeah. So we, it was basically from the jump we were able to really get an idea of, you know, at least what the story was doing and what the, who the characters were and get a good kind of understanding…

2:18Guest 1Yeah

2:19Guest 2... Pretty early on.

2:20Guest 1And because the, because the game's, made in such a way that the, one of the, you know, the mo-cap, and all of the recording of all the actors and the voice is done all in one pass and very early, pretty much as soon as the story is written they go, they launch straight into the f… the filming process. We were, you know, we were working to, you know, what was essentially, the performances were pretty representative of what we were, we were gonna, were gonna end up in the game. Obviously it's like Frankie said, things are pretty ropey at the beginning when it comes to animation. Like doors never work until about the day before the game releases.

2:54Guest 2Yeah.

2:54Guest 1So doors just stay. People are, like, opening doors, but the doors are just staying closed. You know, there's weird glitches. People's mouths aren't moving when they're talking and, you know. But we got a sense of what the movie was…

3:03Guest 2People's, people's skin just disappears.

3:05Guest 1Yeah.

3:06Guest 2We had so many captures where you'd be, you'd be, someone would be speaking and they'd all, they'd just have no skin.

3:10Guest 1And just be see-through for…

3:11Guest 2Floating eyeballs and jaw and terrifying.

3:14Guest 1It's terrifying. Yeah. In a, in not, in not an intentional way, but, Yeah, so, you know, w… yeah, like Frankie said, we were lucky to come on board very early with this one. Sometimes we come in much later and are just kind of able to write pretty much to very representative stuff, and sort of condensed process. But we, you know, we like to be able to kind of get in from the off to get concepts in, get music written as soon as possible to kind of bring music into the kind of ecosphere of the game development. And then, yeah.

3:48Jawad MirGreat. And what's the timeline that you guys have? You know, when you start on a project like this one, how long... And every composer is different. Every creative person is different, but how long does it take before you guys are able to sort of come up with a feel, a theme? And at the same time while you're answering that question, just a connected question to that is, creatively how do you guys work together in terms of, you know, generating something really solid but also butting your heads together and trying to come up with something unique?

4:26Jawad MirObviously there's disagreements professionally and sometimes maybe a little bit more. How do you guys sort of deal with that?

4:33Guest 2There's so many disagreements. No, I think, I think over the y… we've, for whatever, to answer the latter part of the question, I think that our disagreements are the reason why this works so well. Like, we approach things wildly differently. We speak about this so much. We quite often, for whatever reason, we quite often find ourselves on very long drives…... Going to various places and we'll always just spend hours, like, dissecting our process and our relationship and all these things.

5:06Guest 2And I think we've landed at, yeah, our, because, we tackle things from such a different angle, whether, like, creatively, personally, kind of philosophically I guess… ... It just means that actually our output is able to be kind of quicker and better for the, for the sort of friction. Not the friction, the diff… the differences.

5:28Guest 1Yeah.

5:28Guest 2We kind of put those sorts together, so.

5:30Guest 1Yeah. With a nice healthy amount of overlap in the middle as well. We're not, we're not wildly on so far removed from each other that we don't have any common ground. There's, there's plenty of stuff where we agree and, sort of come together and, are able to kind of collaborate very, sort of non-verbally and just pass things from one person to another knowing, you know, we have a quite an unspoken, collaboration when it comes to actually writing where we know what the other person will be able to kind of do with an idea that we're having. So we'll, we'll leave space for that. We'll, we'll, we'll kind of, anticipate what the other person might do and kind of… Give a framework and think, "Okay, I'm gonna tackle this one particular part of this." Maybe it's a cinematic or it's, it's a gameplay loop or it's a, it's working out the transition in for, so that the other person can come in and kind of like flesh out the thing that comes after or take a, an idea and turn it into an, a full functioning piece of music or write a variation of it. You know, there's so much opportunity for, the fruits of a decent collaboration to kind of come about with a video game especially 'cause there's so much music.

6:36Guest 1So going back to the first part of your, of your question about timelines, really the ideas are the thing that we start with, you know? And that's, that's the thing that comes up, and that's the usually the stuff that's pretty solid with the developer and with the narrative team from the off, that they know who the characters are, they know what they're gonna be doing, they know what the arc's gonna be. They know all of the narrative cogs that need to turn. And so for us to sort of tap into that, and start coming up with ideas away from picture, away from the game, and just like start sketching and coming up with, sounds. And that was a big thing with Casting of Frank Stone, is these key sounds that really kind of l… led us into the score and gave us a kind of a real, sort of set of blocks to, and foundation for us to build the score on top of. And that happened, you know... Oh, God. I can look at the timestamps on the writing sessions, but it, you know, years ago at this point. I think we can, we can talk, can't really talk about specifically when they happened, but it's, yeah, a long time ago.

7:36Guest 1And then all of the process after that, once we have those foundations is, yeah, building the stuff that goes around it using those tools that we've built for ourselves to create… ... A compelling cinematic experience.

7:48Guest 2I think actually the f… I remember when we first started working on this thing, we, which generally seems to be the way with a new project, is we'll sit down and just like talk about it. For a week. You know, we got other things going on, but like, you know, we take an hour in the morning and just talk about this thing, and then we'll do some other stuff, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about this thing for a bit. Develop some like concepts. Like very early on we knew, difficult to know how much we can say for, not to ruin it for people who haven't played the game, but we knew that the, there was like a Super 8 camera was a big part of this game. So we were kind of keen to... Oh, I don't know what I was gonna say. We were kind of keen to represent that in a way, you know, that felt like a big almost protagonist.

8:35Guest 2It's, it's a prop really, but it's a massive part of the game. So we've came up with the idea that, okay, maybe we go down a kind of tapey, vinely situation.

8:46Guest 1Yeah. Yeah.

8:46Guest 2Again, when the soundtrack comes out people will be able to hear, but that was like, one of the first things we spoke about, I think.

8:51Guest 1Absolutely. And why, and making sure we were absolutely grounded in why we were doing that, and making sure that was doing the right thing. A lot of us adding music to something is not just a descriptive exercise. We're not just describing what's on screen. We're trying to add a layer of depth and kind of context and, an extra dimension that you kind of maybe don't get without the music, an extra layer to the, to the story and things like that. And, you know, bleeding those elements in even when those elements aren't nec… necessarily on screen kind of gives this kind of a sense of connectivity. It helps to like, yeah, grease the wheels of the story, as well as br… you know, adding to kind of the world-building which is kind of like a real important thing for these, for these sounds and these themes that we were able to kind of come up with from these, conversations and initial sketches.

9:40Guest 2But we digress.

9:41Guest 1Yes.

9:44Jawad MirOf course you do. That's part of the job. What's your mu… what's your journey each of you has been, like, what inspired you or that moment where you felt, you know, "This is what I wanna do for the rest of my life?" Like, not necessarily scoring music for games, but just scoring music, and then the second part is when or has that always been scoring music for games, or did that come later?

10:12Guest 1Interesting question.

10:13Guest 2Yeah. Again, I think this is where we cr… d… divergent somewhat.

10:17Guest 1Yeah. Got quite different paths into where we are now.

10:20Guest 2Yeah. So my background is, was much more record based. You know, working with bands and artists and things as a, as a producer. I have a real,.. Sorry, there's a, there's a jet flying overhead. I don't know if you can hear that.

10:39Guest 1Balls are shaking.

10:41Guest 2Yeah. So it took me to meet Ali, actually, to find, like, a passion for scoring for games. I'd always been s… like, I loved listening to the music while watching films. I loved listening to the music while playing games, and it was something that was always in the back of my head that I'd love to do. I think even in the records that I make, there's a real strong sense of kind of, obsessed with trying to, trying to match the music with the lyrics and just, like, build a narrative into the music behind the lyrics in my record stuff as well. So I've always been like kind of fixated on narrative and things that are happening behind the sort of the scenes of the lyric or the story, whatever it is.

11:27Guest 2But yeah, I met Ali at uni and he was at this point working for the audio resources that we were working for, so doing this thing, and I was like, "Can you get me a job at this place?" And he was like, "No, sorry, man."

11:40Guest 1No, I wasn't.

11:41Guest 2Yeah.

11:42Guest 1No, I wasn't.

11:42Guest 2I had to, I had to ask a lot of times. "We're not looking for anyone. We're not looking for anyone." "Just can you get me a job here, man?" Eventually he did get me a job.

11:51Guest 1It was very, it was very swiftly after the, after the first message that… But yeah, so as Frankie mentioned, I kind of like, I guess I found myself in the scoring world, kind of a lot earlier. Yeah, it was, it was always kind of something that I'd been really gravitated towards growing up was scores, was, music for cinema, music for video games, music for, you know, and orchestral music as well. I just lo… loved orchestral music and I just love going to orchestral concerts, loads of orchestral records, and kind of, Yeah, really being fascinated by that art of telling a story with music, without lyrics and instrumental music. So yeah, we both went to uni… uni together, went to Leeds College of Music, and, that kind of gave me an opportunity certainly to kind of really dive into the scoring element of the music that I was writing. And, yeah, qui… I got to uni and quickly realized that I was not...

12:54Guest 1I'm, I'm a, I'm a saxophone player, and I very quickly came to realize that I am not good enough to do that for my whole life. So I was like, "I'm gonna just write. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lock myself away and write music." but then, yeah, kind of, serendipitously fell into this job of being the in-house composer for this, for this audio outsourcer, which gave me a real in with the games world. And I'd also been lucky enough at the time to work on a few, big film scores and as part of the orchestration department, working with an amazing orchestrator, called Nicholas Dodd, who s… really mentored me in terms of the orchestration side of things that I did. And then, yeah, found myself writing on, for these video games and then realized that, oh my God, there's so much breadth of opportunity within the games world, and the scores are really just, like, picking up in the quality, and you can do all the stuff that you want to do in film scores many times over within one game. There's so much music in these things and the, and the departments are so big and there's so many opportunities. A… add to that the interactivity that the music has to have, the fact that the music needs to behave and needs to change and that extra layer of challenge, but opportunity there just absolutely fascinated me.

14:04Guest 1So yeah, that was, that was kind of my route into, a very long-winded route into writing music for games.

14:13Jawad MirIt's interesting you said that how you realized that you were not the best, but I think that happens to a lot of us unless, until we get into the real world.

14:20Guest 1Right.

14:21Jawad MirThat there's people out there way better than us than we anticipated while living in our own little bubble. But that's, you know, it, that's, and that's just part of learning curve. I... Do you guys have a favorite composer or a soundtrack that you really dig towards? It could be a movie, it could be a game.

14:40Guest 1Oh. A favorite. Goodness gracious. That's

14:44Jawad MirOr top three. I know that's a tough question because if somebody asked me that, I won't, I won't have the answer either, so.

14:49Guest 2I think our shared, where we really meet is probably Dune.

14:54Guest 1Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're…

14:56Guest 2One and two

14:56Guest 1... Absolutely blown away by…... By those scores, recently.

15:00Guest 2Yeah.

15:00Guest 1I think for me, the, I gotta go towards recent stuff, because I'm, I'm always changing, like you said, I'm always changing what my favorite is. But the things that I've really enjoyed recently is the Jedi games, Gordy Haab and Stephen Barton's music to the Jedi Survivor, Jedi: Fallen Order and then Je… Jedi Survivor. I think the music in those games is absolutely phenomenal. I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they did it. It's, it's, it's unbelievable. So that's really up there, yeah, with Dune. And then...

15:30Guest 2I think my one, weirdly…

15:32Guest 1Yeah

15:32Guest 2... I remember, what was it, la… last year or the year before, my Spotify Wrapped number one track was, the War Machines track from All Quiet on the Western Front.

15:41Guest 1Yeah.

15:42Guest 2I absolutely loved that score

15:44Guest 1... It's great. Yeah. Unbelievable score. Won an Oscar.

15:47Jawad MirThat's awesome.

15:48Guest 1Other people's thoughts as well.

15:49Jawad MirYeah. Did you guys, have you guys ever listened to Vangelis?

15:54Guest 1Oh, no, I don't, I don't.

15:55Guest 2Vangelis, yeah.

15:56Guest 1Oh, Van… Vangelis, yes.

15:57Jawad MirVangelis. Sorry, did I say Vangelis? I'm sorry. Yeah, it's Vangelis.

16:00Guest 1Yeah.

16:01Jawad MirDo you…

16:02Guest 1Original Blade Runner.

16:03Guest 2Yeah.

16:03Jawad MirBla… Blade Runner, I think his best work is 1492: Conquest of Paradise, which is also Ridley Scott, and, Alexander the Great by Oliver Stone, but 1492, and Chariots of Fire, you know, the famous theme from…

16:18Guest 1That's the one, yeah. I know.

16:19Guest 2Yeah

16:19Jawad Mir... But there is so much depth in his music. I don't know, maybe I'm the only crazy person out there, but I discovered the soundtrack in 1993, and I listen to it still to this day.

16:36Guest 1Yeah.

16:37Guest 2Yeah.

16:37Jawad MirIt's just amazing what Vangelis has achieved and I know we're kind of going sidetracked, but…

16:43Guest 1Right

16:44Jawad Mir... His music is very different from Dune and stuff. Do you guys ever sort of tune into that kind of world to find certain moments for emotional scenes or certain notes or certain feels?

16:57Guest 1Yeah, I mean, yeah, Vangelis is gre… is great. He has, is, had an amazing thing where he used to build these kind of instruments of which were just like these big amalgamations of, you know, synthesizers and things that he kind of developed his own ways of like playing himself so that he w… he could almost perform these scores live. It's an amazing, there's, it's an amazing thing that he w… he was able to do. I think he also has the record for being paid the most for any one project of a… out of any composer ever, which is…... Quite impressive as well. So, yeah. So I think, yeah, re… for us, tuning into that world depends on the project really.

17:39Guest 2Yeah.

17:41Jawad MirIt, with him, I mean, I rightfully think that he should have been paid because I, more than anybody else because I don't know anyone who has come... You know how everybody tries to sort of get inspiration from other musicians and composers and tracks?

17:58Jawad MirI haven't heard anyone try to take something that he's done and make it their own, because it's just so many layers to his music. And, I mean, he was a, he was a genius. I, yeah, I just kind of went off, topic here, but I wanted to find out if you guys use any kind of, you know, different type of obviously music depending on the project. Where did the name Box Ape come from?

18:25Guest 1Oh, good question. It doesn't really, it doesn't really come from anywhere other than the fact that it sounds kind of cool. And it was…

18:33Jawad MirThat's what I thought.

18:34Guest 1Yeah. It has, it has that kind of ring to it. It's, and w… we wanted to ex… stay clear of anything musical. We didn't want anyone, any music in there. You know, it's, it needed to just be. There's a, there's a, there's a… An anecdote, I'm not sure I should really say this, but it's a bit embarrassing really. But we used, on a, we used to drive, when we used to drive to the studio, there used to be a big wholesale, shop that had a kind of shoddily written sign outside of it that said, "Boxes tape." And I guess it was some packing company or something, and we're like, "Oh, that's a, that's a weird thing." But it really stuck in our heads, and then we were like, "Okay, well maybe Box Tape could be a cool thing." And then we were like, "No, that's ridiculous. How about something that sounds very like that, Boxed 8? That kind of fits that, checks that box to us." Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't have, shouldn't be saying that, but it's, somewhat embarrassing. But it's, it really just comes from nowhere is the

19:24Guest 2Yeah

19:24Guest 1... Story behind it.

19:24Guest 2It's just a cool sound. It's just got a cool sound. We know we want…

19:28Guest 1Yeah.

19:28Guest 2We were like…

19:28Guest 1Doesn't matter

19:29Guest 2... It just needs to sound like a band.

19:32Jawad MirI was gonna say it sounds like a band. It sounds like, sorry, my brain has just kind of gone fried. Hip hop artist, you know, all of the above. So it is pretty cool, and I thought there was that element to it, but I just wanted to clarify. I just wanna make sure.

19:54Guest 2Yeah. Be clear. Absolutely.

19:56Guest 1Yeah.

19:58Jawad MirW… where, is the soundtrack gonna be available soon, to public?

20:03Guest 1It certainly will. Yeah. It's gonna be coming out, hopefully very soon.

20:08Jawad MirDo you know the date for it?

20:10Guest 1We can't, we can't tell you exactly when, but we're looking hopefully towards the end of the month.

20:17Jawad MirOkay. But I mean, it's coming soon, so that's good to know.

20:19Guest 2Yeah.

20:19Guest 1Coming soon. Yeah.

20:20Jawad MirYeah.

20:20Guest 1Definitely by Halloween.

20:23Jawad MirYeah. Awesome. Sorry, just give me a second.

20:24Guest 1Thank you.

20:24Jawad MirWe just have a little malfunction here. Okay, great. And, sorry about the little lighting situation here. We just had some problem.

20:35Guest 2No, you're fine

20:35Jawad Mir... And in terms of what's sort of coming up for you guys next, are you guys working on anything in particular or?

20:46Guest 1We are working on stuff. Unfortunately, the industry…

20:49Jawad MirThat's fine

20:49Guest 1... Is such we can't really talk about any of it probably for quite a long time. But we are busy, so yeah, no. Diving straight into the next thing.

20:59Jawad MirBut how long, how many projects do you guys work on at a given time that you don't wanna over, you know, busy yourself?

21:06Guest 2Yeah. I guess, again, maybe it depends on the project. So the one that we're working on currently had a fair bit of overlap with the end of Frank Stone, but it was just kind of getting started, so it wasn't, you know, a huge amount of work initially or time required initially.

21:24Guest 2So I think it's quite, I think for us probably having, like, two big projects on at a time would definitely be…

21:30Guest 1Yeah. We wouldn't suddenly want any more…

21:32Guest 2Wouldn't want any more than that, yeah

21:33Guest 1... Than that, yeah.

21:34Guest 2I guess in an ideal world, if they were, if they're big projects, it's like a kind of checkerboard situation. 'Cause we're quite often with game development cycles, you know, music we're not r… required to write music the entire time.

21:46Guest 1Yeah.

21:47Guest 2We'll kind of do a few months sprint and then it will go, the developer will carry on figuring out, you know… ... More on the animation side, whatever it is, and then we'll come back in. So in an ideal world, two development cycles would fit together like a double helix…

21:59Guest 1Yeah

21:59Guest 2... And we would just seamlessly continue working.

22:02Jawad MirYeah.

22:03Guest 2Not always the case.

22:04Guest 1But you're, you hit upon the fact that we try not to do too many. It's, you know, there…

22:09Guest 2Yeah

22:09Guest 1... Comes a point where it, the music just gets worse. And so, and so we like to make sure that we can deliver the absolute best that we can, and that comes with not stretching ourselves too thin.

22:19Guest 2Yeah.

22:21Jawad MirRight. And that, and that's a good way because, you know, in the, I'm in the film world, and it's a similar thing. Like, you always have to have something in pre-production, you know, and something in production or post-production, or at least two of the three, if not all three. But to be, and I feel that is so important unless there's a project that you feel like it's something that you've really been wanting to do for a while. And if you can pull it off simultaneously, great, but it just, yeah, quality over quantity, right? That's, that's the bottom line.

22:54Guest 1Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Couldn't, couldn't agree more.

22:58Jawad MirEver thought about doing soundtracks for movies?

23:02Guest 1Yeah. Yeah, no, we've worked on, we've worked on a fair number of films. It's a, it's a different, it's a different game.

23:09Jawad MirOh, okay.

23:10Guest 1It's, it's, a different process, a different workflow, the different teams, a different relationship you have with the, with the different people that are involved. But yeah, we are composers first and foremost. It's kind of like we just happen to be doing kind of games, I guess. So it's, you know, telling stories with music is something that transcends any of the mediums. So we, you know, we're super, we love writing for games. We love doing, working on any kind of other linear stuff. Linear, non-linear, interactive, anything in between. We love it all.

23:49Jawad MirDo you guys

23:50Guest 2We've never, we've never got to…

23:51Jawad MirSorry, go on, please.

23:53Guest 1Oh, sorry.

23:55Jawad MirNo, please go ahead. Go ahead.

23:57Guest 2Yeah, I was just saying I've, I've always wanted to do, like, a s… psychological thriller, like spooky series. British psychological thriller series. For some reason my mum always used to watch that shit when we were growing up, and I just became, like, obsessed with it.

24:12Guest 1It's funny that, isn't it?

24:13Guest 2Yeah.

24:14Guest 1See things when you're growing up and you think, "Oh, God, I think I could do a good job of that."

24:17Guest 2Yeah.

24:17Guest 1Yeah. So any, producers, listening.

24:22Guest 2Yeah. That's what he wants to do.

24:27Jawad MirYeah, for sure. You know, it's, it's amazing that how music has become such an integ… I mean, it always has been, but I think John Williams started an era and then Hans Zimmer kind of sort of moved it along to another level. And now I s… I see a lot of, you know, young generation of musicians in their early 20s, Sort of just jumping into this world, not because obviously, you know, for money, but because they love it. And the stuff that's coming out is quite amazing. Like even when I got to listen to your, soundtrack for Casting of Frank Stone, the first track I heard, and it just… I was doing some work, and, when I'm, when I'm, you know, doing any kind of, editing work, which sometimes I do here and there just for my own projects, like pre-previs and all that.

25:27Jawad MirBut I stop doing that, and I start working on something else where I'm just typing and, you know, writing a script and continuing on my script, and I put your soundtrack on because it just hooked me on right away. And I feel that there's just so much layers that you guys have sort of added to it. It ha… I felt there was like sci-fi. I fe… I actually, you know, the first thing I thought when I heard the track, it's interesting you me… mentioned that, it was like a psychological thriller. I literally felt like that. So your little, you know, dreaming of doing that is sort of in there in the track. So bravo on that.

26:05Guest 1Yeah. I've got to get some, get the right ears on it, and then, that'll be

26:09Guest 2It is… yeah, it's, it's a, it's a crazy score, and I think it was, because of the nature of the game, it just has to have the layer thing is so integral. Again, without spoiling it for anyone, but it's a very like, l-layers is kind of a theme.

26:24Guest 1Yeah, certainly. Certainly. It has, it has to, at the same time, have this extraordinary breadth of styles, just again, because of the demands of the story kind of the various settings really demand quite, sometimes quite drastically different styles of music. So again, when the, when the soundtrack comes out, people will be able to see just the sheer like crazy differences that there are between the different settings, but also the through lines, like you say. But yeah, layering up all of these various things and making sure that we could, you know, condense that down into a soundtrack that feels good.

27:01Guest 2Yeah. And it's weird. It's very weird…

27:03Guest 1It's very weird

27:04Guest 2... Music.

27:05Guest 1Yeah.

27:05Guest 2Which I love.

27:06Jawad MirIt…

27:07Guest 2Oh, yeah. We always put, yeah, weird

27:11Jawad MirWell, I mean, if you look at any composer, director, storyteller, it's always when you break the rules. You know, people are always cra… there's a, audience is always craving for something new all the time.

27:23Guest 1Yeah.

27:24Jawad MirAnd if you give it to them, despite the disagreements that, you know, the executives and the powers that be will have with you, it will work. It will work.

27:34Guest 1Yes.

27:34Jawad MirAre you guys gamers or s-sorry, go on.

27:37Guest 1Sorry, just going to close the window. There's some noise going on outside.

27:40Jawad MirYep.

27:41Guest 1But no, nothing.

27:44Jawad MirAre you guys, gamers or do you play games, whether this one or any others or what's your world like in that, in that realm?

27:54Guest 2Yeah, only this one.

27:58Guest 1No. I certainly, and you are as well. Avid gamers. I love video games.

28:05Guest 2I would definitely not consider myself as an avid gamer, but I do enjoy. I have a PlayStation. I actually bought, when we set up the company and moved down here, I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna buy a PlayStation and try and become a gamer."

28:17Guest 1You…

28:18Guest 2Which I've done a pretty good job of.

28:19Guest 1Good job of. Yeah. No, but I'm, I'm the obsessive type when it comes to video games. I'm the, I'm the I'll die 10,000 times to a boss before I, and really learn how to beat it, and I, you know, I love that all those games that really punish you and

28:33Guest 2There's a funny, anecdote where you sometimes in games like, or maybe you know, but like you start with a map that's got like kind of, when you, when you pause to look at the maps, you are, it's got f… like, frost or clouds or whatever all over it until you've kind of discovered all of the areas.

28:50Guest 2And Ali, we was playing a game, and Ali like showed me his map, and it was just completely clear. He'd explored everywhere. And I, we were playing like a Horizon game, and I'd finished the game and my map was just a line basically just where all of the main story points happen.

29:04Guest 1Yeah.

29:04Guest 2Because I just have…... No interest in like explore. I just need to get… I don't know, I have this thing where I kind of want it to just be finished. I bloody enjoy it, but I'm, my main thing is an anxiety that it's not finished yet.

29:15Guest 1Yeah. Yeah.

29:15Guest 2I think that's probably Freud would have the answer.

29:18Guest 1Yeah. Whereas I am the opposite. I want to explore every corner, interact with every pixel, hear every line of dialogue, hear every note in the score. I'm a real, yeah, I love to just absorb myself into these worlds and it's, yeah. So that, there's another difference fe… between us.

29:35Jawad MirI actually am on Frankie's side because again, I haven't played a game in a while, and then sometimes my son will play and, you know, but most of the games that I've sort of played are sports games.

29:46Guest 1Yeah.

29:46Jawad MirProbably because they end pretty quickly.

29:50Guest 1Yes.

29:51Jawad MirI do remember playing this Indiana Jones game with, in the world of PC in the late '90s.

29:57Guest 1Yeah.

29:58Jawad MirAnd I remember, I tried to think about it now. I'm like, "How did I play that game?" Because it wasn't, there was no music. It wasn't like the way it is now, right? It was just kind of like Indiana Jones trying to find all these different artifacts and running into an enemy, then you're just having a little bit of gunfight and but now games are just kind… I mean, I s… I think I saw this trailer a few years ago of a Star Wars game, and this was around the same time when one of the Star Wars film was supposed to come out. I don't remember which one. I think it was The Last Jedi. And I stumbled upon this trailer. I didn't read what it was, and when it started playing, I thought it was the actual movie. That's how damn real it looked.

30:36Guest 1Yeah.

30:36Jawad MirAnd it's amazing that the whole world of games has become so realistic, and I feel, and I think one of the, somebody at Netflix said this, and I think it's bang on, right, the world of film and the world of game is gonna come together at one point, and it's gonna s… you know, completely become one.

30:55Guest 1Yeah, no, it's, it's fascinating how those two are interacting at the moment, especially because you've got, you know, enormous series. You know, you've got, Arcane and all the other video game series that are coming out that are just so popular and huge.

31:08Guest 2The Last of Us.

31:09Guest 1Last of Us.

31:10Guest 2Live show.

31:10Guest 1Yeah. These, all these massive video game IPs are all, are all having films made about them. And, yeah, the tech is... That's the other thing about the games industry is the, is the tech is so, is at the forefront of what's going on. I mean, the, it's, it's true in the f… in the film world as well, but kind of everyone is trying to kind of use a l… a lot of the same kind of technology, whereas games, there's such a array of different tools that people are using. And the, and there's a real drive to improve all of the tech constantly and make sure that it's, it's, you know, re… everything is at the cutting edge. So it's a really exciting kind of industry to be a part of from that perspective and just seeing the advancements, like you say. Things are looking realer and realer. The performance is getting better. People are being able to develop huge games sort of really quickly now. And, you know, it's a, it's a fascinating…

32:01Guest 1... Time to be, to be looking at both of these genres.

32:05Jawad MirYeah. I would... Have you, have you heard of Sora AI?

32:10Guest 2Yes.

32:11Guest 1Yes.

32:11Jawad MirYou must have.

32:12Guest 2AI music time.

32:13Jawad MirYeah. No. It's, made by OpenAI where you can just text, to visual.

32:19Guest 1Yeah.

32:19Jawad MirLike, it looks extremely, you know.

32:21Guest 2Oh, yeah.

32:21Jawad MirIt's in its first iteration. Yeah. I wonder if that can be somehow in future, or even when I say future it could be six months from now the way technology…... Is going, where you can actually create games using those commands. And I wonder…

32:39Guest 2Yeah

32:39Jawad Mir... How that will play.

32:40Guest 2Well, I mean, there's already now people were talking about, you know, they, like, just maybe just, like, creating assets or creating…

32:47Jawad MirYeah

32:47Guest 2... You know, little bits and bobs. They're helping with textures, doing some of the jobs that, you know, is expensive to pay someone to do unfortunately.

32:54Jawad MirYeah.

32:55Guest 2We go to a lot of conferences and people, the AI thing's quite a big topic in the, in the past couple of years obviously. And it's kind of scary…

33:01Jawad MirYeah

33:01Guest 2... How you see people's opinions of it change. We went to a conference a couple of years ago, and it was like, "What do you guys think of AI?" And everyone was like, "Oh, we would never, we would never use that because it's, it's immoral," and all this stuff. And then last year like, "Yeah, we're using that."

33:15Guest 1Yeah.

33:17Guest 2It was kinda crazy.

33:17Jawad MirThat's why you should never say never. It's… but you know it, what it is it's... I heard this example once, and I've only,.. You know how when the tractors came out the farmers thought, "That's it. It's over"?

33:28Guest 2Yeah

33:28Jawad Mir... For me personally, when I remember when the internet came out, I had, I start… set up an eBay account. I think it was '97 or '98. And everybody I knew, family, friends, schoolmates, teachers, professors, I'm crazy that I'm putting my credit card online.

33:49Guest 2Yeah.

33:49Jawad MirI mean, now we look where we living. Like, everybody's life is online, right? So it's just about I think times change. People take time to understand because it's a new thing. It's a scary thing. And same thing with AI. I've had difference of opinions every few months. I want… one time I'll think this, and then the other time like, "Oh, this is now bad. It's, it's good, but it's bad." So it's just an evolution of human growth, and I think that's important for you to be sort of self-aware of that.

34:14Guest 2100%.

34:14Guest 1That's it, yeah.

34:15Guest 2And we've always been of the attitude that it's like at the point where we can use it and it's actually gonna be useful and make our work better, then we'll ju… hop on board. 100%.

34:23Jawad MirYeah.

34:23Guest 2Are we there yet? I don't know.

34:25Guest 1Yeah.

34:25Guest 2In fact, there's certainly, there's things where we're like, this would be the per… we have, like, a big crazy stem exporting process to then rename it and put it into our mixed session and exp… like, all of the kind of boring shit that comes with having to do, you know, scores, especially for game.

34:40Guest 2Crazy amount of that. It's like this would be the kind of... If we could develop an AI tool to just do all that, great.

34:46Guest 1Yeah. Yeah.

34:47Guest 2I think we're very much, like, of the opinion, or I certainly am of the opinion that it's like it's, it's inevitable anyway, and it's just if you just use it. When you can use it, use it.

34:57Guest 1Yeah.

34:57Guest 2Embrace it…

34:57Guest 1Yeah

34:57Guest 2... 'cause you can't stop it.

34:59Guest 1No.

35:00Jawad MirYep, 100%. Awesome, guys. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I had a great time chatting with you guys.

35:07Guest 2Yeah.

35:08Jawad MirHopefully we can do this in future whenever your next project is about to come out, which is years away, right?

35:17Guest 2Most likely.

35:18Jawad MirMost likely. But yeah, Ca… Casting of Frank Stone is out already on all platforms, PS5, Xbox. And, the soundtrack comes out later this month. Thank you, guys. Composed by Boxed Ape of course.

35:37Guest 1Thank you very much, mate. Been a pleasure speaking to you.

35:38Guest 2Yeah, nice to meet you, man.

35:39Jawad MirLikewise. Likewise.

35:40Guest 2Take care.

35:41Jawad MirTake care, buddy. Good luck.