Machinima Spotlight: ‘Till I’m Done

I’m not even going to pretend to understand music videos, especially when they are surrealistic interpretive works of abstract art. Is that even a thing? If not, it should be. The VMA’s should give WTF? awards to these kind of videos. Anyway, what does this have to do with the ‘Till I’m Done machinima by Elli Darffy Grown? Everything.

Elli has recreated the original video, as best as possible, by Paloma Faith using The Sims 3. I am actually not familiar with Paloma Faith and went and watched the original video after the machinima. I’m impressed.

Here’s the thing. People don’t understand what goes into a recreation. There are those who roll their eyes at recreations and wonder why someone can’t come up with their own ideas. Recreations are a lot of work. They are their own kind of challenge. It means creating a lot of custom animations and custom content and I honestly wouldn’t have the patience for it.

Elli Darffy Grown has been involved in SimsFilmFest for many seasons and we’ve watched them improve. Last season I was impressed with Snowman by Sia. I will admit that I never did watch the original music video to see if it was a recreation or an original idea. I may have to go back and do that.

A lot of work went into ‘Till I’m Done and it shows. This is the sort of thing that a lot of people don’t have the patience for. When Gus Rockman started his Rocky Horror Picture Show project (that will one day be finished…maybe) I got to see how he created the animations for it. I couldn’t do it. I applaud anyone that has that kind of patience. What is even more impressive is recreating the camera work. Granted, it will never be 100%, but getting it as close as possible to the original work is it’s own kind of talent. For those who think that anyone can recreate something, no they can’t. Not everyone possess that kind of talent. It takes a certain eye and attention to detail and commitment. Honestly, I think we could all learn a lot about making machinima by doing a recreation.It would probably force everyone of us to learn at least one new technique that could be applied to original projects.

Check out the Elli’s video, and then check out the original if you haven’t seen it. The machinima is both ambitious and impressive. Also, if anyone can tell me what the video is about, I’m listening.