Director/Producer: Leo Berkeley
Year: 2005
Length: 12 mins
Synopsis:
Leo Berkeley’s only Machinima film to date, is Ending With Andre. A short drama focusing on Wendy, a single woman trying to escape the failures and abuse of her past relationship. She voluntarily imprison s herself in the “solitary confinement” of her small home. Away from any friends or family, she feels safer yet still fears that Andre may find her again. Indeed, her fears are justified when Andre unexpectedly returns, confronting Wendy on her first real outing from her home. Her anxieties heighten with his presence. Will he hurt her again? or worse, will she fall for him again?
Analysis:
For long-time filmmaker and short-time gamer, Leo Berkeley, his first and only Machinima project maximises the form in which it is created to instil an impression of the fragility of the human psyche. Through capturing and elaborating on the unexpected and sometimes inexplicable events surrounding his Sims character, Berkeley crafts a powerful story, perfectly balancing the absurdity of some of the animation with the insecurities of man.
A subtle feature of Ending With Andre, as with the majority of other popular Machinima works, is the lack of the on-screen display that is intrinsic to the Sims platform. Typically, when one plays the Sims, the characters appear with icons above their heads indicating their wants, needs and whether they are human-controlled or not. The characters in Berkeley’s work appear without this feature. This was achieved through a painstakingly laborious process, whereby the creator had to remove & replace the obtrusive pixels frame by frame. When questioned about the necessity of this process, Berkeley admitted:
“In retrospect, it probably was a mistake… At the time I was thinking, if I was going to leave it there I’d somehow have to deal with its presence in terms of the story I was creating.” (Berkeley, 2006)
Although choosing to digitally manipulate his images to remove the on-screen display, Berkeley handled other limitations of the Sims engine in a rather different, yet perhaps more creative manner.
“The other issue in the Sims was that none of the houses you create have roofs. Again, I could’ve made the decision, and I thought about it, that somehow I’ll try & construct it so either you don’t see that the houses have no roofs, or I’ll do visual effects to get them in there. But, in the end I just decided that it was all a bit too hard & its not worth the effort. So I just, I mean it’s a bit absurd, but I just built it into the voice over.” (Berkeley, 2006.)
The narrator of the piece remarks on the unique feature of all ‘Sims’ dwellings: “It was strange. None of the houses had roofs. Fortunately, it never seemed to rain.” This is a self-reflective practise that seems common in Machinima. Obvious limitations and unique characteristics found within the games in which they are created are often, quite humorously, referred to. However, where most Machinima creators fail to move beyond this seemingly adolescent use of self-reflection, Berkeley elaborates on it to enhance his story.
The self-reflectivity Berkeley employs in his work can be seen to build on the personalities of his characters, rather than to create mere quips about the game engine. Where many traditional filmmakers may view the overly “animated” actions of the Sims-created characters, Berkeley sees them as advantages. He uses the narrator to justify the absurd behaviour of his characters not as comical exaggerations of typical human behaviour, but rather as examples of atypical behaviours stemming from psychological maladjustments. The narrator suggests that Wendy’s ferocious eating pace is s result of the residual damage that Andre has caused her: “She felt when she was eating that if she took too long between mouthfuls the fear would have a way of getting into her.” Also, the extremely bizarre actions of the A.I-controlled character, Andre, are justified by the female narrator: “He said she was cold-hearted. It would be warmer for him in the fridge than standing next to her.” Next, we see Andre attempting to climb into a refrigerator.
Overall, this is a very powerful story. A most effective use of Sims Machinima, as Berkeley maximises the exaggerated animation of his characters to express a discomfort in the mundane practices of everyday life.