Northwest Passage: A Twin Peaks Fanedit

I finally got around to watching this, and WOW! I'm not a huge David Lynch fan; I get it, but it's not usually for me. As such, I never sat down to watch Twin Peaks, so this is my first exposure. The short version: I loved it! It starts of engaging and a little odd, and then when the season two stuff starts happening, it just gets nuttier and nuttier. The pacing of this thing is a wonder, considering how much was cut. I had no problem following the plot, nothing necessary to my understanding of the narrative as crafted here appeared to be missing, and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. There did seem to be some stuff that could be further cut as a few side characters come off as underwritten to the point of being superfluous, but as a Twin Peaks neophyte, I can't say for sure what impact that would further have on the end result. Either way, I enjoyed all of it, and I actually want to sit down now and watch the whole series!

AV Quality: I left this score as a 10, but on the mp4 version I watched, the volume levels were extremely low. On my stereo, I normally have the volume at 9. Some discs or channels I might have to up it to 12. This video I had to turn my volume up to 18 to hear it. This didn't negatively affect the viewing experience at all, just a minor inconvenience at the start.

Visual: Again, I left this at a 10, but there was at least 1 error I spotted. Specifically, there was a video transition where the fade out scene, there were a few flash frames where you could see the start of the deleted next scene in the fade out.

Audio: There were 5-10 transitions where unfortunately the audio really gave away that these scenes were pasted together and didn't originally air that way. Usually it involved the first scene having a heavy score and the 2nd scene starting with no music. So the change was pretty abrupt. Not 'hard cut' abrupt, but enough to be somewhat jarring and remind that this is an edit.

Narrative: Narrative was strong, but I downgrade do a 9 because there were some plotholes. But cutting that much material, its pretty much inevitable, and the editor probably did about as good as could be done.

Enjoyment: For reference, I would score Twin Peaks Season 1 a 9, this edit a 7, and Twin Peaks Season 2 a 3. So I liked this edit much better than season 2. However, next time I am in the mood for rewatching, I will just watch season 1 again. Generally, with this sort of cult classic show, they tend to get better with each rewatching. I expected to love this edit since the Laura Palmer arc really was the most important one and many of the others were real stinkers (ie 40 year old cheerleader). But my favorite part of Twin Peaks was the quirky humor, and cutting out all the side plots cut out most of the humor (along with cutting out all the garbage). This edit has its comedic moments, but it was pretty serious most of the time. I hadn't really noticed before how much of the comedy was built into the side plots.

Recommendation: I would recommend this edit for someone who has already seen Twin Peaks (at least season 1). Being able to watch a completely story during a single afternoon really is nice, even if its not everything I may have hoped it could have been. However, I would not recommend this edit for someone who hasn't seen season 1 yet. This edit really starts off slow for at least an hour, so I could definitely see somebody new to the series getting bored and giving up.

Q2 has done something I never thought possible,
he made me like David Lynch!

I have never really enjoyed Lynch's films, and while I watched Twin Peaks on and off in high school, I just never got in to it.

Last summer, I picked up the series set from a discount bin on the recommendation of a friend who urged me to give the series another shot.

I watched it all. But boy, was it ever it was a struggle for me... LOL!
I figured Twin Peaks was just not my cup of tea.

But then I watched NORTHWEST PASSAGE, and something just "clicked" for me. I watched the entire epic in one sitting, completely spellbound. It was still strange and weird and at times confusing, but now it felt more directed, more purposeful, and definitely more conclusive.

In my opinion, editing episodic television into an engaging and entertaining new story is the hardest type of fan edit to create. And Q2 has succeeded wildly! I can not believe he reframed every scene into 16x9! It is amazing!

Visually the edit is beautiful. There were couple audio fades/transitions that I thought were abrupt and could have been smother. But this is pretty close to perfect.

Thanks for the great murder mystery Q2!

I may have to rewatch Twin Peaks again!

This is one series where a lot of people just seem to think 'oh yeah, that weird show that was weird.' Yeah, it was weird, but there is a LOT of humor in it too, and not just of the dark variety. It's a lot of fun and Q2 left it intact, I'm happy to say. A lot of editors might try to take out the humor and make the series darker and edgier, but it's nice the way it is; a solid crime drama with a sort of wacky twist to it.

Anyway, everything about this is pretty much flawless in every way! Highly recommended.

December 8, 2011 @ 11:54 pm

How to judge something like this?

Did I enjoy it? Yes.
Did I miss anything? Well, yes, I miss Audrey Horne, but who wouldn’t? But she has no place in this, which does make me wonder why she got that one scene with Coop.
Was I confused? A little, at times. Some things we were told had happened, and then we went ahead without really making us feel the importance of it…if that makes sense. It’s because in the series we saw it happen, here we are just told of it, and at that point the series didn’t need to give that information weight, because the viewer already knew.
Was I confused when I watched the original series? Hell yes.

The ending is cheesy, but still dark, as the real murderer in not caught. I thought it worked, but we do wonder what happens with the one-armed man and how he could have stopped Bob.

I thought the video was great. Beautiful show.

I do believe I enjoyed watching this more than I would have enjoyed watching the whole series again. There is just too much that I don’t find that good, especially when we get later into the show. This highlighted some of the best things, and actually improved on some scenes.

For this reason along with the above I’ll rate this 9/10.

A nice piece of editing.

Update sep 9 2012

Added ratings for the categories.