Northwest Passage: A Twin Peaks Fanedit

April 30, 2011 @ 10:31 am

A tremendous idea, very well executed.

I’ve watched the two seasons of Twin Peaks twice all the way through and I love the show.

The biggest thrill for me watching this fanedit was how the story of Laura’s killer came so much more sharply into focus. I can see now that it’s really a story about possession – demonic possession – but the original TV series stretched out and diluted the main narrative so much that, until now, I never regarded in this light.

The 16:9 framing is surprisingly good. Only a handful of scenes suffer a little from chopping the top and bottom off the frame.

Editing is mostly excellent and the lead up to the climax – with added dream footage from episode 29 – is handled well. I had some minor issues with the continuity at the start of the 2nd disc regarding the mostly excised subplot about Dr Jacoby receiving a supposed phone call from Laura Palmer and going to meet her. The remaining elements of that subplot didn’t quite gel.

Great fanedit. 9/10.

QUALITY

Quality is decent. The cropping to 16:9 naturally means a reduced resolution.


VISUAL EDITING

The conversion to 16:9 generally works really well. Occasionally shots look a little tight, but it never felt intrusive or like it detracted from my enjoyment. It was nice to experience the series in this aspect ratio and it definitely helped in conveying a more cinematic feel.

In terms of cuts, I found a fair amount of shots to be too quick, mainly establishing shots and mostly in the first half. 1:20:20 of Part 1 I remember being especially abrupt. There's also a frame jump at 2:14:34 in Part 2 (probably a misplaced keyframe from cropping). The end credit scene has very obviously had the aspect ratio stretched and doesn't look great.


AUDIO EDITING

No doubt there were numerous cuts and trims that went by unnoticed. I did notice quite a few audio transitions though; nothing jarring, but some obvious crossfades. Again, more in the first half than the second. A minor thing, but there is also a relatively loud audio pop during the credits.


NARRATIVE

First thing's first, this is being presented as a 5-hour movie, which seems like a crazy idea. Looking at it like that, it's way too long. However, perhaps it is best viewed as a 2-part TV movie of sorts? It is presented in two 2.5 hour chunks, and this mitigates the excessive runtime considerably. Being able to view it in two screenings of a reasonable length works well, the pacing is generally good and it never feels episodic.

Unfortunately, there are narrative problems, as others have noted. There are minor(ish) things, like characters referencing something that no longer exists in this cut (Lucy mentioning seeing Bobby's parents, Donna mentioning Howard's letter), Audrey makes a single appearance that has no relevance to the plot, and then never makes another appearance again; Big Ed (a civilian) randomly tags along to a police bust (which the audience have no context for since there's no introduction to the bookhouse boys here).

And then there are more significant things, like having Doc's heart attack and Leo's shooting offscreen. If these characters were entirely relegated to the background, that could work at a push, but because this edit isn't 100% focused on the perspective of the police and FBI, and we do have deviations where we focus on these minor characters, it feels odd to have something so massive happen to them and then only get the info dropped in with a single line of dialogue. We also have no context for why Doc has his heart attack, nor is anything ever said about him having the other half of the heart necklace, in spite of it still being emphasised on camera when he's listening to Laura's tapes. Plus, to have a murder, a heart attack and two other attempted murders all on the same night is crazy - the series acknowledges this and has an explanation; this edit does not. I could keep the list going, but I don't want to labour the point. Suffice to say, the narrative is far from perfect here.

On a related note, there are some general effects that an edit like this has on the feel and flow, which are really just a byproduct of the concept and can't be helped. The first part of the edit feels very dry overall, since there is a lot of procedural stuff and info-driven dialogue, without much of the quirky character moments to break things apart and make it more digestible. There is also less of a mystery in one sense; since we spend less time and see less of the townsfolk, we're therefore limited to a smaller set of suspects, making it easy for the audience to put the pieces together and draw conclusions based on where the narrative is focusing. On the other hand, whereas the original series reveals to the audience who the killer is before their capture, Q2 decides to keep the audience in the dark with the police; I think this was a smart move and it worked well for the narrative.

Some have noted the absence of the black lodge plot, and while I like that plot and am sad it couldn't be included, it wouldn't have worked for a filmic narrative and would have made things feel far more episodic. Unfortunately, its absence does make one of the giant's clues superfluous: "the owls are not what they seem". It is worth bearing in mind that Q2 makes the interesting decision to include part of the trippy stuff related to the black lodge and insert it within the climax of the edit. I thought this was well-executed, although I'm not sure what value it added to the narrative, personally.


ENJOYMENT

Issues aside, across its 5-hour runtime the edit nicely condenses the main initial narrative thrust of the series, with a few tweaks to make the experience a little different this time around. I really enjoyed being able to re-consume the series in a much shorter amount of time.

There is some talk in the reviews as to who this is aimed at, and I also saw someone treating this as their first experience of the series. It seems to me that Q2's intent was an alternative spin in a cinematic format for those already familiar with the material. Because of narrative issues and the absence of some great material, I would strongly recommend people not let this be their first experience, but I think it's a good option for a revisit. I also disagree with people who think all the Lynchian-ness has been stripped away... plenty of the weirdness is left. Most of what Lynch directed of the series were climactic episodes, which are naturally retained. Plenty of opportunity was here to trim some of the awkward, drawn-out dreams and visions, but these mostly remain intact. I think any hardcore Lynch fan is probably also the sort of person to frown on any kind of edit, full stop. If one wants to speculate on the meaning of Twin Peaks and bask in the mind of Lynch, then naturally anything unsupervised by him is not going to be the way to go. But if you simply want to enjoy a different take on the material, this is a fun ride.

‍

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.

April 7, 2011 @ 9:14 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*