The visual aesthetic of the new Twin Peaks

[dreamshake]

Peter Deming discusses the show: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/twin-p ... 201878462/

Interestingly, he says that he and DKL have such an intuitive relationship that they didn't discuss lighting at all other than an occasional descriptive adjective like "sad."

And that he knew how to light the scene based on the set design. Pretty special relationship.

[Panapaok]

Interesting that Lynch still insisted on using a similar camera set-up with Inland Empire. Thankfully Deming & Showtime made him change his mind.

[claaa7]

very interesting interview! i notice that he calls Mr. ??????? KARL THE GIANT and not THE FIREMAN.. might that have been how he was called in the script? - i know the actor's real name is Carl

[ThumbsUp]

Nearly all the colours of Diane's outfit/style/nail polish pop up over and over all season long in every storyline and setting. Lots of baby blue, teal, red, that raspberry colour. That's just one example, but yeah, lots of visual unity going on here.

[claaa7]

it's crazy that Lynch at first wanted to make this with the same digital cameras he used on "Inland Empire"! as much as i like "Inland Empire" i am really glad that didn't happen. i think the camera they decided on using is a nice middle ground between that style and the more cinematic style of Lynch's earlier career. i'm still missing the look of DKL images shot on film though.

so visually, which scenes were the best looking in your opinion? i mean we have the start of episode 3 and most of episode 8 which was all visual glory, but i'm thinking of more "regular" scenes if you catch my drift (no Red Room, visual effects, etc.).

one that sticks out a lot to me is the entire introduction of Mister C - from the night time driving to "American Woman" to the entry to Otis and Buella's place to the meeting with Darya and Ray. everything about that scene is great, the night light, the camera angles, the lingering on faces, the music and sound design. just beautiful! great introduction to Mister C as a character too... especially as it was the first time we saw any incarnation of Cooper for years and years. they certainly didn't fumble that opportunity and all the actors did a wonderful job. you can see that Lynch cast some people based purely on their special looks, without much regard to acting skills - like Buella for example.

overall the night scenes had much more impact on me than the day time shooting which often looked quite "ordinary", which is understandable considering it's a documentary type of camera. for example i loved the look of the interiors of Janey-E and Cooper's house when shot at night. the one day time scene that comes to my mind as impressive and outstanding is from episode 14 with the walk in the woods. some great footage of the majestic woods which we knows hold many spirits and many mysteries. the aerial shots worked wonders.

[BGate]

it's crazy that Lynch at first wanted to make this with the same digital cameras he used on "Inland Empire"! as much as i like "Inland Empire" i am really glad that didn't happen. i think the camera they decided on using is a nice middle ground between that style and the more cinematic style of Lynch's earlier career. i'm still missing the look of DKL images shot on film though.

That's not quite true, I don't think. I'm no expert but "prosumer" cameras have come a long way in the last 10 years. Here's the actual quote from Deming/Indiewire

“David went digital before anybody, at least in his mind, and he shot ‘Inland Empire’ [the one project in which Lynch served as his own DP] with a digital camera. He and I would disagree on the quality of [that camera], but he became very enamored with becoming a small self-contained unit and the sort of do-it-yourself situation,” said Deming. “And he was still very much interested in that type of set-up for this.”

The problem is that with the amount of special effects required for the new season of “Twin Peaks,” smaller, less expensive DSLR cameras have a “rolling shudder” and don’t supply a constant frame, which makes it extremely difficult for visual effects artists.

Deming doesn't name a specific camera, but I think what I said above is true of so-called DSLRs. I'd love to hear from someone more informed on the technical aspects of this how they interpret the comment/how different the show would have looked if they had indeed used them.

[Trudy Chelgren]

I would have loved it if The Return was shot like Inland Empire. Something about it stands on this strange line between rich and visually stunning, and flat and lifeless. Compare Cooper's dinner with the Mitchum brothers or the New York scenes with Steven and Gersten in the woods or Gordon, Albert and Tammy in their room in Buckhorn. The Return's visuals seem to thrive by contrast, and by the darker scenes. For me at least. Inland Empire's use of digital had a rawness and a grit to it. It was so far from the feeling of film that it looped back on itself. The Return did not have rawness by any means, and I missed that. It had a steely unreality.

In the Peter Deming interview, he says how they didn't use Lynch's first choice of camera because of the visual effects, which would have been too difficult to match up the blurry frame rate. The CGI was such an immense part of the feeling of, again, unreality in this iteration of the show. I can't help but wonder how it would have looked if some of the creatures, the Evolution of the Arm or that floating orb that reveals the true Diane, had been sculpted and were in-camera effects. Like Eraserhead.

[Snailhead]

^ Totally agreed! The visual appearance of the Return was very flat uninteresting to me. Something more along the lines of Inland Empire would have been a lot more striking.

[The Gazebo]

one that sticks out a lot to me is the entire introduction of Mister C - from the night time driving to "American Woman" to the entry to Otis and Buella's place to the meeting with Darya and Ray. everything about that scene is great, the night light, the camera angles, the lingering on faces, the music and sound design. just beautiful! great introduction to Mister C as a character too... especially as it was the first time we saw any incarnation of Cooper for years and years. they certainly didn't fumble that opportunity and all the actors did a wonderful job. you can see that Lynch cast some people based purely on their special looks, without much regard to acting skills - like Buella for example.

overall the night scenes had much more impact on me than the day time shooting which often looked quite "ordinary", which is understandable considering it's a documentary type of camera. for example i loved the look of the interiors of Janey-E and Cooper's house when shot at night. the one day time scene that comes to my mind as impressive and outstanding is from episode 14 with the walk in the woods. some great footage of the majestic woods which we knows hold many spirits and many mysteries. the aerial shots worked wonders.

Yeah, the scene at Otis' place is one of my all-time favourites. Loved it. And I agree on the daytime/nighttime view - if there was less (or preferably none whatsoever) of the daytime Vegas bollocks, I might have had a somewhat more positive view of the show altogether. Lynch really knows how to make powerful nighttime scenes. But while daytime scenes in the original never felt out of place in the grand scheme of things, The Return's daytime scenes were flat, dull and alienating, in my view. The walk in the woods that you mention was (again, in my view) a stale fart compared to the original series' excursion to the Log Lady's house, and Jaques' cabin.

[Trudy Chelgren]

I saw this on Reddit, props to the user Hybries for the translation. It was an interview with Pierre Buffin, director of BUF who created the visual effects for The Return. There are some interesting quotes that stand out:

"We did most of the special effect in 3D, like the atomic explosion, but most of the 2D effects, like the lights that shine above the machines in Vegas for example, Lynch did them himself, with a small team working at his place."

I guess that explains a lot. 'Primitive' was definitely the intention then, with some of the effects.


"Lynch had asked us to do a starry sky, but the stars weren't moving, which he disliked. Against all logic, we made the stars move, but suddenly they looked like dusts. Then, with a small Sony camera, Lynch refilmed the stars while moving his camera."

I knew he'd use one somehow. I think it's safe to assume that the disturbing shaking of the Experiment in the glass box was also achieved this way.


"He never showed us any pictural reference apart from his own paintings. Everytime we would show him any other reference, it didn't work. We need to stay in his world."

I knew that was a reference point. It was shining from the start.

[claaa7]

as has been discussed and mentione in other threads seeing the entire series on Blu Ray really made the visual style pop and glimmer in a way that wasn't at all apparent when watching the compressed streams. there seems to have been quite a lot of work done after the fact so they might very well have been in a rush working on the episodes while the show was starting to air. especially the daytime scenes fare a lot better and i now got the feeling of a unified whole watching the series (which seem to owe a lot to additional color grading) whereas at times it visually almost felt like different works at times.

i'm so impressed by all involved with the production side of this gigantic, sprawling and rich project. What a work!

[BGate]

They weren't still working on the show after it started airing, and if you watched it through cable on a nice big TV it looked wonderful. Slightly worse than 1080p, obviously.

[enumbs]

Watching the show on the Sky streaming platform in the UK, I felt that many of my worst fears about Lynch's digital cinematography were realized. The show looked flat, ugly and bland, and with the exception of the odd stunning sequence - or indeed most of part 8 - I came to accept that the visuals were simply something which had to be sacrificed, perhaps in service of telling such an expansive story on a limited budget and in a relatively short period of time. In any case, the show had so much to offer that I made peace with this element pretty quickly. While the look initially kept me at a distance, I found much of the film making so stunning that by the final few spectacular episodes I barely noticed these perceived shortcomings.

Watching the Blu-Ray, I have to say that I'm utterly amazed by the difference in quality. Having watched Mulholland Drive the day before beginning my re-watch, I'm shocked to find myself saying that I found Twin Peaks every bit as visually impressive. I loved the warm look of the sheriff station, the sunny, crisp feel of the Vegas scenes, and the muted and realistic tones of the finale. The show is fucking gorgeous! I can't emphasize how elated I am that one major factor holding me back from fully embracing this thing has been eliminated. The fact that Sky (and Showtime from the sound of things) allowed the show to go out the way it did was a tragedy!

[eyeboogers]

They weren't still working on the show after it started airing...

Producer Sabrina Sutherland disagrees with you about that. The production office was working down to the wire on all things Blu Ray, DCP's and whatever else was left to do.

[Mr. Reindeer]

They weren't still working on the show after it started airing...

Producer Sabrina Sutherland disagrees with you about that. The production office was working down to the wire on all things Blu Ray, DCP's and whatever else was left to do.

Sure, but DKL himself said in EW in May that the picture for the show itself was fully locked, and that he wouldn’t have let a second of it air until that was the case.