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Special Effects

Posted: 12 June 2017, 20:18
by Lynchland
Twin Peaks uses glitches, new technology to bring Lynch’s madness into a new age, Julie Muncy / Polygon
As the influence of the spirit world grows increasingly explicit across these initial four episodes, the show leans on digital effects to portray its impossible happenings. A digitized Agent Cooper passes through an electrical socket. Disembodied heads of spirits and the late Garland Briggs, the father of Bobby Briggs, pass through the ether. Dougie Jones, a third doppelganger of Cooper possibly manufactured by the evil Coop — it’s, uh, complicated — disappears in a burst of smoke and electricity. What’s most striking about all these special effects, however, isn’t their content, but their composition : most of them are terrible.

It’s confusing at first. The return of Twin Peaks is clearly well-funded : It has a cast in the hundreds and is beautifully shot with digital cameras. [...] So why are these special effects so garish ? Dougie Jones’ death looks like an effect from a bad FMV video game, and when Cooper stands outside the purple room, the void of space around him looks like a Windows screensaver.

But that's precisely the point. These deliberately low-quality visual effects, juxtaposed with the immaculate digital camera work and the occasional special effect portrayed in a convincing fashion, create an affecting unreality. They straddle a line Lynch loves to move between. They’re fake enough to be funny, but played too seriously to write off entirely as jokes. Instead, they move fully into the realm of the uncanny.

All these effects conspire to construct the spirit world behind Twin Peaks as a place that’s just not quite right. It’s eerily artificial, forcing the viewer to confront the staged nature of the show itself. These touches allow us to see the spirit world as a dreamspace, a separate type of reality — one that might even be conscious of us as viewers. It makes the horror of the spirit world even more vivid, as it comes from a place that already feels consciously impossible. Everything that happens here is intensely otherworldly, caught between being fake and real at the same time, and made the more haunting because of it.
What's your opinion about these SFX ? (I like this article but, in the same time, I don't find these SFX that poor but rather typically lynchian...)

Image

"Dougie Jones", an artwork by Cristiano Siqueira aka Crisvector, an illustrator from São Paulo, Brasil.

Re: Special Effects

Posted: 13 June 2017, 13:54
by dale_coop
When I started watching the first Part, I thought the SFX was weird (like they were made in the 90's or something).
But then, when I finished the first 2 parts, I started to really like them.

Nowaday, everyone tv series use the same SFX, it tends to become invisible, anonymous,... (boring ?).
But here, it's unique. It's graphic, organic, dreamy. I think it matchs well with style of Lynch.
We cannot stay insensitive when watching the SFX in this season of Twin Peaks.

So, I personnaly think BUF made a great work here.

Falling.jpg
(love that scene)