In minute long clips, Madelaine Turner channels the directorial styles of Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, and more.
This Screenwriter Turns Her TikToks Into Cinematic Shorts
TikTok is generally a place to show off your new fit, do a little dance, or make people laugh with some candid commentary. But Madelaine Turner is aiming to elevate the platform—and she’s using cinematic videos to do it. On her TikTok page, the 27-year-old screenwriter, who is based in Long Beach, California, posts short films that channel the directorial styles of Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, and more. “I am deeply, embarrassingly, in love with storytelling in all forms,” Turner says. “I’m really drawn to filmmakers who—I think compulsively—need to color outside the lines.”
Since joining TikTok in February last year, she has amassed over 380,000 followers for her mini movies. Her first viral hit was a Wes Anderson-inspired take on a pandemic routine. In another video, she mashed together Twilight and Gossip Girl. She says she gets her creative ideas organically, often starting with the music first. “I’ve always had little narratives playing out in my head when listening to music, and it seemed like such a fun and creative exercise to try and create those narratives within the confines of my apartment,” she says.
None of her clips would be as effective without spot on costumes, which she often thrifts. For a Jane Austen-inspired take on Mean Girls, she wore retro lace dresses and ruffled gloves. In a The Parent Trap-inspired clip, she looked eerily similar to Meredith Blake, red lipstick and all. “I like bright, funky, comfy things,” she says of her approach to costuming. “I like pieces of clothing that make me laugh. Stylishly.”
Below, Turner discusses her creative process, what her favorite movies and directors are, and what new ideas she has floating around for her next short.
What's your process for creating TikToks? Where do you get ideas?
I’m absolutely worthless without music! It’s truly the main source of my content and fuels most of my creative process. There’s no real method for it (I wish there was, I’d be way more productive), but sometimes I’ll just hear a certain song, or a melody, or an audio recording, and it’s like *click.* I see the whole thing.
The genre mash-ups I do are often born from hearing a piece that puts me somewhere in between two totems of pop-culture. Like, the Twilight/Gossip Girl parody was just “Supermassive Black Hole” coming up on shuffle and thinking “Omg, this sounds like a song they would have used on Gossip Girl... Wait!”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Christian Allaire
