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maxfolkman.bsky.social
Max Folkman
@maxfolkman.bsky.social
1.3K followers 610 following 89 posts
Writer, Director w/ @nickfolkman.bsky.social • Now: Senior Writer @ Riot Games • Prev: Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank, Miles Morales, MASSIVE CHALICE • voice on @scriptlock.bsky.social • Rep: Rain Management
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maxfolkman.bsky.social
A puppet holds a megaphone and announces “attention, freaks. It’s me.”
September 23, 2025 at 4:23 AM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh
Spidey clutching his head saying OMG
June 25, 2025 at 3:22 AM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
In honor of Val Kilmer, I recommend everyone watch the commentary for Kiss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, where he spends the entire time name dropping celebrities for a contest on his website
April 2, 2025 at 3:48 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
📝🔒📌
A sweet pin of the Script Lock podcast logo
March 3, 2025 at 11:22 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
Some great stuff in this 2010 interview with Alex Garland after working on his (so far) only video game (Enslaved: Odyssey to the West)
"It's not important for everyone to understand storytelling, but it's important for them to respect it."
web.archive.org/web/20101007...
Interviewer: There’s also often one writer, Marc Laidlaw, who drives the story. Is that sufficient, do you think, or should all developers learn to become good storytellers to a degree? Garland: That’s a really, really big question. The first thing I’d say, and I want to make this really clear, is that I was not the writer on Enslaved in the way that Marc is the writer on Half-Life. I was very emphatically a co-writer. When I arrived at that project, the levels and the characters pre-existed. Not only that, but much of the required scenes between the characters already existed as well. So, in the way I conceptualise a writer, in that he begins with a blank sheet of paper, I was not the writer. With regard to narrative, I think what I’d say is that it’s not important for everyone to understand storytelling, but it’s important for them to respect it. If you’re going to have a narrative within a game, you have to see it as being as valid as the gameplay. That’s what it boils down to. So here [gestures towards the door] is a film production company, and lots of different people are working on Judge Dredd behind us right now. Some of them will have narrative uppermost in their minds, and some of them won’t; some of them will be thinking: ‘How do I design this gun?’ And the design will have some narrative components. It’s got to have a display that tells you what kind of ammo you’re using, stuff like that. But they’re not really thinking about the overall narrative picture and they don’t have to, but they’re also not going to do stuff that contradicts it, and if they do then someone else will correct it. Garland: I guess if I were to make a criticism it would relate to character and consistency. Making sure characters are true to themselves, and true to some kind of larger truth, which relates to the recipients of the narrative. That is to say, the player. Us. For example, I think the first serious discussion we had about the narrative was on the very first day that I, Tameem and the level designers all sat down together. We got to a section where Monkey was walking down a walkway, and he sees an escaping slave trying to pull himself up to the walkway. And instead of helping the guy up, Monkey kicked him in the face and sent him to his death. They thought that projected the idea that Monkey was a badass. Whereas, to me, it projected the idea that Monkey was a bit of a cunt. I think that highlighted a difference in our approach to character. This is a generalisation, and I know there are plenty of exceptions to the rule, but game design has a tendency to be fast and loose with character, whereas in film and books, character is handled with kid gloves. Ultimately, if you want to be serious about narrative, you have to be serious about character too. Garland: That said, I wouldn’t want to let games off the hook. Games can and will be high art. I don’t think Rez is Hamlet, but I think Hamlet will one day exist in games. Other people might not like Hamlet and prefer Rez instead. That’s fine. What I do think, though, is that the games industry has some very serious problems to address. It seems to me that what’s happened is that in its organic development, it has leapfrogged some key stages and has jumped straight to bloated Hollywood megabucks, mega-resources-type products. That’s really dangerous. I say that from the point of view of someone who has an agenda, because I work in the film industry and struggle constantly with the consequences of these things within film - how you get finance, how you actually make a film while dealing with an industry that, in some ways, is only seriously interested in big franchise movies. Dredd we’re going to try to make for $30 million. Studios don’t want to make films for $30 million, they want to make them for $200 million for all sorts of reasons. Interviewer: Do gamers - fans - ultimately need to evolve as much as games do themselves? Garland: Fans are dangerous - and I say that as a fan. What happens as a fan is that you start to define what you want that thing to be. And, broadly speaking, the people who are doing what they’re doing should do it in a vacuum. They should not really be listening to anybody. They should be closing out as many voices as possible. Closing out the voices that say this film or game should have a love interest; closing out the fans that say they like this gun from the first game, and that if this gun’s not in it, they’ll hate the second one. They should do what they feel is the right thing to do, and people like me at the other end - the receivers - can then make their own minds up.
February 22, 2025 at 11:26 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
Rewatched The Wrong Trousers last night for the first time in years and would like to retroactively give it the cinematography Oscar for 1993
Gromit trails Feathers McGraw down an alley with film noir composition and lighting Feathers McGraw enters the backyard of Wallace. It’s night, with a slight glow coming through the gate against the coolness of the moonlight Feathers McGraw stands in front of the mechanical trousers with a screwdriver, in a very film noir-y shot The closing shot of the Wrong Trousers, where the trousers match off into town on their own. The shot is blanketed in orange light from the sunset, with clouds overhead
February 20, 2025 at 9:36 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
With every passing year I’ve become more convinced that this scene from Burn After Reading is the best thing the Coens have written
January 26, 2025 at 8:11 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
RIP David Lynch. Everyone has their favorite Lynch-isms, but I keep going back to his raw reaction to watching the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life.
January 16, 2025 at 7:03 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
Only gonna get worse!
Snapshot from the WSJ article “Inside Hollywood’s Big ‘Wicked’ Gamble” In today’s Hollywood, it isn’t enough to debut a film in theaters. As seen with last year’s blockbuster “Barbie,” getting audiences to the theater in droves requires sucking up more pop-culture oxygen than ever—and turning a movie into an event, a movement and perhaps even a lifestyle. “We’re going to be just short of obnoxious,” Universal Pictures’ chief marketing officer, Michael Moses, assured theater owners at a screening of the film in September.
November 21, 2024 at 12:38 AM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
Framing some stuff
A black and white inked drawing of dinosaurs riding a souped-up dump truck. The drawing sits on a white table and has a black wooden frame sample around one corner. A black wooden frame sample is positioned on the corner of a black and white inked comic. The cropped panels are from the comic Hellboy, from the story “Pancakes”.
November 12, 2024 at 8:36 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
An earlier version of this talk had this on one of the slides, so you know you’re in for some quality content. COME!!!
Sonic dressed up as the Heath Ledger Joker
October 17, 2024 at 11:21 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
Panels from Punisher War Journal #4 where Gibbon bemoans that nobody ever asks what a Gibbon is anymore.
July 18, 2023 at 9:44 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
July 2, 2023 at 5:01 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
I’m not going to make it a habit of copying my tweets, but this was too good to stay on the hellsite
THE SIX STAGEs OF FILM PRODUCTION 1. Wild Enthusiasm 2. Total Confusion 3. Utter Despair 4. Search for the Guilty 5. Punishment of the Innocent 6. Reward of the Non-Involved As described by Walter Murch
June 24, 2023 at 8:17 PM
maxfolkman.bsky.social
I’m here
June 14, 2023 at 10:14 PM