Top Ten Lessons on Filmmaking From David Lynch
Top Ten Lessons on Filmmaking From David Lynch
DAVID LYNCH : TOP TEN LESSONS
ON FILMMAKING
TAKE UP ONE IDEA. MAKE THAT ONE IDEA YOUR LIFE –
THINK OF IT, DREAM OF IT, LIVE ON THAT IDEA. LET THE BRAIN, MUSCLES, NERVES,
EVERY PART OF YOUR BODY, BE FULL OF THAT IDEA, AND JUST LEAVE EVERY OTHER IDEA
ALONE. THIS IS THE WAY TO SUCCESS.
-SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
That
is David Lynch. David Lynch.. buddy I just love you. To him idea is
everything. That is true because men come and go, success comes and goes, money
comes and goes but the ideas stay forever. David Lynch has put idea at his highest
regards. In fact David Lynch is synonym to idea and meditation.
Here
is the advice from David Lynch about the secret to his success over the
years in his own words.
1. THE THRILL IS IN THE HUNT
FOR A GOOD IDEA.
IDEAS ARE LIKE FISH. IF YOU WANT TO CATCH LITTLE
FISH, YOU CAN STAY IN THE SHALLOW WATER. BUT IF YOU WANT TO CATCH THE BIG FISH,
YOU’VE GOT TO GO DEEPER. DOWN DEEP, THE FISH ARE MORE POWERFUL AND MORE
PURE.THEY’RE HUGE AND ABSTRACT. AND THEY’RE VERY BEAUTIFUL. -DAVID LYNCH
We
don’t know an idea until it enters a conscious mind. Ideas have to travel quite
a ways before they come into the conscious mind. So by transcending, you start
expanding that consciousness, making the subconscious conscious.
You’ll
catch ideas on a deeper level. And they have more information and more of a
thrill. It’s the happiness in the doing that got greater for me. Catching more
ideas became easier, along with a kind of inner self-assuredness. Looking back,
I did not have much self-assuredness in the beginning.
2. INNER STRENGTH IS KEY TO
WORKING IN THE ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS.
A LOT OF ARTISTS THINK THEY WANT ANGER. BUT A REAL,
STRONG, BITTER ANGER OCCUPIES THE MIND, LEAVING NO ROOM FOR
CREATIVITY. -DAVID LYNCH
In
this business, or in any business, you can just get steamrolled if you don’t
have this inner strength. And the more happiness you have going in, life
becomes more of a game than a torment. And so you look out at the world of
people that used to stress you. It could happen that you would just put your
arm around them and say, “Let’s go have a coffee.” Everything seems happier.
I
always wondered if Transcendental Meditation would make someone just so calm
that they didn’t want to do anything. They’d just become a bland person and
only wanted to eat nuts and raisins. But it’s not that way. You get more
energy. That’s the field of unbounded energy within every human being. It’s
very, very important for the work, this thing of happiness. It’s so important
to be happy in the doing.
3. POSITIVITY IS ESSENTIAL TO
THE CREATIVE PROCESS.
THERE’S SO MANY PROBLEMS IN OUR WORLD, SO MUCH
NEGATIVITY. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE DARKNESS — TURN ON THE LIGHT AND THE DARKNESS
AUTOMATICALLY GOES.-DAVID LYNCH
Stories
always have held conflicts and contrasts, highs and lows, life and death situations.
And there can be much suffering in stories, but now we say the artist doesn’t
have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand the human
condition, understand the suffering.
A
lot of artists say anger or even the experience of fear or these things feeds
the work, and so the suffering artist is a romantic concept. But if you think
about it, it’s romantic for everybody except the artist. If the artist is
really suffering, then the ideas don’t flow so good, and if [he is] really
suffering, he can’t even work. I say that negativity is the enemy to
creativity.
4. EVERYTHING MUST SERVE TO
PUSH THE IDEA FORWARD.
I DON’T THINK ABOUT TECHNIQUE. THE IDEAS DICTATE
EVERYTHING. YOU HAVE TO BE TRUE TO THAT OR YOU’RE DEAD. -DAVID LYNCH
For
me there is always a plot. There is a story that makes sense to me. But in the
story, there are things that are more abstract. There are feelings, and cinema
can say feelings and can say abstract thoughts. Cinema can go back in time, or
forward, and it’s very magical. But you do not do it just to do it. You do it
to realize the ideas you fall in love with. The ideas are gifts, such beautiful
gifts. And I am always so thankful when I get an idea that I fall in love with.
It is a beautiful day to get an idea that you love. What we need is ideas. That
is the only thing we really need.
5. DON’T GET AHEAD OF YOUR
IDEA.
I HAVE NO PROBLEM GETTING FINANCING. I HAVE A PROBLEM
CATCHING IDEAS THAT I FALL IN LOVE WITH FOR THE NEXT FEATURE. -DAVID LYNCH
Don’t
think about the money or what’s going to happen after the film is finished. The
first thing you need is an idea, an idea that you fall in love with. The idea
tells you the mood you choose for the characters, how the characters talk. It
tells you the story, it shows you all the details, and so all you have to do is
stay true to that idea as you shoot your film.
Even
with a little amount of money it is possible to figure out a way to do things.
So you stay true to the idea, and you don’t let anyone interfere with it. And
all rules include final cut and total creative freedom. If you don’t have the
final say or the creative freedom what’s the point of doing anything?
6. EVERYONE MUST BE ON BOARD
WITH YOUR IDEA.
I LET THE ACTORS WORK OUT THEIR IDEAS BEFORE
SHOOTING, THEN TELL THEM WHAT ATTITUDES I WANT. IF A SCENE ISN’T HONEST, IT
STANDS OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB. -DAVID LYNCH
The
trick is to get everyone working with you to go on the same road, based on the
same ideas. And you do this by talking. In the prop department for instance,
the prop person can bring me some things. They may be very good things, but
they’re not in line with the idea. So, you tell the prop man the reason that
they’re not in line, and to look for things that are more like this. And the
next time he comes, it will be much closer to the idea. And one day he will
bring things because he catches the idea.
It’s
the same way with actors. You have rehearsals, and it gets closer by talking
and talking. I always say, they catch that idea there, the way they talk, the
way they think, the way they move. It’s the same way with all the departments
that are helping me.
7. GET INSPIRED, NOT
INFLUENCED.
I LIKE TO REMEMBER THINGS MY OWN WAY. HOW I
REMEMBERED THEM, NOT NECESSARILY THE WAY THEY HAPPENED. -DAVID LYNCH
There’s
a difference between influence and inspiration. I was never a film buff, and I
was not really interested in art history when I was a painter. For me, I always
say the city of Philadelphia was my greatest influence. The mood of that place
when I was there, the feeling in the air, the architecture, the decay,
insanity, corruption and fear swimming in that city are the things I saw in
films.
I
don’t really care what is going on in the world, nor with cinema. However, once
in awhile, you can see a film that is truly great. Or you see some new
paintings and say, “That person has really got something fantastic.” It is an
inspiration, and it pushes you forward.
8. DON’T IGNORE YOUR
TRANSITIONS.
I THINK THAT COMMERCIALS CAN REALLY RUIN A SONG. YOU
KNOW THAT THE PERSON SOLD THE SONG FOR A GOOD DEAL OF MONEY, AND THAT WAS THE
TRADE OFF. BUT, MUSIC AND PICTURE CAN MARRY IN A BEAUTIFUL WAY, AND THE REVERSE
ALSO. -DAVID LYNCH
Cinema
is very close to music. In music, lots of times you have different sections, so
a very loud, fast technique and then very, slow; very high things and very low
things. It is all moving forward at a certain pace, and everybody knows that
the piece of music written on the page, that a certain conductor with a certain
orchestra can get something so profoundly above the others. It’s a magical
thing. Cinema moves through time like music. It goes from one scene to another.
One of the things that is important is these transitions between one thing and
another, one thing flowing into another. And these transitions are very
important and very beautiful.
9. CINEMA DOESN’T NEED TO MAKE
SWEEPING STATEMENTS ON SOCIETY.
LIFE IS VERY, VERY COMPLICATED, AND SO FILMS SHOULD
BE ALLOWED TO BE, TOO. -DAVID LYNCH
A
lot of times, someone finishes a film and in the film there’s a man and a
woman, and certain things happen. And the journalists will say, “Oh, does this
mean you feel this way about women and men in general?” No. It’s this
particular woman in this particular place going through these particular
things. That woman does not represent all women — and this is very important.
10. STOP THE FILM VS. DIGITAL
DEBATE. THERE’S ROOM FOR BOTH.
DIGITAL VIDEO IS SO BEAUTIFUL. IT’S LIGHTWEIGHT,
MODERN, AND IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER. IT’S PUT FILM INTO THE LA BREA TAR PITS. -DAVID
LYNCH
For
a long time I championed digital. I fell in love with digital with Inland Empire. And recently, I was working on deleted
scenes from Twin Peaks. And for the first time
in a long time, I saw the footage shot on film, and I was overwhelmed by the
depth of the beauty that celluloid, that film can give. It has such a depth and
such a beauty. And I like to photograph factories, and I think that in photographing
factories I also saw the difference between digital and celluloid in film.
So,
there are all these different choices we have. In digital we have very long
takes. You don’t have to stop the camera. You can keep it rolling. And you can
talk about the scene while the camera is rolling, and a lot of time that helps
to get a film deeper and deeper. Digital is lightweight, much faster, no dirt,
no scratches, no tearing, and there is so much control in post-production. It
is a beautiful thing. But maybe these different mediums will all stay alive and
one thing will be right for this project and another thing will be right for
that project.
What
I love about David Lynch, in all the mediums in which he works, is that he’s
not afraid to follow his intuition. I hope you like Top Ten Lessons on
Filmmaking From David Lynch. Please let me know your thoughts in comment box
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