Master David Lynch

Source: last.fm

This post is a bit different from any other on this blog. This one goes to the unique David Lynch. His credits? Director, visual artist, musician and meditation practitioner. He has developed his own cinematic surreal style in cinema and the fact that his movies are hard to decipher makes it even more fascinating. Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive are films that stick in one's head.

Because I own one of his books called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, I thought I might share some of his ideas on filmmaking, cinema and creativity.

"Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way we make heads or tails of it is through intuition. Intuition is seeing the solution – seeing it, knowing it. It’s emotion and intellect going together. That’s essential for the filmmaker.

How do you get something to feel right? Everybody’s got the same tools: the camera and the tapes and the world and the actors. But in putting those parts together, there are differences. That’s where intuition enters.

Personally, I think intuition can be sharpened and expanded through meditation, diving into the Self. There’s an ocean of consciousness inside each of us, and it’s an ocean of solutions. When you dive into that ocean, that consciousness, you enliven it."

"Sometimes you hear a piece of music, and it marries to a scene in the script. When I’m shooting, I will often play that piece of music in the headphones whilst listening to the dialogue. Hearing the music is just a verification that things are going the right way – for instance, the right pace or lighting. It’s just another tool to ensure that you’re following that original idea and being true to it."

"Stories have tangents; they open up and become different things. You can still have a structure, but you should leave room to dream. If you stay true to your ideas, filmmaking becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process. And if it's an honest thing for you, there's a chance that people will feel that, even if it's abstract."

"I like making films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost into another world." 

Got any favourite director quotes?