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March 28, 2024, 04:10:59 PM

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David Lynch's Masterclass

Started by Wet Blanket, March 19, 2019, 03:24:25 PM

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Wet Blanket

https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/03/david-lynch-online-masterclass/

I get the adverts for these all the time ahead of YouTube videos and such. Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard do one as well. I'm not particularly interested in making a film personally but I'd certainly like to hear Lynch's take on it.

Has anyone subscribed to any of these? The website seems a bit cagey about revealing the price for individual courses, but it's a £170 for 'All Access' which is a bit steep

Shit Good Nose

I think you can get just as much from laserdisc/DVD/blu ray commentaries and books, to be honest.  At that price, at least.

Plus I'd be a bit cagey about forking out for Lynch given that I've never been entirely convinced he knows what his films or his thought processes are about half the time...

Maybe wait for someone to post it online illegally.

Wet Blanket

Apparently an average Masterclass course video is between 3 and 14 minutes long, and there are about a dozen videos per course. It would be interesting to watch 13 videos of David Lynch discussing his art (or Steve Martin or Werner Herzog and all the other high profile 'tutors') but £170 worth of interesting... maybe not.


NoSleep

I wonder if this this gets beyond his usual pet theme of creativity and its source and into the nuts and bolts of filmmaking. Aside from the numerous commentaries and accompanying documentaries to his films, there's the CD, David Lynch: A Marriage Of Picture And Sound (2011).

www.amazon.co.uk/David-Lynch-Marriage-Picture-Sound/dp/3869840552/cab-21

https://www.discogs.com/David-Lynch-The-Marriage-Of-Picture-And-Sound/release/3520374

NoSleep

Quote from: Wet Blanket on March 19, 2019, 03:38:20 PM
Apparently an average Masterclass course video is between 3 and 14 minutes long, and there are about a dozen videos per course. It would be interesting to watch 13 videos of David Lynch discussing his art (or Steve Martin or Werner Herzog and all the other high profile 'tutors') but £170 worth of interesting... maybe not.

The link says that the Lynch portion is $90; isn't the $180 for all (or at least some of) their content from various filmmakers?

Wet Blanket

A bit more digging and yeah it's £85 for the single courses but probably better value for money to get the lot for £170.

In Lynch on Lynch he seemed open to discussing technical aspects of his work, but didn't go near that side of things in Room to Dream. I imagine he'll emphasise the importance of meditation somehow. Apparently in the Werner Herzog course his assignments include 'walk 100 miles' and 'schedule an interview with a prisoner', so I'm assuming they should better be regarded as reasonably highbrow  'infotainment' as opposed to an actual course of learning.

NoSleep

There'll be signature finger-waggling aplenty, that's for sure.

rasta-spouse

Quote from: Wet Blanket on March 19, 2019, 03:53:15 PM
I imagine he'll emphasise the importance of meditation somehow.

On one of his pods Russell Brand relates a mini-masterclass he got from Lynch when he needed advice on directing a music video. I recall it had a new age flavour to it. And I think they both do TM together. What a list of contacts that man has. 

Mister Six

What's the point of meditating with someone?

Wet Blanket

Incidentally he's looking alarmingly gaunt in the promo adverts for this. I hope he's taking care of himself

rasta-spouse

QuoteWhat's the point of meditating with someone?


I think Lynch has an anecdote about group meditation reducing the amount of violence in a city. Synchronising brainwaves?

NoSleep

That would be the "Maharishi Effect", which claims that the larger the number of people regularly following TM in an area then the lower the crime rates would be.

https://research.mum.edu/maharishi-effect/

Most likely it's the other way round.

mjwilson

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on March 19, 2019, 03:29:24 PM
I think you can get just as much from laserdisc/DVD/blu ray commentaries

Good luck with that for Lynch.

olliebean

Quote from: Wet Blanket on March 19, 2019, 03:38:20 PM
Apparently an average Masterclass course video is between 3 and 14 minutes long, and there are about a dozen videos per course. It would be interesting to watch 13 videos of David Lynch discussing his art (or Steve Martin or Werner Herzog and all the other high profile 'tutors') but £170 worth of interesting... maybe not.

So that's probably 1.5-2.5 hours of material in the average course, then (assuming the average video length tends more towards the upper end of that range) - $85 seems a bit steep for that, frankly.

garbed_attic

Quote from: Wet Blanket on March 19, 2019, 03:53:15 PM
Apparently in the Werner Herzog course his assignments include 'walk 100 miles' and 'schedule an interview with a prisoner', so I'm assuming they should better be regarded as reasonably highbrow  'infotainment' as opposed to an actual course of learning.

Herzog has been very consistent in his belief that this is what teaching filmmaking should consist of though tbf... like, he was saying this kind of thing a good decade before he actually did any of these masterclasses. I mean, a bit part of his personal mythology is that he made his first film with a camera stolen from a film school.

He is, in many respects, not a fan of book learning for such a hyper-literate man.

But, to be honest, I doubt many students' brains work like Herzog's.

Bence Fekete

"Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read...if you don't read, you will never be a filmmaker."

― Werner Herzog

Sin Agog

Quote from: Bence Fekete on March 19, 2019, 11:58:14 PM
"Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read...if you don't read, you will never be a filmmaker."

― Werner Herzog

He's got a point.  How else will you know which one's the record button?

Herzog's Of Walking In Ice, the diary he kept during his trek from Germany to France to visit an ailing film critic's hospital bed, is still a bit of a favourite.    And I totally agree with his earlier advice about walking, experiencing and the like.  He's just trying his best to ensure that not all his students end up becoming the kind of ciphers and no-marks who fill the ranks of his profession.

fucking ponderous

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on March 19, 2019, 03:29:24 PM
I think you can get just as much from laserdisc/DVD/blu ray commentaries and books, to be honest.  At that price, at least.
Completely agree. I doubt there's anything he's said here that you can't find for free somewhere else if you're willing to look for it. These things are such a scam. Basically just glorified behind the scenes interviews.
Also, weird emphasis on Wild at Heart in that promo material. Not that I'm complaining.

chveik

Lynch is pretty rubbish in interviews. I really doubt that it's worth the trouble.

Sin Agog

Shirley that five-hour documentary by that sexy, pretentious German dude on the Twin Peaks: The Return DVD already served this purpose?

NoSleep

I don't think he's rubbish in interviews (his explanation of his creativity is as clear as it could possibly be), but I don't think there's anything left that he hasn't already covered elsewhere, unless it's a radical departure. No doubt that the "a painting that moves" story is the central pillar.


Head Gardener


rasta-spouse

Has anyone read Lynch's Catching the Big Fish?

PlanktonSideburns

Quote from: fucking ponderous on March 20, 2019, 05:14:16 AM
Completely agree. I doubt there's anything he's said here that you can't find for free somewhere else if you're willing to look for it. These things are such a scam. Basically just glorified behind the scenes interviews.
Also, weird emphasis on Wild at Heart in that promo material. Not that I'm complaining.

Sorry to derail but that is the best avatar I have ever seen

colacentral

Quote from: rasta-spouse on March 25, 2019, 04:04:13 PM
Has anyone read Lynch's Catching the Big Fish?

Yes. It's about 100 pages long with about 10 words per page, and 60-70% of it is about meditation. But if you're a Lynch mega fan it's still a good little read, and there's information in there that explains alot about season three of Twin Peaks (the way that he describes meditation, positivity / negativity, the unified field etc in imagery which is later mimicked in Twin Peaks, as well as his general views on life shedding some light on what he's trying to say with the show. I've seen and read as many Lynch interviews as I can find and there is a bit of info in that book relevant to Twin Peaks that I don't think you'll find anywhere else).

St_Eddie

For £170, I'd expect David Lynch to personally come around to my flat, give me a masterclass in film, cook my supper and then work the shaft and cradle the balls.

Blumf

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 25, 2019, 04:53:25 PM
...and then work the shaft and cradle the balls.

Transcendentally


Head Gardener

I have the 2xCD audiobook of Big Fish narrated by Lynch and it's beautiful to listen to, I picked it up in a chazzer

hedgehog90

Quote from: Wet Blanket on March 19, 2019, 04:10:15 PM
Incidentally he's looking alarmingly gaunt in the promo adverts for this. I hope he's taking care of himself

I thought the same. The dreaded C word crept into my mind, but considering he's 73 it's probably just his age catching up with him.

Incidentally I listened to the Room to Dream audiobook recently, and it hit me just what an insane undertaking directing the entirety of Twin Peaks The Return was for Lynch (70 years old at the time), and the incredible toll it took on his life.
Another season of Twin Peaks now would probably kill him. The best we can hope for is a Netflix film or 2 if we're lucky.