How many of us became David Lynch fans while first watch­ing one of his films? And how many of those fans also left filled with the desire to make a film them­selves? Though the long-cir­cu­lat­ing term “Lynchi­an” puts a name to Lynch’s dis­tinc­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing and dis­turb­ing cin­e­mat­ic style, it increas­ing­ly seems that no film­mak­er, no mat­ter how skilled, can quite pull off that style but Lynch him­self. But even if you can nev­er be the man who direct­ed the likes of Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve (and co-cre­at­ed the sim­i­lar­ly inim­itable tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks), you can still learn a great deal about film­mak­ing from him that you can’t learn from any­one else.

Now online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­Class has made some of his knowl­edge eas­i­ly acces­si­ble in the form of their new course “David Lynch Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Film.” In Lynch’s world — unlike Hol­ly­wood in gen­er­al — you can’t make a film with­out cre­ativ­i­ty. But of what does cre­ativ­i­ty con­sist? “Ideas are every­thing,” says Lynch in the trail­er for his Mas­ter­Class above. “We’re noth­ing with­out an idea. So I go where the ideas lead.” He has long liked to make an anal­o­gy with fish­ing: you put a piece of bait on a hook, cast your line out into the world, and wait for an idea to bite. Dif­fer­ent idea-fish­ing meth­ods work for dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and Lynch has spo­ken of his suc­cess with drink­ing a milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy every day for sev­en years, and even more so with decade after decade of twice-dai­ly med­i­ta­tion.

How­ev­er you fish for ideas, “you don’t know when they’re going to come or what will trig­ger them. Lo and behold, on a lucky day, bin­go, you’ll catch an idea, and… par­ty time.” Lynch also drops an unex­pect­ed­ly prac­ti­cal piece of advice to do with all this in the trail­er: “If you want to make a fea­ture-length film, all you need to do is get 70 ideas.” Then you take those 70 ideas, write them on cards, and put the cards in order — and not nec­es­sar­i­ly in a nar­ra­tive­ly con­ven­tion­al order. “In cin­e­ma, I don’t like rules,” Lynch says, a state­ment that will sur­prise nei­ther his boost­ers nor his detrac­tors. He cov­ers that ter­ri­to­ry in the eleventh les­son of his Mas­ter­Class, which explains the dif­fer­ence between “restric­tions that sti­fle cre­ativ­i­ty from those that actu­al­ly help you to think out­side the box.” Oth­er lessons get into “how to approach a blank page,” “how to iden­ti­fy and rec­og­nize the right per­former for a part,” and “how David han­dles the pres­sures of the set while pro­tect­ing a cre­ative space for the cast and crew.”

A final “bonus chap­ter” offers Lynch’s views on tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, a prac­tice that has taught him “to approach life and work with deep­er aware­ness” and “enjoy the ‘doing’ of almost any activ­i­ty.” That sets “David Lynch Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Film” apart from the oth­er film­mak­ing cours­es Mas­ter­class offers, taught by such an intel­lec­tu­al­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly var­ied set of lumi­nar­ies as Mar­tin Scors­ese, Ken Burns, Jodie Fos­ter, Spike Lee, and Wern­er Her­zog. You can take all of those, and any oth­er Mas­ter­class besides, with the site’s “all-access pass,” or just this one course for $90. And even if you don’t, you’d do pret­ty well to take with you into your film­mak­ing career the words by which Lynch him­self has clear­ly lived: “Nev­er give up final cut and total cre­ative free­dom.” For a com­plete list of Mas­ter­class cours­es, click here.

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Boosts Our Cre­ativ­i­ty (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Med­i­tat­ing)

How David Lynch Got Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion? By Drink­ing a Milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Sin­gle Day, for Sev­en Straight Years

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing: A New Inter­ac­tive Com­e­dy Game

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

This week, Mas­ter­Class rolled out its lat­est course–Natal­ie Port­man teach­ing a 20-les­son class on act­ing. The upstart edu­ca­tion­al ven­ture writes:

One of her generation’s most ver­sa­tile per­form­ers, Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actor Natal­ie Port­man has been cap­ti­vat­ing audi­ences for decades. Since her on-screen debut at age 12, she’s worked with some of cinema’s most cel­e­brat­ed direc­tors and show­cased her skills through unfor­get­table roles in Black Swan, Jack­ie, and the Star Wars fran­chise.

Hav­ing nev­er tak­en an act­ing class, Natal­ie devel­oped her craft over 25 years of obser­va­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and count­less bold exper­i­ments. The con­sum­mate dra­mat­ic shapeshifter, she has worked across gen­res and his­tor­i­cal peri­ods, imbu­ing each per­for­mance with an authen­tic­i­ty she attrib­ut­es to intense research, prepa­ra­tion, and an eye for human behav­ior.

And now, in her first-ever act­ing class, she “shows how empa­thy is at the core of every great per­for­mance, how to bring real-life details into every role, and how to build your own cre­ative process.”

You can enroll in Port­man’s new class (which runs $90) here. You can also pay $180 to get an annu­al pass to the entire­ty of Mas­ter­Class’ cours­es–a cat­a­log of about 50 cours­es, which includes oth­er act­ing class­es by Jodie Fos­ter, Samuel L. Jack­son and more.

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

450+ Movie Scenes Where Actors Break the Fourth Wall, Pre­sent­ed in Two Big Super­cuts

What Made Robin Williams a Unique­ly Expres­sive Actor: A Video Essay Explores a Sub­tle Dimen­sion of His Com­ic Genius

Movie Accent Expert Ana­lyzes 31 Actors Play­ing Oth­er Famous Peo­ple: Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Natal­ie Port­man as Jack­ie Kennedy, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, and More

FYI: Mira Nair, the direc­tor of Mon­soon Wed­ding and The Name­sake, has just released an online mas­ter­class on inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing. In 17 video lessons, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed direc­tor teach­es stu­dents how to “make a big impact on a small bud­get, evoke the best from actors and non-actors, and pro­tect your cre­ative vision so you tell the sto­ry that can only come from you.” Nair’s course runs $90. But for $180, you can get an All-Access Pass to Mas­ter­class’ cat­a­logue of 45 cours­es, which includes cours­es by a num­ber of oth­er promi­nent filmmakers–Martin Scors­ese, Spike Lee, Ken Burns, Ron Howard, Wern­er Her­zog and more. Not to men­tion actors and actress­es like Samuel L. Jack­son and Helen Mir­ren.

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Direc­tor Robert Rodriguez Teach­es The Basics of Film­mak­ing in Under 10 Min­utes

The Stu­dent of Prague: The Very First Inde­pen­dent Film (1913)