Patrick Lumb, production designer for the Hollywood film industry, has chosen Lucca as his ideal place to live.
Franca Severini
For some years, Patrick Lumb has been “commuting” between the city’s historic center where he lives with his wife Nancy, and Hollywood, where he is art director and set designer for the most renowned directors in the field. Creativity and industry mark Patrick’s life in a binomial that ideally bonds him also to the Perini Journal, always on the look out for excellences in every field. From Lucca to Hollywood, a round trip between two cities lived as complementary entities, homes to the life and work experience of one of the greatest interpreters of contemporary creativity.
“Creativity can be found everywhere, even in the simplest gestures, like making the bed in the morning or brushing our teeth before going to sleep. Inspiration derives from the world we live in: from the way water can find its way from the mountains to the sea, to the way plants grow and react to their environments, to how fish and animals in their natural habitats are so adeptly camouflaged” says Patrick Lumb.
We humans are adapting continually while also impacting our world. Creativity is not only the passive desire to incite pleasure but also an indefatigable force, often born out of need, that has the power to transform everything we know.
It is difficult to find the perfect match between creativity and industry, and Hollywood is a huge industry that encapsulates almost every aspect of human endeavor. It drives, reacts to and embraces innovation in finance, science, in every form of the arts and literature. It is rare to find a big Hollywood film that has a director with enough money, control, and power that the film can be driven by creativity rather than by the need for commercial success. Hollywood epitomizes the age-old battle between art and finance. The old adage that ‘time is money’ is reflected in the amount of time given to prep, shoot and distribute projects. Sometimes creativity can thrive under restrictions. However, sometimes the reverse is also true.
In any case, industry and creativity are inextricably linked. Industry is born out of the desire and/or necessity or other to achieve a profit. In order for an industry to thrive and grow, it requires innovation and creativity to make a successful commercial product.
Italy has an unrivaled and incredibly rich history of innovation in a great many fields: architecture, art, design, film, fashion, photography and, of course, food. The beauty and talent of past and present artisans undoubtedly influences everyone’s life in this country.
Patrick was able to create a happy union between creativity and industry in the movie “The Omen”. “I felt I truly had an input into the outcome of every frame. We created a world for the characters to live in that far exceeded everyone’s expectations and the limitations imposed by the budget and the schedule. It was a balance of creativity born out of restrictions and exceeding limits to succeed in creating something much bigger than was envisioned both by the script itself and the studio that controls the budget.”
He is currently working on several interesting commercial campaigns and television promotional advertisements that give a condensed representation of the meeting point between industry and creativity, test that reveals the artistic abilities in relation to the established budget. A very interesting stimulus.
Hollywood and Lucca are both a great source of stimuli forhis work and his personal life: they are two cities filled with creative, interesting and talented people trying to change the scenarios of the world and of finance. In both places you never know who you will meet; there are people with incredible skills, passion, appreciation and drive to accomplish many different things.
“And speaking about Lucca, the most precious thing I have found here are the friendships, the environment which surrounds me, a rich cultural heritage that is inescapable in every aspect of my daily life. I could summarize Lucca in five words: inspiring, serene, profound, mysterious, beguiling. While Hollywood would be immense,competitive, glamorous, seedy, addictive like a drug.
If I could, I would bring the Church of Santa Maria Corte Orlandini to Hollywood and the Arc Light Cinema with films in their original language to Lucca” smiles Patrick.
“Lucca-Hollywood is an electrifying journey. I like the excitement of starting a new project when I am going to Hollywood and I always love coming home to Lucca, where a special warmth envelopes me upon arrival.” •