More from David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish:
A Sense of Place
A sense of place is so critical in cinema, because you want to go into another world. Every story has its own world, and its own feel, and its own mood. So you try to put together all these things--these little details--to create that sense of place.
It has a lot to do with lighting and sound. The sounds that come into a room can help paint a world there and make it so much fuller. While many sets are good enough for a wide shot, in my mind, they should be good enough for close scrutiny, for the little details to show. You may not ever really see them all, but you've got to feel that they're there, somehow, to feel that it's a real place, a real world.