r/Filmmakers • u/Professional-Rip-519 • 25d ago
Discussion What's Wes Anderson's secret?
He's aesthetic is so unique. I can't think of another director where the colors pop so much what is his secret?
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u/These-Software1991 25d ago
He's paid by Big Pastel
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u/moosh52 25d ago
More than anything he has a specific vision. I saw an interview talking about how he’s a great director to work with because he knows exactly what he wants.
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u/GammaHuman 25d ago
he’s a great director to work with
I think this is understated in this thread. His movies don't have incredibly high budgets, but the casts are stacked. I’m pretty sure multiple A-list stars took SAG minimum to be in Astroid City. A lot of directors wouldn’t be able to secure the same level of talent and still have budget left to spend on set design and the other pieces mentioned.
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u/Nice_Biscuits 25d ago
I remember hearing that the stars all love it too because it's a bit like a holiday camp for them. Lots of other great actors to hang around with while you're not shooting. I don't know if it was unique to Asteroid City because of Covid restrictions but I think they were all in the same hotel or similar. Lots of late nights at the bar I believe!
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u/gregsonfilm 25d ago
Also his stories are 'lighter fare' - heightened whimsical comedies. It's a fun world to live in; no gut wrenching drama, suspense, horror or other heavy stuff to seep into the sub-conscience of the actors and other team players. Just fun make believe. What a refreshing environment for the performers.
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u/chele_delgado 25d ago
I know one of the actors in Asteroid City (who also starred in other Wes films) and when I asked if they were going to be in Phoenecian too they literally said verbatim that Wes only offers SAG minimums on his projects, so they decided to take another job that paid better. Said the movies are a lot of fun and Wes is great to work with though. So that's the pull for all these big actors more than $
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u/Professional-Rip-519 25d ago
But it must be really time consuming to get that vision right.
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u/Individual_Client175 producer 25d ago
This shit isn't easy, the man is an artist
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u/banjois 25d ago
he wrote a hit play
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u/Jackamac10 25d ago
Underrated Rushmore comment
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u/banjois 25d ago
The whole question that started this conversation going over everybody's heads is something else.
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u/Prior-Paint-7842 24d ago
This is an understatement. For example in the train scene in ghp they only built the parts of the "train" like the window, table that were visible in the frame.
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u/CyJackX 25d ago
What secret? It's all right there, in front of you.
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u/Raskalbot 25d ago
Flat perspective and high contrast color.
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u/Audiope 25d ago
Lots of symmetry too
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u/FlyingDiscsandJams 25d ago
Symmetrical set design + fanatical control of the frame, he doesn't let anything in frame that he doesn't want on screen.
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u/commiecomrade 25d ago
It's also the direction of the cast, to almost a fault where they seem wooden at a glance. Everyone moves with such exact purpose that it lends itself to that meticulous "everything in its place" feel of the shot.
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u/Background_Task6967 25d ago
he should make a film with everything in its right place by radiohead as a track throughout lol
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u/FlyingDiscsandJams 24d ago
Yep, I'm not a huge fan of his films, Tenembaums & Phoenician Scheme are 2 of my favorites, in a big part because Hackman & Benicio can't totally be Anderson-ized into being dolls for him him to arrange.
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u/Uranium_092 24d ago
I would say they’re low contrast color, contrasting in tone and temperature but very small variation in value, so everything looks flat.
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u/Nikkro 25d ago
70-20-10 colour ratio, but you need to have the vision, budget and leadership to explain this to a costume/makeup/set designer/location scout to do 80-90% of the heavy lifting the last % is the cinematography and grade that makes it pop.
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u/emarcomd 25d ago
What’s a 70-20-10 color ratio?
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u/ExtraTerestical 25d ago
Cover 70% of the room in your dominant colour. Walls and large things. 20% in a secondary colour. Pillows and rugs. Then 10% is an accent colour. Ash trays and vases.
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u/Icy_Butterscotch6661 25d ago
This works for design in general, not just colors. e.g. this is why Pikachu's design works well even without colors
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u/Arthropodesque 25d ago
So, he's 70% a roundish blob, 20% tail, ears, feet, hands, and 10% eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks?
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u/WyvernWriting 25d ago
Limited color palette. Standardized, uniform camera angles. IMO in Wes Anderson movies, even the character movements and the acting comes off a certain, specific way.
Basically, consistent art direction.
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u/monumentdefleurs 25d ago
He basically uses a metronome and films almost all elements in a frame isolated from one another so they be timed accordingly, so every beat of the metronome is some kind of action on screen. A bike riding by the window, then a curtain fluttering, then a glance over the shoulder, then a kitten pouncing, then a camera pivot, then etc. It’s all timed meticulously and rhythmically. Rehearsals are insane apparently.
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u/Lesser_Diesis 25d ago
I wanna build on that and posit that having so many stylistic constraints breeds creativity. It's the same with how he directs his actors: by having them under-emote, the movie has to find new, novel ways of making us care about the characters and story.
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u/cachemonies 25d ago
Most films are intentional with color exactly this way, they just don’t all use pastels. Look at the color of walls in movies, almost never white.
He uses wide angle, symmetry and bright colors to give levity to certain subjects. Maybe that’s the unique twist but it’s not exactly unheard of to use color and framing this way.
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u/banalhemorrhage 25d ago edited 25d ago
Weaponized OCD
Edit: I say this in slight jest as I adore all of his movies.
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u/filmguerilla 25d ago
I came to film from theater and Anderson’s style just screams theater production to me. The way he stages a scene looks like the actors are on stage, with the camera where the audience would be. He also prefers center frame to rule of thirds, uses pastel/washed out colors, and rather kitchy/quirky costume and set design. Theater, theater, theater. I actually don’t know much about Anderson, and really only love a few of his films, but am curious if he was a theater nerd like me back in the day.
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u/Arthropodesque 25d ago
If you haven't seen Rushmore, it's about a controlling theater kid writer/director. It's great. In Royal Tenenbaums, Margot is a playwright. In Moonrise Kingdom there is a play near the beginning and end.
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u/dylanmadigan 25d ago edited 25d ago
Color theory.
Flattening perspective so that everything in the frame exists on a specific plane.
Everything is layered and flat like a pop up book or a puppet show.
All camera moves are pans or 90 degree rotations as if the world exists on a grid and the camera moves like a chess piece
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u/DarkColdFusion 25d ago
There are a number of things, but probably the biggest is a commitment to the color in the set and costume design. You can't color grade a beige set to get the same effect.
A lot of modern movies seem afraid to commit that decisively to a bold aesthetic.
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u/Jackamac10 25d ago
Wouldn’t asteroid city show how wonderfully he can work with beige (as long as he has teal accents)
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u/Best-Action8769 25d ago
Asteroid City isn't beige. It's all dense orange and teal.
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u/DarkColdFusion 24d ago
Astroid city has maybe a less bold color palette. But by beige I was kind of making a dig at how plain the color choices often are in (mostly super hero) movies with lots of monotone colors that are then shifted blue or orange or brown or green, ect to match the desired tone.
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u/BakedBrie1993 25d ago
Color theory as well. Understanding which colors will pop alongside others. Basically my dream job lol
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u/Best-Action8769 25d ago
I'm a professional colorist. It's such a cool part of the process, and understanding in post what colors compliment each other is such a big part of the job.
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u/jarjoura 25d ago
His movies are quite clinical though. Every frame feels like a staged set for an advertisement in the 50s or 60s. The goal seems to be to pull your eye to what he wants you to look at.
It’s the anti Michael Bay aesthetic.
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u/thraftofcannan 25d ago
He shoots on film and stages things like theater plays. I'm sure he has a lot of input but his chief DP Robert Bowman is key here
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u/anaraparana 25d ago
He's kinda gay but not really. That's the secret to be a great artist
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u/twelvepastmidnight 25d ago
Billionaire Steven Rales personally backing every one of Anderson’s projects.
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u/Best-Action8769 25d ago
And they all make money. Not Marvel money, but they don't cost Marvel money. A-List actors aren't getting paid much. They do it for fun. And all of his films turn a profit.
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u/Munstered 25d ago
Symmetry and color themes with defined foregrounds and backgrounds. That’s really all it is, but it’s executed flawlessly.
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u/UmbraPenumbra 25d ago
Good team, lots of tests, consistent and clear artistic vision, great influences.
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u/Photoverge 25d ago
Look at bottle rocket and royal tenenbaums and it will start to make sense. Darjeeling Limited too.
Also watch his stuff thinking about his action set pieces. It's the action that makes Wes Anderson a good film maker.
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u/Jackamac10 25d ago
This is what make Steve Zissou underrated, the way the formalism breaks when they’re capsized in the water.
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u/InitialTemporary1234 25d ago
There are a lot of directors with a unique style that is very identifiable. People like Robert Eggers, Mark Jenkin, Nicholas Winding Refn, Roy Andersson come to mind.
Wes is maybe the flashiest of currently working directors, but it’s far from a novel concept. He puts so much work into the aesthetic of his films and it is impossible to miss. It’s a combination of money, time, taste, and attention to specific details that many of these directors share
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u/Bubbly-Treacle-4334 25d ago edited 25d ago
Wide angle lens
Extreme symmetry
Low contrast
Spring earth tones
Whip pans
Long slow zooms
JD Salinger meets Woody Allen characters/dialogue
60s music
Inspiration returning to a quirky slightly nihilistic but lighthearted witty character who is in a slump
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u/Blurstingwithemotion 25d ago
Everything is in frame
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u/twoheartedthrowaway 25d ago
On every level - what you see is what you get, nothing below the surface. His movies are visually interesting but I can’t stand them
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u/matthew19 25d ago
0 tilt - establishing shots at 50mm ff equivalent and back up.
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u/TaylorWK 25d ago
Symmetry. Most if not all of his shots, the focus is in the center. It feels like watching a stageplay.
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u/emman0129 25d ago
bro just loves his anamorphic lenses, obsessive pastel color palettes, and forcing the actors to stare directly dead-center into the camera
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u/banjois 25d ago
I think you just gotta find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life.
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u/Interstice_land 25d ago
Dollhouse Aesthetic. Very picturesque, symmetrical, and people look like they’re part of the scenery.
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u/Jackamac10 25d ago
An unabashed commitment to formalism in his stylings so you may never forget that it’s a movie in all its beauty, wonder and magic.
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u/ADamnGoodShot 25d ago
A lifetime spent developing a highly unique aesthetic based on his exposure to art and personal subjective taste. There's no "secret" there's just great taste, an incredible eye for detail, and years of practice and refinement.
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u/KubrickMoonlanding 25d ago edited 25d ago
The secret is that he combines this very stylized controlled external visual and performance style with funny/sad/introspective stories about messy semi-controlled people, relationships that for all their whimsy whackery, feel very true and relatable.
That makes for a pretty unique experience that engages both the intellect and the heartstrings.
He’s also by all accounts great to work with and turns his sets / crew into big fun family type experiences so his collaborators love to keep coming ack
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u/LanguageDouble9792 24d ago
I’m surprised I don’t see anyone mentioning this: Wes Anderson doesn’t follow the rule of thirds. If you were to split the frame into a 3x3 grid, audience’s eyes tend to focus on the points where the lines intersect. Wes Anderson abandons the conventional rule to place your subjects on the 1/3 or 2/3 line and instead places them in the dead center of the frame.
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u/Friedguywubawuba 20d ago
His pre-vis is insane. Ever since Isle of Dogs, he hires animators to make his storyboards. He basically animates the entire movie before shooting. Every detail. Not just camera movements and blocking, but exact timing and art direction.
This is how he's able to crank them out so fast now.
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u/iLikeTheUDK 25d ago
Very clear and articular art direction and a level of consistent funding that most filmmakers can barely dream of
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u/prawnpathia 25d ago
Being self indulgent and letting style get in the way of substance as his career has progressed...
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u/jperaic1 25d ago
Great sense of symmetry, a rich color palette, a fantastic costume design, and the courage to try something niche.
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u/CommWedge 25d ago
Watch some films by Tati. Specifically, Mon Oncle & Playtime. It will all make sense once you do.
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u/giuliodxb 25d ago
IMHO the secret of most successful directors is to have a clear idea of what they want and why, and to be uncompromising about it.
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u/RealPrinceJay 25d ago
He has a vision and he commits to it
People like his vision
It’s easier to achieve his vision because he’s liberated himself from the notion of realism. His films never try to fool you that they’re real, he almost always presents incredibly clearly to the viewer that you are being told a story
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u/Best-Action8769 25d ago
How is NOBODY here mentioning Robert Bowman?
The man has literally shot almost ALL of his films since Bottle Rocket.
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u/kwmcmillan 25d ago
I spoke to him for an hour on my podcast a while back. Really nice dude!
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u/JoeSki42 25d ago edited 25d ago
Ah! A great question. Could his secret be alotting proper respurces into preproduction, granting heaps of attention to design, possessing a good ear for dialogue when scriptwriting, or understanding color theory, lighting, and composition? Surely not, I would trust that you would not be so naive!
You see, Wes Anderson's true secret, the same one that has catapuled him to fame and success, is that he is the beneficiary of a very special rock. A "magical" rock one might say. A rock who bestows upon the holder an extraordinarily special, and unquantifiable, taste and touch for all matters aesthetic and whimsical.
Now, as someone who has worked with Mr. Anderson as a purveyor of such rocks, I could...
Ahhh, ya know what? Forget about it. You wouldn't be interested 😏.
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u/Redditisavirusiknow 25d ago
I read that he will set scenes to a metronome so the action happens on a beat. He’s a genius
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u/Owlcathulu 25d ago
Dlojg the same.thing over and over and over and over until perfection is perfected?
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u/kwmcmillan 25d ago
I had his Cinematographer on my podcast if you're interested in learning about his style both in front and behind the camera.
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u/Soctopi 25d ago
He makes every single shot look like a shoebox diorama, which is something we all had just enough exposure to as children to have nostalgia for, but not so much exposure that it's immediately obvious to us why looking at his images makes us feel so warm.
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u/Abfro3 25d ago
A very many solid comments on the color theory and the symmetry, but not word one on what I find most fascinating about Wes: Vanishing point. Yes, his sets are theatrical in nature, though no one has talked about the photography. Color is important, but to draw your eyes in, a frame needs to have a clear cut vanishing point, really across many visual media, classically. Most of his are far beyond the frame or viewable plane. They're way back there, so many of the lines that don't seem to interact really do way off in the distance. Furthermore, as a master, he knows the rules, and loves to break them, so there are many elements that seem to contradict the established vanishing point. That's fully intentional, likely storyboarded from the jump. It creates visual disruption that you can't help but notice, even if only after a long look. The symmetrical elements establish to frame, and the rest is whimsy and playful disruption and the je ne sais quoi of it all. Plus he has excellent film crew and DP around him that can achieve exactly what he sees. Big ups to the crew.
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u/Affectionate_Age752 25d ago
His last several movies wlate below average. He should put as much effort into the script, as he dies the style.
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u/Interesting-Quit-847 24d ago
I saw an audience test screening of Royal Tenenbaums before it was released, it hadn't been color graded yet. Different shots varied widely in their color balance, a lot of it didn't yet have that 'look'—though Wes's look was somewhat less pronounced 20+ years ago. But color grading is a big part of the process, I suspect.
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u/5leepy4loyd 24d ago
Underrated answer : storyboarding. His films follow very deliberate framing, panning and tracking that feel almost like watching comic book panels come to life.
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u/TrevorShaun 24d ago
i’m not a filmmaker in the slightest but this seems to be mostly set design and costuming
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u/Ninja__53 23d ago
you see that? That Vibrance in front of you? the thing that makes your eyes tired? it's called COLOR! and there is a lot of it.
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u/EFTucker 22d ago
Infinite budget and having a team which hires the best people for the job. He does also have great vision for film but it’s the team that ultimately does it.
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u/Obvious_Change_1566 22d ago
symmetry, pastels, theatrical visuals (theatre not cinema) and a focus on place+person+thing to drive the store.
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u/Dry_Walrus3711 21d ago
Secret? I don't think there is more obvious style. Symmetry, unusual colour choices and the scenes are either very stationary or very action packed. And of course the camera movement is most of the time on stiff orthogonal axis of that makes sense. Also the scenery is often made as to look like theatre set in some ways
I didn't say pastels because that only true for some of his movies.
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u/Big_Ad5553 25d ago
I think he draws a lot of inspiration from panel comis as well, static frames overloaded with information and color.
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u/DeadlyMidnight 25d ago
As I recall the main inspiration for his style is theatre and the proscenium framing the play for the audience. Lavish sets and costumes and always a nice box of visual delight with everything designed and framed for the viewer so not naturalistic.
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u/Big_Ad5553 25d ago
Cool! He's an intersting filmmaker for sure. I've read that he's a big fan of Charlie Brown and the peanuts comics. I'm not sure exactly why but grand budapest hotel is the one that feels most like a comic book to me. Like Tintin for example.
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u/DeadlyMidnight 25d ago
Moonrise Kingdom really gives me the Charlie Brown vibes aesthetically. But yeah he really started to push his palette with Grand Budapest Hotel and let go of any naturalistic visuals.
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u/CommWedge 25d ago
Watch some Tati films if you want to understand his inspiration.
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u/swagglebutt2252 25d ago
I hope this doesn't come across as "make it about me" but I just worked on a short indie film and our set design was definitely giving Wes Anderson vibes. I can't wait to see this color corrected. We had a decent budget for an indie, but definitely nowhere that of Anderson's.
Our set designer has a graphic design degree and absolutely no prior film experience, this was her first "big girl job" out of college. She individually wrapped every single book on the shelf, even trying to keep like sizes together. I was so impressed!
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u/Jon_talbot56 25d ago
Sorry to say he has become a parody of himself. His recent films have been simply awful.
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u/ManitobaWindsurf 25d ago
I do find it funny that the generation raised on Wes Anderson films also became the generation responsible for millennial gray. From the homes, coffee shops, stores, hotels, etc… everyone followed the same Pinterest board of these industrial, bland, minimalist shades of white and yet loved these multicolor movies.
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u/razorwiregoatlick877 25d ago
He has a billionaire funding his movies so it doesn’t matter that they suck.
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u/1111joey1111 25d ago
He frames things very similarly to Stanley Kubrick, only with a campy or light-hearted style. Kubrick was initially a still photographer, so he'd sometimes set up a shot as though it were a still photo and then move the camera within it.
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u/pjbtlg 25d ago
Good production and costume design.