SNAPSHOT
It’s hard to find a director with a more distinct visual style than Wes Anderson. In this video we’re going to learn how to recreate it photographically. …What are the elements of Wes Anderson’s visual style that make him so recognizable? (courtesy Laughing Squid (c) Imitative Photography)
There is so much to love about Wes Anderson.
His quirky characters. His heart-on-his-sleeve approach. The ability to invest the ephemeral with something intensely weighty and meaningful. Stories that appear to be slight and yet are so full of narrative weight that you leave the cinema thinking about them for ages afterwards.
And, of course, his highly distinctive visual style, in films like The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch to name just two entries in a long and varied line of films, which has endeared him to many people.
Perhaps it’s the fact that it all looks so fairytale-ish or that it feels real and yet not, an uncanny valley of set design that, rather than repelling, draws us closer; whatever it is, it has struck a chord and led to the creation of sites like Accidentally Wes Anderson (also a book), the genesis of which is explained this way by Imitative Photography:
It’s an Instagram page started in 2017 by Brooklyn-based couple Wally and Amanda Koval. They came across a similarly named subreddit of photos of real places that looked like they had been plucked from Wes Anderson’s films. They then started their instagram account as a sort of travel bucket list of places they wanted to explore. (courtesy Laughing Squid)
This wonderful takes a deep dive into the visual whimsy and charm, explaining what it is we love the worlds Wes Anderson creates so much that we try to make a slice of it ourselves in a world that could do with far more quirk and colour and lovably offbeat weirdness.