Replicate the Wes Anderson Look in the Color Grade

So you want to achieve the iconic Wes Anderson look? Or, maybe it's a client that spent all weekend at a Wes Anderson festival and now wants their corporate video to have that look. Regardless of the reason, the Wes Anderson look is heavily sought after, and for good reason.

In just five easy steps, we will show you how to dissect the luminance and color elements of this iconic look and apply it to your own footage, whether you are using Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or Final Cut Pro.

Quick Disclaimer

First things first, the Wes Anderson look is a complex organic process that involves world-class art direction, cinematography, and direction. Anderson and his production designer and cinematographer are all in sync and work together as a singular unit to produce a particular look and style.

Much of the actual look of a Wes Anderson film happens on set. It involves careful color palette and texture choices by the art team, careful lighting setup by the director of photography, and careful composition and camera movement choices by Anderson himself. That is not to say that the colorist does nothing, but rather, that the colorist doesn't produce the look entirely in post-production.

So keep in mind that if your source material is in no way Andersonian, then you'll be hard-pressed to achieve the look.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's get to it!

Base Correction

Before we dive in, it is important to note that you need to have done a base correction for your footage first. Once you have done that, we can move on to the five steps: compressed dynamic range, contrast, saturation, warm/cool separation, and teal and orange. By following these steps, you can transform your footage into the cinematic world of Wes Anderson, achieving a whimsical and nostalgic look that is sure to make you stand out.

Before we dive into replicating the foreign color palette of Asteroid City, it's important to remind you that you need to have done a base correction for your footage first. This will provide us with a good starting point for replicating the look.

Overview

Here are the five steps you can take to replicate the iconic look of Asteroid City:

1. Compressed Dynamic Range: Looking at the reference in the Luma waveform, you'll see that the shadows are elevated between 10 and 20 ire. This is a key characteristic of the look because the image never gets close to zero or deep black, and the highlights sit just below 80 ire throughout the entire trailer. To replicate this, we'll compress the tonal range in the same way that the curves do.
2. Contrast: In the Asteroid City reference, the luminous values are spread evenly across the tonal range from the shadows to the highlights. Whereas in your clip, the trace is compressed in the shadows and highlights with a noticeable gap in the mid-tones. To achieve a high contrast image, we'll raise the deepest shadows and undertones, yielding a more even look across characters' faces and contributing to the overall pastel aesthetic. Furthermore, we'll bring the highlights and overtones down closer to the mid-tones, further solving the image and enhancing the pastel feel. This technique also enriches the density of the sky and bright sand.
3. Saturation: Comparing the traces from the two clips in the vector scope, we can see that we need to add more saturation to ours to match how far out from the center the trace extends in Asteroid City. This gives us the vibrant yet pastel color intensity when combined with the low contrast.
4. Warm-Cool Separation: In the reference, the sky and the shadows have a teal tint to them, while everything in between, like the skin, sand, and mountains, remains pretty warm. Our goal here is to introduce cool tones in the highlights and shadows while slightly warming up the mid-tones. We'll use the RGB curves to achieve this.
5. Teal and Orange: To replicate the Wes Anderson color palette, we need to isolate the cool colors in our image and push them towards teal, then shift everything else towards orange. We can achieve this using the HSL secondary panel in Premiere, the HSL qualifier in Resolve, or a new instance of the color wheels effect in Final Cut.

These five steps can seem quite complicated and time-consuming, but there's a tool to simplify the whole process. Introducing Cinema Grade, a modern color grading plugin that offers point-and-click grading, allowing you to grade your footage directly in the viewer. It features easy shot matching and batch copying corrections, a false color feature for achieving cinematic exposure, 90 built-in color looks, and real-time previews of presets and LUTs. This is a game-changer that makes it super easy to craft a look that makes you stand out.

To celebrate the premiere of Asteroid City, we're offering a special gift with every new purchase of Cinema Grade. For a limited time, you can get a LUT that replicates the iconic Wes Anderson color palette. This exclusive LUT is embedded inside of Cinema Grade, providing you with a quick and easy way to achieve the look of Asteroid City without having to go through all these complicated steps. It's a turnkey solution that comes in five different variations, each offering a unique take on the Asteroid City look. This gives you the flexibility to pick the best one that matches your footage. To redeem this after purchasing, just send an email with the subject Asteroid City, and we'll update your license, unlocking the exclusive LUT.

Step One: Compressed Dynamic Range

To achieve the iconic look of Asteroid City, the first step is to compress the dynamic range of your footage. Looking at the reference image in the Luma waveform, you'll see that the Shadows are elevated between 10 and 20 ire. This is a key element of the look, as the image never gets close to zero or deep black, and the highlights sit just below 80 ire throughout the entire trailer. This tells us that the look has compressed dynamic range.

To replicate this effect, we'll use the Luma curve and bring the top highlights point down and the Shadows point up. It's important to note that we didn't use the color wheels or other slider controls because they don't compress the tonal range in the same way that the curves do.

Compressed dynamic range is a key characteristic in the look of the film, but in this particular case, the colorist exaggerated it even more to create a unique look.

Step Two: Contrast

In order to achieve the iconic look of Asteroid City, it's important to pay attention to the contrast of the image. When comparing our footage to the reference clip, we can see that the luminous values are spread evenly across the tonal range from the shadows to the highlights in the reference, whereas in our clip, the trace is compressed in the shadows and highlights with a noticeable gap in the mid-tones. This results in a high contrast image, which is something you'd expect on a sunny day with harsh shadows. However, even under similar lighting conditions, Asteroid City appears less contrasty.

This is because the colorist intentionally raised the deepest shadows and undertones, yielding a more even look across characters' faces and contributing to the overall pastel aesthetic. Furthermore, the highlights and overtones are brought down closer to the mid-tones, further softening the image and enhancing the pastel feel. This technique also enriches the density of the sky and bright sand to achieve this effect.

To replicate this look, we can create a point for the overtones and drag down, and a point for the undertones and drag up until the trace expands nicely through the mid-range, essentially creating an inverse S-curve. By shaping our tone curve in this way, we can achieve the desired contrast for the Asteroid City look.

Step Three: Saturation

Saturation is the next step in replicating the iconic look of Asteroid City. By comparing the traces from the two clips in the vector scope, we can see that we need to add more saturation to our footage to match with how far out from the center the trace extends in Asteroid City. This gives us the vibrant yet pastel color intensity when combined with the low contrast.

To achieve this effect, we can use the saturation controls in our editing software. In Premiere Pro, we can use the Hue/Saturation Curves effect to adjust the saturation levels of our footage. In DaVinci Resolve, we can use the Saturation control in the Color Wheels panel. And in Final Cut Pro, we can use the Saturation control in the Color Correction effect.

By carefully adjusting the saturation levels, we can create the same vibrant yet pastel color palette that is characteristic of Asteroid City. This is an important step in achieving the overall look of the film and bringing your footage to life.

Now that we have covered the third step, we can move on to the next step in the process of replicating the iconic look of Asteroid City.

Step Four: Warm Cool Separation

In order to replicate the unique color palette of Asteroid City, it's important to pay close attention to the warm cool separation. The goal is to introduce cool tones in the highlights and shadows while slightly warming up the mid-tones to create a distinct separation between the sky, desert, and talent.

To achieve this effect, we'll use the RGB curves. We'll set three points in each curve and start tweaking. For the red curve, we'll pull down on the overtones and undertones to introduce teal and slightly raise the mid-tones to add some warmth. Then, in the green and blue curves, we'll do the opposite. We'll raise the overtones and undertones to introduce more cool colors in the shadows and highlights. We'll then balance the mid-tones to maintain warmth in the mid-tones.

By doing this, we're starting to see the distinct separation between the sky, the desert, and our talent. This is a key step in replicating the Wes Anderson color palette and achieving the iconic look of Asteroid City.

Remember, all of these steps can seem complicated and time-consuming. But, there's a tool to simplify the whole process. Cinemagrade is a modern color grading plugin that offers point-and-click grading, allowing you to grade your footage directly in the viewer. It features easy shot matching and batch copying corrections, a false color feature for achieving cinematic exposure, 90 built-in color looks, and real-time previews of presets and LUTs.

To celebrate the premiere of Asteroid City, Cinemagrade is offering a special gift with every new purchase. For a limited time, you can get a LUT that replicates the iconic Wes Anderson color palette. This exclusive LUT is embedded inside of Cinemagrade, providing you with a quick and easy way to achieve the look of Asteroid City without having to go through all these complicated steps. It's a turnkey solution that comes in five different variations, each offering a unique take on the Asteroid City look. This gives you the flexibility to pick the best one that matches with your footage. To redeem this after purchasing, just send an email with subject Asteroid City, and your license will be updated, unlocking this exclusive LUT.

Step Five: Teal and Orange

In order to complete the Wes Anderson color palette, we need to focus on teal and orange tones. By isolating the cool colors in our image and pushing them towards teal, and shifting everything else towards orange, we can replicate the distinct color palette of Asteroid City.

To achieve this, we can use the HSL secondary panel in Premiere, the HSL qualifier in DaVinci Resolve, or the color wheels effect in Final Cut Pro. We'll use the key tools to select the warm colors, then invert the selection. Next, we'll use the color wheels to push the selected range towards teal, and introduce some orange into the warm color range.

Conclusion

By following these five steps, you can transform your footage into the whimsical and nostalgic world of Wes Anderson. While these steps may seem complicated and time-consuming, there is a tool that can simplify the process for you.