Creative Look Inspiration – ‘Asteroid City’

Deconstructing Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City Look (in DaVinci Resolve)

Wes Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City has a unique low contrast, targeted saturation look, inspired by classic ‘desert sun’ movies of the 1950s.

Shot using his favored KODAK 35mm VISION3 200T Color Negative Film 5213 by DP Robert Yeoman ASC, Asteroid City marks his 11th feature-length collaboration with the director.

In this Insight, we reverse engineer Asteroid City’s core visual characteristics and demonstrate a step-by-step approach to recreating this look in DaVinci Resolve, with the following elements at the heart of an “inspired-by” look:

• Reduced contrast
• Strong, targeted saturation
• Lack of traditional vignettes
• Film grain

Important: The point of this Insight is NOT to create a look on our footage that we can cut seamlessly into Asteroid City. The point is to derive inspiration, pull out key components of that film’s look, and apply it to a completely different project.