Studio Brief 2 - Wes Anderson Research

Research

1.Wes Anderson wrote every single story for the newspapers in the grand budapest hotel (The Trans Alpine Yodel, The Daily Fact, and The Continental Drift). 

2.Two “t’s” in patisserie on mendl’s cake boxes - edited out during production (the grand budapest hotel).

3.Issues with copyright and getting permission to use popular shop names and brands throughout films, so made names very generic such as bookstore. Names of people on lists and authors on books were named after members of the cast and crew.

4.Anderson used a ‘psychological game’ to get Ralph fiennes to star in the grand budapest hotel. Fiennes received and email from Anderson asking him to read the script and decide which part he wanted. Anderson felt that if you approach an actor with a role they’re more likely to say ‘I like the other parts, but not sure on my guy’.

5.The grand budapest hotel was shot in 3 different aspect ratios, 1.37, 1.85, and 2.35:1

Tells audience film is in 3 different time periods, 1885, 1965, and 1930s.

• 1.37:1: 16 mm standard ratio.
• 1.85:1: 35 mm US and UK widescreen standard for theatrical film. Also the ratio of Ultra 16 mm.
• 2.35:1 (47:20): 35 mm anamorphic prior to 1970, used by CinemaScope ("'Scope") and early Panavision.

6.Futura is used in all of Anderson’s films until moonrise kingdom.

7.Started filming on his dad's super 8 film camera:

Super 8mm film cameras do not need to use the Super 8mm film produced by Kodak, but other film stocks produced by companies such as Fujifilm and independents (in the form of re-packaged film) are compatible. The only difference to the films is the cartridge used to insert them into the camera. All lengths of film sold are of 50 ft (15 m) lengths. Kodak did produce 200 ft (61 m) and sound cartridges, but these have since been discontinued. Most stocks are reversal film (for simple projection) but some negative stocks have been produced.

8.‘Planimetric staging’ used in majority of films, director placed the camera at s 90 degree angle with the subject to give a perfectly symmetrical look.

Definition of planimetric
1: of, relating to, or made by means of a planimeter//planimetric measurements
2of a map : having no indications of relief

Planimetrics is the study of plane measurements, including angles, distances, and areas.

9.Fantastic Mr Fox - 535 puppets

Isle of Dogs - 1,105 puppets

10.Created lines, symmetry, overhead shots, flat composition.

11.Film Reviews:

Isle of Dogs

A winningly dippy hodgepooch of lo-fi sci-fi, band-of-outsiders adventure and the most meme-ready canine antics you’ll find outside of YouTube, this leisurely tale of abandoned mutts taking on a corrupt human government is effectively puppy-treat cinema: small, salty, perhaps not an entire meal, but rewarding nonetheless.

More than any part of its slender, precarious narrative, “Isle of Dogs” is really a film about its own enthusiasms: for four-legged fleabags of all shapes and sizes, of course, but also for the culture and cinema of Japan, which is woven with typical fastidiousness into Anderson’s magpie aesthetic.  - Vanity

A miniaturist who likes to max out, Wes Anderson creates elaborate counter worlds that look like ours while remaining uniquely Andersonian. Together they comprise a kind of Wes World, in which reality seems as if it has been filtered through a sieve and then carefully arranged with white gloves in a vitrine. The results can be thrilling or wearying, and sometimes both, as is the case with his latest, “Isle of Dogs,” an animated movie set in a fantasy Japan. There, cat-fancying villains of the future conspire to eradicate dogs, prompting one character to plaintively ask, “Whatever happened to man’s best friend?”

It’s an earnest, heart-heavy question in a movie, by turns droll and melancholic, that can be easier to admire than to flat-out love. As he did in “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Mr. Anderson tells his tale primarily using stop-motion animation, an artisanal process that creates the illusion of movement frame by frame with objects like puppets.

- New york times

Melancholic -feeling or expressing pensive sadness.

Magpie aesthetic - If something is hideous, that's interesting. It's kind of the same sensibility that Andy Warhol had. He was interested in everything and soaked up what he saw like a sponge.

Slender - gracefully thin.

- barely sufficient in amount or basis.

- of small girth or breadth.

miniaturist  - a painter of miniatures or an illuminator of manuscripts.

Artisanal - made in a traditional or non-mechanized way.