Isabella Ruffatti looks at the pros of romanticising your life and proposes why you should join the latest social media trend – videoing your life as though you were in a Wes Anderson movie. Especially if you’re an aspiring videographer or filmmaker.
Over the past few weeks, a new trend has seen people all over the world sharing TikToks and Instagram reels inspired by American filmmaker Wes Anderson’s iconic style, which often involves monochromatic colour palettes and symmetrical compositions.
Social media’s tendency to romanticise life can be anything from mildly annoying and wildly unrealistic to potentially harmful. But sometimes it has the power to add a little magic into our everyday lives. The recent imaginings of everyday life as though it were a Wes Anderson film have done just that.
You’d better not act like you’re in a Wes Anderson film…
It feels like just about everyone on my Instagram feed has done it from someone at my old uni who took some very aesthetic shots of the award-winning library to several of the rollerskaters I follow on my rollerskating Instagram account which have done their own spin on it. And it’s been a global phenomenon too, with videos showing everyday life in Mexico City and even in Ukraine.
Wes Anderson’s films are known for their quirkiness, pastel colour palettes, title cards, and symmetry. I’ve watched Moonrise Kingdom and The Great Budapest Hotel and though I can’t say I remember the plot of any of these films, I do remember the little moments and the stunning compositions they were accompanied by (plus Saorise Ronan having a Mexico-shaped mark on her face for some reason?).
Credit: Jessica Kantak Bailey/Unsplash.
Why romanticize your life?
The past few years have been turbulent for many, including me. Around a year ago, I moved back to London after being away for almost two years. I’d just graduated from uni (officially, as I got my degree in 2020, but it had been postponed) and was trying to find my way in a city that was quite different to live in now that I wasn’t a student but a foreigner with family an ocean away and few friends still living in London.
Then there’s the climate crisis, the pandemic, all the wars and everyday cruelties people inflict on one another… Life can be overwhelming.
It became clear to me that as one of my favourite TV shows Crazy Ex-Girlfriend puts it, life isn’t ‘some carefully crafted story/It’s a mess and we’re all gonna die’. But sometimes it’s nice to dream and romanticising my life has been a way to keep myself going by highlighting the positives and taking control of my own narrative.
Imitate your favourite filmmaker
I also love movie and TV shows so I’ll take any excuse to work on a video. If you do too, then all the more reason to jump on this trend. I know I will always fondly remember the time I made a modern reimagining of the first few chapters of Homer’s The Iliad despite it being truly cringey, not to mention the sheer amount of improvisation needed to finish it as the main actor decided to ditch filming half-way through and iMovie nearly killed me when it wouldn’t export my less than five minutes long but still very effect-laden video. Fun was had, lessons were learnt and I have never used iMovie again.
It’s also a great idea to imitate your favourite filmmaker if you want to improve your filmmaking skills. When doing a master’s in screenwriting, one assignment I did involved doing a silent film Charlie Chaplin-style. Writing dialogue has long been my favourite part of writing something, so this was a welcome challenge.
A little movie magic
In a time when it seems that all news are bad news, a little movie magic is perhaps exactly what we need right now. So, if you haven’t already, try it: get your smartphone and video your life like a Wes Anderson film. To quote another great TV show Avatar: the Last Airbender, ‘In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself.’ Romanticising your everyday life as a Wes Anderson film is a good way of doing that.
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk.
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