The late Gordon Willis‘ visual signature was “the Prince of Darkness” — deep, inky, mine-shaft blacks. And yet his Washington Post newsroom in All The President’s Men was accented with bright, eye-poppy colors. Because Willis had adapted to the reality of the setting (or so I’m assuming), and he wasn’t an obsessive.
Janusz Kaminski‘s visual signature is subdued, grayish colors with streams of milky white light. When he shot the same newsroom for The Post, everything looked — surprise! — grayish, subdued, drained out. Because Kaminski is an obsessive. He also didn’t want people saying that had merely replicated the Willis color scheme, at least as far as the newsroom was concerned.
