Ghost of Tsushima is known for its striking color palette, and it seems like that is not lost on Chad Stahelski. The director noted as much in a recent interview as he talked about some of the color and lighting-related tricks he picked up while shooting the John Wick movies.
Stahelski spoke to IGN about these techniques and how those involved tried to make John Wick bigger through better set pieces, characters, and lighting. These steps would ideally mean the team has stepped up their visual chops enough to respectfully adapt Ghost of Tsushima.
“With every John Wick, we try to build the world a little bit bigger with the characters and set pieces and lighting,” said Stahelski. “Just what we’ve learned over the past couple years with DI, digital intermediate — the coloring at the end [of production] — and what you can do with new technology and with new Alexa cameras, that’s kind of allowed us, hopefully, to take cinematography to the level that Ghost deserves.”
He then specially brought up John Wick: Chapter 4 and mentioned the brighter colors in that recent installment.
“You can see the purples and pinks, and we can push the color and highlights about as far as you can push in Chapter 4,” he said. “So it was a big technological achievement to get the colors that we did in this and to get them to really stick, especially in the theaters you’re seeing them in.”
Ghost of Tsushima‘s wide color palette often filled the scene with violet, red, yellow, blue, or white, depending on the local flora. And while that was a big part of its visual oeuvre, it also had a Kurosawa Mode that narrowed the audio channels, added film grain, and turned everything black and white. When asked if there was possibly going to be a version of the film in that style, Stahelski only said it was “definitely a conversation.”
