The grey colour palette of KGF and Salaar is a reflection of Prashant Neel’s personality

It was during KGF: Chapter 2 that audiences began talking at length about the colour schemes that director Prashant Neel uses in his films – he tends to favour darker, more grey shades, which led to several memes about his filmmaking style being all ‘kattale, kattale, kattale’ (darkness). While KGF’s greyish tone was thought to be because of the setting of the mines of Narachi, this colour palette has followed into Salaar’s Khansaaar as well. The announcement poster of Prashant’s next with NTR Jr was also devoid of colours, at which point, netizens had commented that a greyscale fatigue was setting in.

Ugramm, KGF, Salaar, #NTR31 and now, Bagheera: Prashant Neel’s grayscale obsession amuses fans; warn it can get tiresome 

But going by what Prashant says, it is unlikely that he will change this around to appease audiences. Turns out, the filmmaker is not much of a fan of loud or bright hues. It’s an obsessive compulsive disorder, Prashant said in an interview with Galatta Plus. “I don’t like anything with too much colour. I think it’s (his choice of colour palette for his films) just a reflection of my personality onscreen,” he said. The filmmaker’s trusted DoP, Bhuvan Gowda, adds Prashant, does not mind shooting like that, but is not a fan of it either.

The silver lining is that Prashant has begun to realize that sticking to this almost monotone palette can be good or extremely detrimental. People in his close circles have told him that they think he can only make a grey film and that is when it struck him that his OCD was seeping on to the screen. With Salaar, though, the filmmaker knew that he wanted to shoot the film in shades of grey, even if it looked as if he was replicating what he did in KGF. He stuck with it because it was going with the drama.

While Salaar 2 may still be very grey, this realization that Prashant has about his OCD reflecting onscreen could work wonders for his next with NTR Jr.