By Iain Blair

Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser (ACS, ASC), whose film credits include Zero Dark Thirty, Bright Star and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, enjoyed the challenges that came with his latest film, Dune — he was nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar for his work. Directed by Denis Villeneuve and based on Frank Herbert’s book of the same name, Dune features inhospitable alien worlds, monsters and wars set thousands of years in the future as it charts a hero’s dangerous journey.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), a young man propelled into an intergalactic power struggle that pulls him to the sands of the remote planet Arrakis, home to an indigenous human civilization called the Fremen. In this hostile environment, humanity fights for control of the Spice, a rare and mind-expanding natural resource upon which space travel, knowledge, commerce and human existence all rely.

In addition to Fraser, Villeneuve (read our conversation with him here) assembled a lineup of Academy Award-winning and nominated artisans, reteaming with two-time Oscar-nominated production designer Patrice Vermette, two-time Oscar-nominated editor Joe Walker and two-time Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert.

Here, Fraser, whose credits also include Lion (for which he earned Oscar and BAFTA noms), Mary Magdalene, Vice and Foxcatcher, talks about the challenges of making the ambitious epic, his unique analog/digital approach to the cinematography and working with VFX.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

You shot this digitally. Was that the plan from the start?
No. We were unsure, so we went and shot a ton of tests — everything from 35mm film to the large-format ARRI Alexa 65 and IMAX, and we shot anamorphic, spherical — it basically ran the gamut. It was a test of how the film would feel. Then we projected it at the IMAX theater in Playa Vista and compared all the looks. It was funny to see Denis’ reaction. Film did not impress Denis as much as we thought it might. I thought we’d shoot film, but Denis felt it had a nostalgic quality which, despite being beautiful, wasn’t what he envisioned Dune to be. But on the other hand, digital didn’t feel organic enough.

The last time we spoke, you’d been developing a process and look that combines digital with the warmth of analog.
It’s something I’d been working on for a few years before this came along, so I suggested we try this technique as the next step. In theory and in simple testing, it works like this: You basically shoot the movie digitally, give it a quick grade, output it to film and then grade the scan of that. This gives you the best out of digital and the best out of film, and we found it to be a really interesting process.

Is this the first time you’ve used it on a feature film?
Yes, and every filmmaker I’ve worked with since then that I’ve told about this has had this sort of light bulb moment. We all remember what it was like to work on film — all the bad things and problems with the lab — but also all the great things — the beautiful emotional images. I still have a very strong love of an emulsion, and the big question is, “Where does emulsion come in the process?” Does it come by acquiring image, or afterwards? I’m sure there are very film-centric filmmakers out there who’ll have my head on a platter for saying this, but I felt that for this film, putting an emulsion in the process after the fact was the right approach. You get that analog film look just like in the old days, when you could sculpt a look depending on what stock you went with — Kodak, Fuji, etc. Whether you underexposed and overdeveloped it or overexposed and underdeveloped it, or flashed the film, you had all these opportunities to give it a certain feel and look.

When we went digital, and when film stocks got reduced to a core number, we lost options. But with this process, you can shoot with any of the leading cameras you want, whichever one suits the project, and then the world opens up again. You can choose whatever stock you want to print it onto — negative stocks, print stocks, 35mm, 60mm. So you effectively go back to film. Now some may say it’s creating a faux grain, along with film problems like a bit of gate weave and noise, but it also creates this analog feel that film lovers have always loved about film.

What cameras and lenses did you use?
We used the ARRI Alexa LF 4K and Mini with Panavision H-series and Ultra Vista lenses. The first part of the film has a more formal look, then we decided to shoot IMAX for all the desert sequences and went for a much looser, hand-held style.

We deliberately went for an unsaturated look. Our skies aren’t blue, our rocks aren’t red, our sand isn’t golden, and we designed our LUT to take away the blues of the sky and so on. We used different LUTs, and colorist Dave Cole and lab FotoKem were able to combine the elements of highlights and shadows to create a LUT that worked for us. They were very much partners in creating the look, partly because they have a lab at their disposal.

We shot all the rock desert scenes in Jordan and all the desert sand dune scenes in Abu Dhabi. My DIT, Dan Carling, was on set, and we worked very closely because it was so crucial that we got the right images and graded the right way.

What about dealing with all the VFX? How involved were you in that side of the project?
I was fairly involved. I believe we had well over 2,000 VFX shots. Denis and I shot as much in-camera as possible, but even that stuff always has some VFX work on it. I visited with VFX supervisor Paul Lambert and his team a few times during the process, and they did ask my opinion about a number of things, but after the shoot wrapped, I had to move on to another film, so that limited it.

But one of the great things about this partnership between Denis and me and Patrice and Paul was that we built a lot of the sets for real, and we built what we could using a very simple technique — scaffolding wrapped in the materials and colors of what would have been the real stone.

By using that method, all the lighting behaved the way it should behave, because if you only are able to build 12 feet and you use blue- or greenscreen to fill in the other 18 feet to the top of the stage, that doesn’t help the lighting. If you need a shaft of light, I’d have to create that, so why don’t we do it in conjunction with the art department, where it’s actually built out of the material? That gives you the best chance of succeeding in making it look as real as possible. So for the most part, that’s exactly what we did, and all the set extensions that Paul added using VFX could only really look a certain way, as they were lit to be correct. There was a lot of coordination between the camera department and VFX, as well as all the other departments, and that was key to the production pipeline.

As you mentioned earlier, you did the DI at FotoKem. How important is this part of the process to you?
It’s very important. I did a color bible and worked on it before I had to start on another film. So I went into editorial and did a little cut — a sort of DP cut of the movie that was in no way an edit. It was a color bible, literally, of every scene that we knew would be in the movie at that point. Obviously, scenes got added and cut during post, but at least fundamentally we knew what the film would look like.

I graded all that with Dave [who used Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve], and then that color bible became what VFX used as a reference. Then Denis came in and looked at it, and he had some notes, and we made some adjustments. Of course, things change as the film gets cut and becomes what it is, and Denis and Dave worked very closely together on the final look and fulfilling that original vision we all had. This is what I love so much about filmmaking and collaboration — it’s not just my grade, my lighting and so on. To me, the grade is as much Denis’ and the colorist’s and the production designer’s. It’s a communal effort. The grade is the movie’s grade, and I trust Denis’ and Dave’s opinions implicitly. (Editor’s note: Watch this space for our upcoming interview with Cole.)

This was your first time working with Denis. How did you get involved in this?
We’d actually met a long time ago at a barbecue at Roger Deakins’ home. They’d just finished shooting Sicario, and I’d seen his previous films and loved his work, but I’d never met him before. We ended up having this great conversation, and over the years we stayed in touch and saw each other at awards shows. Then he called and asked if I’d be interested in meeting to talk about Dune. He’s a master filmmaker, so I jumped at the chance.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.