By Iain Blair
Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve is well-versed in making ambitious and provocative sci-fi films, including Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. His latest is Dune, which is based on Frank Herbert’s novel of the same name. Villeneuve says it was “the most challenging and complex movie I’ve ever made.”
Director Denis Villeneuve on set
Set thousands of years in the future, it stars Timothée Chalamet as a young man propelled into an intergalactic power struggle that brings him to the remote planet Arrakis. Here he finds inhospitable heat, hurricane-strength sandstorms and monstrous sandworms. This is where humanity fights for control of the Spice, a rare natural resource upon which space travel, knowledge, commerce and human existence all rely.
To create all this, Villeneuve assembled a team of Academy Award-winning and nominated creatives that he has worked with before. This included production designer Patrice Vermette, editor Joe Walker and visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert.
The Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures film is set to release in select theaters in 2D, 3D and IMAX, as well as on HBO Max on October 22. It will also be available on HBO Max’s Ad-Free plan in 4K UHD, HDR10, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.
I recently sat down with Villeneuve to talk about his workflow on Dune, including the post, editing and visual effects.
What were the main technical challenges in pulling it all together?
We had to bring to life a very ambitious project for the budget, so there were many. It’s always the case — there’s never enough money, and you’re in competition with all the other big blockbusters.
We had so many visual effects to deal with, but it was even more challenging because I insisted we shoot it in real environments. That meant real deserts, and I wanted to use as little artificial light as possible for all our exteriors. So once we were in the desert, we never switched on a light, we just played with the sun all the time. But that was a challenge for all the night shoots because I wanted to approach those in a way I’d never done before — shooting under the shadows or just before sunset or sunrise, when you have 45 minutes of available light without shadows. So it was trying to recreate nights in a different way, a way you’re not used to seeing.
Can you talk about when you began integrating post and all the VFX?
We were dealing with post and visual effects right from the start. In terms of all the sets we had to design and build, we had to plan what would be real and what would be set extensions. Then any vehicle and creature — such as the ornithopters [huge insect-like flying machines] — had to be previz’ed, so that when I was shooting, I’d know exactly what we’d need for plates and all the visual effects.
So prep on the film was very long and intense, and the reason we’re sitting here today talking about all this is because we really succeeded in prep. We built some enormous sets on the stages and backlot of Origo Studios in Budapest, Hungary, and we had to be very precise and disciplined about the schedule. So it was like this giant Rubik’s Cube, a puzzle we all had to solve — especially my production designer Patrice Vermette.
You must have done a lot of previz and postviz. What was entailed?
The whole movie was storyboarded and we did so much previz [with The Third Floor and MPC]. It’s actually a process I don’t like very much, but it’s so crucial as you need the whole crew to be able to see what’s going on when you have so many elements to coordinate. We didn’t do so much postviz as all the visual effects were on track pretty quickly.When we started shooting there was no COVID, and the schedule was tight and precise and very organized.
How tough was the shoot?
It was very demanding, as we had all the stage work in Hungary, and also shot on location in Jordan and Abu Dhabi. The shoot itself was like war time as we were under some very strong restrictions with the schedule. My obsession with just using natural light wherever possible made it even more difficult. So we built a massive tent outside between some of the stages so we could have the proper shadows and sunlight on the actors for some of the set pieces. That was another huge technical challenge — building sets outside so we could get the look we wanted.
Shooting in the desert in Jordan and Abu Dhabi was very intense but also fun and so inspiring. I shot every day, with different units and, yes, the desert is physically very tough, but I would not complain because it’s paradise, and we had perfect conditions for shooting. I dreamed of having a very harsh, white sky with strong winds, and we got exactly that for a whole month when we were in Jordan. So it was a blessing, but when we got back to Hungary, that’s when we suffered as we were shooting outside and we had so much rain. We almost ran out of rain covers it got so bad, and the one thing you can’t have in Arrakis is water! So the big challenges were having enough stage space and the bad weather.
Denis Villeneuve and EP Tanya LaPointe on set
Years ago, I interviewed David Lean and he talked about making Lawrence of Arabia and how Wadi Rum was the most magical location he’d ever shot in, partly because of the light. But your desert scenes look very different. Can you talk about the color palette you wanted?
I was very aware of the look he gave Lawrence of Arabia. That film was one of the cornerstones of classical cinema for me, and I even did a small thesis on its visual language as a film student. One of the most intense movie experiences I’ve ever had was watching it alone in a theater in Montreal as a kid. I was blown away.
But for this, I wanted a far more desaturated look to really emphasize the harshness of the sun and the desert. Everything is faded and bleached, and I wanted to capture the violence of the sun. I wanted nature to be powerful and abrasive, not beautiful, and it seemed like the best look to capture the brutality of the planet and cut out any sense of romanticism about the desert. At the start, the look of the desert is more mesmerizing to Paul, but the more he gets inside it the more dangerous it becomes. And I also grew up with movies that were more desaturated, so the look is a bit nostalgic for me.
What did DP Greig Fraser bring to the project?
I chose Greig because I love his camera work, and he has such a great eye for where to place the camera and composition and framing. At the beginning we went for a look that emphasized very solid tableaus, but the more the movie evolved, the more the camera left the tripod and it became like a documentary in style, with Greig doing much more hand-held shooting in the desert. The more Paul’s world gets stripped away, the freer the camera gets. And I wanted a DP who was very flexible and spontaneous, which he is, and because of how he embraces nature and the natural light. (They shot with the ARRI Alexa LF 4K and ARRI Mini with Panavision H-series and Ultra Vista lenses. For all the desert sequences they shot IMAX.)
He doesn’t try to control nature, but dances with it, and he can move very fast. That was very important as we were shooting with the main unit, and at the same time I was directing a splinter unit and we were supervising a second unit —I’ve never done that before. I’ve always worked with just one unit and focused on that, but for this I knew it was like a war. We needed several units going into battle at the same time, or we’d never manage to get it done on schedule.
Greig is a master at juggling all this stuff. I’ve never seen anyone else do what he can — answering a call on his phone about another unit while he’s in the middle of shooting and watching another monitor. And we were shooting all the time. There were no breaks. Sometimes I was directing stuff from my bedroom on an iPad. The technology today is so amazing. [Editor’s Note: For more on Greig Fraser’s process on Dune, check this space for an upcoming interview with him.]
Where did you post and how did COVID affect the edit and post?
We did all the post here in LA at Legendary’s facility next to the Warner lot. That was the plan, but then COVID hit, and I had to go back to Montreal. Doing post from there was a whole new way of working — I had to supervise my team remotely. For the VFX, we set up all the screens and communications equipment at my home so I could direct it all, and it went really well. But trying to do all the editing remotely was far more of a problem.
Even though Joe Walker, who cut Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, and Sicario for you, is your longtime editor?
Yes, and frankly it was a big surprise to me, as Joe and I have spent so much time together working over the past six, seven years — we’re so close and know each other so well. I’m always with Joe, but even so, we both felt we had to be in the same room, so I flew back to LA to finish the cut in person with Joe.
What were the big challenges?
The big one was to find the right balance between all the elements — the story and all the visuals and VFX — and to make sure the audience got enough information to be able to follow the dense plot and understand it all. especially an audience that’s never read the book. There’s so much back story and cultural stuff — this whole, rich, complex universe that Frank Herbert created — and it was very challenging to make it all digestible for a new audience. It would have been far easier to make a movie for a hard-core fan, and it would have been finished a long time ago! (Laughs)
How was working with two-time Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert?
He was with me all the time and on set every day. He was my biggest ally, along with Greig. We developed such a shorthand on Blade Runner that I knew I wanted him on this, and we had a very close relationship. Basically, he was as important as Joe or Greig, and that’s the first time I’ve felt that about a VFX supervisor. I don’t think I want to make another movie without him now. We share the same sensibility and he understood exactly what I was looking for.
We did well over 2,000 VFX shots, and there’s been a lot of talk about how much we did in-camera, but the truth is, everything we did in-camera had some sort of VFX work done — a fix or addition and enhancement and so on. For instance, the ornithopter bodies were real, but only half the wings were real — the rest was all CG. Then we used real helicopters as a reference for color, light, reflection and so on, and we had them take off and land, but all the flying sequences were VFX, and it took a lot of work.
What was the hardest VFX sequence to do and why?
It was the worms, and it involved a lot of R&D with sand and particle movement, and DNeg had to write a lot of new software to bring them to life. It was very complex as we wanted it to be totally photoreal and look like part of the whole environment — not just added on. That took a very long time.
DNeg was the main vendor, but we had a lot of companies doing all the VFX and so on. [Rodeo FX, Wylie Visual Effects and Track VFX also contributed. Gentle Giant, Digic and The Scan Truck provided cyber scanning. Digital Domain did motion capture. Lidar Guys did the Lidar].
L-R: Denis Villeneuve and writer Iain Blair
Where did you do the DI?
At Fotokem with colorist Dave Cole. It’s so important and we had a very precise approach to the look that was dictated by all the artwork we did in prep — what kind of light, contrast, atmosphere and so on.
As we were shooting, Greig kept saying to me that he was trying to be as good as the artwork, which was like this dream for me, it was so good. We did it this way because I learned so much on Blade Runner, where the artwork wasn’t as precise because we lacked the time, and I was still learning. I’ll always remember Roger Deakins telling me, “Your artwork needs to be dead on, otherwise it’ll be chaos in post.” He was so right, and I learned that the hard way. So after that I had to fight to make sure we brought it all back to the original artwork, and for this I made sure it was all perfect and everyone knew exactly what they had to do.
When you look at the artwork for this and then the final movie, it’s the same exact look. I’m very proud of the look and Greig’s work. Greig and Dave completely embraced the vision that myself and Patrice Vermette originally did on paper, and it turned out just the way I dreamed.
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.
