To shoot the film in the desert, the director and his cameraman spent weeks scouting out dunes.
Canadian Denis Villeneuve is not only one of the most brilliant directors in current cinema but also one of the most meticulous, a quality that’s difficult to deal with when it’s your turn. Film in the desert to recreate the spectacular sand planet Arrakis, where the story takes place.
In fact, there is a need for Villeneuve and his cinematographer, Greig Fraser, to find the “perfect dunes” for one of the scenes in Dune. Part 2was taken The director himself admits that the desert is no longer one of his favorite filming locations. “For the production, I wanted a dune with a very special shape,” the director explains to Empire.
“But Greig needed the same dune in a very specific light. So Patrice (Vermette, the production designer) spent weeks pitching in the desert dunes. We looked like crazy people! I still find sand in my shoes every morning. “The sand traumatized me,” Villeneuve admitted with amusement.
But the filming of Dune Part 2 was hell for its director, even more so for Vermette, who, as in the first film, had to deal with carrying bottles full of desert sand so that the dunes looked “uniform” when changing locations. “We didn’t repeat any locations,” the designer explained.
No more green screens
As everyone knows, Denis Villeneuve is a big critic of green screens Filming of the two films, dune He mobilized his entire team to the Jordanian desert of Abu Dhabi to create locations that were as realistic as possible. However, green screens were required for some parts of the films.
But since the sun reflected on the sand changed the light, they were not usable for post-production, and the team of Dune Part 2 had to invent green screens the color of desert sand to enjoy the spectacular scenery of Arrakis.
