It took an army to put Denis Villeneuve’s epic Dune on screen; here are stories
from the director and some of his soldiers
BY STEVE POND AND BRIAN WELK
Photographed by Jeff Vespa
How They Did It
Maybe there’s a self-preservation chip that I don’t have,” Denis Villeneuve said with a laugh. The Canadian director has good reason to say that, considering that his last movie was a sequel to an all-time classic, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and his new one is an attempt to put Frank Herbert’s massive sci-fi novel Dune on the screen.
BY STEVE POND
Production Design
Before any set on Dune was constructed, before anyone began VFX designs or the cinematographer began mapping out lighting, Denis Villeneuve worked with production designer Patrice Vermette on crafting a “visual bible” for how every bit of the film would look.
BY BRIAN WELK
Costumes
Denis Villeneueve was very clear with costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan about what Dune was and what it wasn’t. He wasn’t looking for sci-fi or steampunk, and that’s exactly why he wanted West and Morgan in the first place.
BY BRIAN WELK
Cinematography
As the cinematographer on Rogue One, Snow White and the Huntsman and the upcoming The Batman, Greig Fraser knows big. That’s why he was so impressed when he first spoke to Denis Villeneuve about Dune and the director didn’t even talk about the size of the movie.
BY STEVE POND
Sound
When Denis Villeneuve told supervising sound editors Mark Mangini and Theo Green that he wanted Dune to blur the lines between sound design and music, it was a direction that they’d heard before.
BY STEVE POND
Editing
For film editor Joe Walker, one of the oddest parts about making Dune came unexpectedly. The film was his fourth with Denis Villeneuve, after Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, and he’d spent the first three of those sitting to the left of the director as they edited together. But Dune was partly edited during the pandemic, and the two men collaborated from separate locations via video links screens.
BY STEVE POND
Visual Effects
The sandworms get all the love and attention, but if you ask Dune’s visual effects supervisor, Paul Lambert, it was the sand around the worms that proved to be the most challenging to create.
BY BRIAN WELK
Music
At the moment in Dune when Paul Atreides sticks his hand into a box and feels a surge of enormous, unrelenting pain, Hans Zimmer wanted singer Loire Cotler, who he describes as a sweet and gentle person, to “unleash that inner female strength” for what would become a primal wail in his “Gom Jabbar” theme.
BY BRIAN WELK
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