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After striking Oscar gold in the spice fields of Arrakis for the visual effects in Dune, Paul Lambert returns to helm the VFX on the sequel, Dune: Part Two, which further expands the storytelling and the epic vision of filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. The story picks up with House Harkonnen taking over the prized planetary possession and decimating the House Atreides which has sought refuge and gathering rebellion support from the Indigenous desert dwellers known as Freman. 2,156 shots were produced by DNEG, Wylie Co., and Territory Studio with concept art provided by Rodeo FX and previs by MPC. Denis Villeneuve sees the movie and of course there are times hell embrace a slightly different approach, but he knows what he wants, states the production VFX supervisor. Thats what makes it such a pleasure and joy to work with him. Because you know when you do a particular shot that the background isnt going to become something completely different. We have a certain trust with each other as to how we approach the visual effects. I know that if there has been a concept, were going to stick to that, and that allows me to setup the shots in a way which is good for the over-all composite. The idea of shooting sand screens came from me knowing what that background or a proxy version of it was going to be.Unlike Ridley Scott, who is known to use as many as 12 cameras at one time, Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser favor framing and lighting for a single camera. Honestly, from a visual effects standpoint its a godsend! laughs Lambert. The moment you start to add additional cameras, especially four, you know that there are going to be certain cameras that will always be compromised because you cant plan for four cameras. Great attention was paid to get the desired backlight for each shot. According to Lambert, I introduced Greig to the world of LiDAR scanning apps on an iPhone. When we were going on another recce you would look around and ask, Wheres Greig? And hed be over somewhere scanning the earth or the actual rock structure. That geometry was brought into Unreal Engine.Shadows were critical for the Harkonnen harvester attack that takes place during daylight, in the middle of the desert, so special effects supervisor Gerd Nefzer and his team had industrial tractors hold large black screens in designated areas. Its all about sun and shade, notes Lambert. We needed to think of a visual way to understand what that shadow would do. We had an iPad with custom software from DNEG where we had a huge spice crawler in there. But we were also able to cast a shadow from a spice crawler. We could look at where the camera was going to be, see the structure and see where the shadow was on the ground. We definitely dont want to be running [the characters in the film] into this particular area because we dont have a real shadow for that. One of the main rules I had with Denis was, To try to keep things believable I never want to change the lighting on a character. If we shoot in the daylight and I try to make Paul look as if hes in shadow, it will look wrong. Theres nothing I can do to make that look correct. Another rule in the desert is we never step through previous footprints, which meant whenever we destroyed an area with footprints we would move over. If we couldnt move over to shoot, we would then rake the sand. Trying to simulate that is a big old problem. Given the time of year in the United Arab Emirates, it was extremely difficult locating a backlit dune with the correct wind direction for the iconic moment where Paul Atreides rides a sandworm. We found one, and that was the dune we would run along and then replicate to create the cascade, explains Lambert. But also, when you see some closeups of Paul running on top of the dune, we had to replicate the peak of the dune because what we needed to do is create a physical collapsable dune. What we came up with were these three huge steel tubes attached to industrial tractors. These were embedded into the dune we had created. A stuntie attached to a wire with a camera on a crane behind him would run, we would then callout for those tubes to be pulled out, the dune would collapse, then the stuntie would fall down and the camera would follow. Because of the light direction, which we needed to match the photography, we could only do it at one particular time of day. Obviously, there was a massive reset. We could do it once a day in the morning before we went off and did other things. It took us four attempts. With that element of the stuntie falling down and the camera behind kicking up sand, what I had to do was extend out the rest of the dune collapsing up ahead and the worm coming out so that you felt as if youre way the heck higher. Thats one of those things where if you get all the particulars correct it then works as a shot. Obviously, there is a lot of digital. But you have a basis that is always something real. The decision to deploy infrared cameras to emulate the black sun exterior environment of Giedi Prime brought with it some unpredictable results. We did a multitude of tests before we started the main shoot, recalls Lambert. We were going to shoot it outside between the two stadiums and on white sand, so it was a high contrast area where you had shade and this whiter than white. It was in this grey look. We tested everything. I even tested my gaffer tape for tracking markers. Cut to the day of the shoot when the fighters appeared. The three fighters appeared, and they looked great, muscular, ready to fight. And then we saw one of them through the infrared camera. They had covered his tattoos in makeup. However, in good old infrared, you get to see that. And, he had tattoos all over his body! I asked Denis, Does this fit the aesthetic? He said, No. I had to have Wylie Co. remove that, which was a substantial job. But its the day of the shoot. What are you going to do? We had to shoot.Lambert also needed to accommodate where the studio walls and buildings were casting shadows behind Feyd-Rautha and the other fighters. I made a decision, he notes. Rather than try to remove that - because if you go from something bright to something dark its always going to look bad - I decided to keep those shadows and played them as if they were stadium shadows from the big towers. If you were to look at it as a whole, it wouldnt make sense but in the fight sequence it works well. The fireworks on Giedi Prime scenes also evolved considerably during the shoot. When Feyd and Lady Margot Fenring are walking down the hall and she seduces him, we built a set with these huge structures internally, explains Lambert. The idea was we had fireworks outside that would have a certain pattern that would then play on the interactive light inside and we would extend those. But the actual fireworks, where you see the burst that went through a big development process. They looked completely different than what you see in the film. We had this idea of seeing holes in the atmosphere, and each time one opened it would open a blackness from within the white sky. But Denis was not keen on it until my producer found this little video of ink inside water, which Denis loved, and thats basically what it became!Hardly veering from the original concept was the Orni Bee. We built sections of the back of the Orni Bee for when Glossu Rabban is hanging off it and fighting the Freman. He was holding onto a particular rig, which we built close to the ground but then played as if it was way higher. We also built the Orni Bee for when theyre all taking off from Arrakeen to fight Paul out in the desert. Its a great big physical build. We didnt lift this one into the air because it was way heavier than the original ornithopter. When its flying, we built some silks around it on the actual horizon, which we then augmented. Having a practical asset helps to inspire Denis and the actors, and in the end helps visual effects because I always have something to actually work from.Paul Atreidess vision of a cataclysm became a major visual effects scene. We shot practical actors falling on the ground, who then got body parts replaced by CG to make them way thinner, while all the other characters you see in the background are all CG, states Lambert. It became a big visual effects shot. At one point the look of that particular sequence was going to be way the heck far out there because when we were shooting the plates Greig chose to do some close focus work, and everything was just shapes. It would have been hard to actually get the work inside of those plates. We pulled back a little bit to what the actual visual was going to be. Along with the visions there were holograms. Territory Studio did the Harkonnen tabletop in the city where you have Fayd and the Baron overseeing their bombing tactics on the Freman, shares Lambert. It was beautifully designed. Basically, there were some initial designs from Patrice but then Territory Studio took those to the next level in designing how to visualize a war in progress, like seeing where the spaceships and trajectories were. Denis had a lot of backwards and forwards and creative discussions directly with Territory Studio trying to get his story point across. It was a good relationship. Three puppeteers were responsible for the baby sandworm. When the baby worm was underground, that was a special effects rig that was a ball and chain being pulled, reveals Lambert. Those movements you see in the sand are practical. Then the actual puppeteers would puppeteer the baby worm when it wraps itself around the actress. She carries it and put it under the water. All the puppeteers are in the water moving the puppet. What we did in CG was whenever you see the worm above the water, we would compress the scale. But the main part of that is a puppet. We deemed that was the best approach. There were a multitude of techniques used depending on [what was required for the shot]. Its a philosophy that Denis and I have had throughout our other movies. What is the best way to actually make something believable? To make sure that you dont know that Ive done anything to it! Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.
