By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Warner Bros. PicturesNo doubt, the entire success of Dune: Part Two was riding on the shoulders of Paul Atreides as he takes his maiden journey on top of a massive desert creature. This was something that filmmaker Denis Villeneuve was strongly aware of, so he had a separate unit working on the sequence over a period of three months. Given the sandworm does not actually exist, this iconic moment could not be accomplished without the expertise of Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Lambert, who won an Oscar for the first installment. The first discussion we had with HODs was about the worm ride. Denis gave this incredible pitch that was a completely original idea, which was: For a Freman to get onto a worm he had to climb a dune, the worm would burst through the dune, the Freman would go down with the sand and land on the worm. We never went into how you get off a worm! That could be for later. It was like, Oh, my god, what an absolutely incredible idea! How the heck do we do that?The worm doesnt exist without sand. Youre talking about incredible simulations which have to be created to get that scale. We saw it briefly in Dune: Part One, and that was in darkness. But for this one, Paul was actually going to get onto the worm in broad daylight. There wasnt going to be hiding anything whatsoever. We started down a path of some early development with DNEG as to how we have a worm crash through a dune.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorAn example of a lighting panel utilized by Cinematographer Greig Fraser.Co-existing with the sand is the sandworm. The worm doesnt exist without sand, Lambert notes. Youre talking about incredible simulations which have to be created to get that scale. We saw it briefly in Dune: Part One, and that was in darkness. But for this one, Paul [Timothe Chalamet] was actually going to get onto the worm in broad daylight. There wasnt going to be hiding anything whatsoever. We started down a path of some early development with DNEG as to how we have a worm crash through a dune. They went through trying to get the speed of the worm to be correct. DNEG used what is called a ball pit render and would start the simulations with those size particles of sand because they could do fast iterations. We would stay in low-res until it felt right, and thats when DNEG would up-res. If you imagine DNEG working in an area that was 80,000 balls in a pit, once they up-res it there were 800 million! They got smaller and smaller and far more complicated. DNEG found that every time the tube [the worm] was rammed through a dune, the dune would explode. They went around and around in circles until somebody had the idea of, Why dont we open its mouth as its coming out? That solved it. We wanted to keep the simulation as believable as possible without cheating and cutting corners because the moment you do that youll get to these amazing renders, but something wont look right and you cant put your finger on it.Greig Fraser prepares to shoot a scene inside of a practically-built ornithopter cockpit.A badass moment occurs during the Harkonnen harvester attack when Chani defends herself by firing a rocket launcher at a Harkonnen soldier. Denis was worried that it might look too comical, Lambert reveals. We shot a stuntie being pulled on a rig, but after that we realized it required a lot of re-timing and obviously a digital double to take over. It took a lot of time to get that to feel right and to make sure it didnt feel comedic. Chani also uses the rocket launcher to shoot down an Harkonnen ornithopter defending the harvester. Every explosion that you see is digital. We did shoot some reference of explosions out in the desert. I actually got to film explosions out in the desert this time. It wasnt allowed on Dune [Part One] because where we were shooting, it wasnt the best idea to be setting off explosions. All of those explosions were mainly for reference, such as what a big explosion would be like in the hot desert. The guys and girls at DNEG did a fantastic job creating the simulation. When Chani takes out the Harkonnen ornithopter, we did shoot reference, but not for when the Harkonnen soldier gets shot up into the spice crawler.DNEG found that every time the tube [the worm] was rammed through a dune, the dune would explode. They went around and around in circles until somebody had the idea of, Why dont we open its mouth as its coming out? That solved it. We wanted to keep the simulation as believable as possible without cheating and cutting corners because the moment you do that youll get to these amazing renders, but something wont look right and you cant put your finger on it.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorMaking use of LiDAR scans from his iPhone and Unreal Engine, Greig Fraser was able to meticulously plan to ensure that every shot was backlit.Oppenheimer had ramifications beyond the box office as it influenced how the atomic missile strike is portrayed in Dune: Part Two. It was cool, Lambert remarks. We tried to keep it as much as plate-based as possible. That sequence obviously has a huge digital effect in the background and Greig Fraser [Cinematographer] did some additional lighting on the characters, which had to be extended onto the background. We started off with a conventional nuclear bomb, but this was also the year of Oppenheimers release, and we were using the same references from the 1940s. We then veered to something different. Denis wanted a manga look to it. The idea was this isnt a nuclear bomb, but more like a super high explosive. It was a big, old TNT explosion, which meant that you had dust, sand and rocks flying everywhere. We shot some practical elements of people running, but there is a substantial amount of digital crowd running, simulated and motion captured for that purpose.We started off with a conventional nuclear bomb, but this was also the year of Oppenheimers release, and we were using the same references from the 1940s. We then veered to something different. Denis wanted a manga look to it. The idea was this isnt a nuclear bomb, but more like a super high explosive. It was a big, old TNT explosion, which meant that you had dust, sand and rocks flying everywhere. We shot some practical elements of people running, but there is a substantial amount of digital crowd running, simulated and motion captured for that purpose.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorHaving a clear vision is important to Denis Villeneuve, who has a on-set conversation with Rebecca Ferguson.Giedi Prime, which is the home world of House Harkonnen, orbits around a black sun, and has a monochromatic palette for the daylight exterior shots. Greig did some intriguing camera tests. You had two crew members both with black T-shirts, and one would stay black and the other would go white. You didnt know why. It could be because of the weave or material or temperature. You could never tell what would change to a different tone. One thing it did do was give this subsurface look to the skin and make your light look super sci-fi. Denis fell in love with that particular look, but if we go down this path you cant undo it. These are modified cameras from ARRI. Youre capturing the full spectrum, infrared and real light. Then youre desaturating it to get that particular look. But we also wanted to be able to transition from real to that world. Rather than try to rely on a full-on digital effect to try to recreate the infrared, we built a stereo camera rig. One of the cameras is vertical and the other is a horizontal that shoots through a mirror or across the mirror. One camera is infrared and the other is RGB, which means we get the exact same image with one in infrared and the other is RGB. Then I can do a collage roto where you can transition from one to the other. That worked out well for when the Bene Gesserit come in or when the Baron is coming from the inside of his stadium to the outside light. The idea being that the outside is a different atmosphere where you have this infrared light.Some crowd replication was required and rubber blades had to be digitally fixed for the fight between Paul Atreides (Timothe Chalamet) and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler).A black oil aesthetic emphasizes that House Harkonnen is resembles a virus rather than a bastion of humanity.Machine learning assisted in producing 1,000 blue-eye shots found in the sequel.Accompanying the Emperor to Arrakis is the Imperial Tent, which is attached to his ship. You could have a simple shot where you put this great big battle occurring behind you, and have a shot where youre not looking at the battle but looking at the Imperial Tent, which was then attached to the chrome ball, Lambert states. That chrome ball saw the whole world 360. The idea behind the Imperial Tent was that it started flat, and the Emperors ship, the chrome ball, would pull that up so the actual structure would appear in this almost pyramid shape. You dont actually get to see how it got made. What we were able to do was a technique we developed on the first one and used extensively again on Dune: Part Two, which was proxy shooting. Rather than building out this interior tent to its final in-camera texture, we would build this proxy version of it. You would get the overall tone and shape. I would then go in in post, because I didnt have to shoot up against bluescreen or greenscreen, and add additional texture to it. Its a far more believable process than just having bluescreen or greenscreen.To avoid the need for additional sand simulations, a rule was made to not go over previous footprints in the sand when shooting.DNEG, Wylie Co. and Territory Studio provided 2,156 visual effects shots, while Rodeo FX contributed concept art and MPC did some of the previs. [The extensive crowd work] was potentially one of the harder things to wrangle and get right, Lambert remarks. We did a lot of 2D and 3D replication. Tiling was done for a couple of shots which was then augmented with thousands of others. A returning visual effects element that was refined further for the sequel were the blue eyes of the Freman because by their consumption of spice. On the first movie, Wylie Co. had to roto 300 shots. We knew on the second movie there would be a hell of a lot more blue eyes. Nuke has a new feature called CopyCat where you can say, If this image is doing that, try to replicate doing this. I did some initial tests, and we found that if I could feed it images of our actors faces from the first one along with the mattes, it could be trained to figure out whenever it saw an eye it could make this matte. The ones that didnt work, we rotod and put them back into it. It was a five-month process. By the end of it, we had trained the models on 77,000 pairs of eyes; 400 of the 1,000 shots were done completely with machine learning.Dunes are treated as characters in their own right.Infrared cameras were deployed for the exterior daylight fight scenes on Giedi Prime, which orbits a black sun.An overriding element that had to be kept in mind when dealing with the mammoth creature that lives beneath the surface is the sandworm would not exist without sand.For when Chani turns to see the Imperial Tent explode, Greig Fraser captured the shot in the United Arab Emirates while the rest of the oner involved stitching various motion capture performances together.A significant challenge for the visual effects team was all of the crowd work.All of the explosions were digitally created.Industrial tracks held black screens that to get the proper shadows for when Paul Atreides and Chani attack the Harkonnen harvester.Unlike the first movie, Paul Lambert was able shoot practical explosions as reference for Dune: Part Two.Finding a dune for Paul Atriedes to run across that was backlit and had the right wind direction was not easy given the time of year.Every explosion that you see is digital. We did shoot some reference of explosions out in the desert. I actually got to film explosions out in the desert this time. It wasnt allowed on Dune [Part One] because where we were shooting, it wasnt the best idea to be setting off explosions. All of those explosions were mainly for reference, such as what a big explosion would be like in the hot desert.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorChani watching the Imperial Tent explode was a huge shot to execute. In [the first] Dune, we did something called the Paul oner where hes in his dream state and is fighting all of these characters. In Dune: Part Two, we had Chani doing something similar. Chani gets up, runs, fights, and she turns her head seeing the explosion of the Imperial Tent in the distance. That is a 35-second all-digital shot apart from the end shot of Chani. We shot Chanis turn out in the desert. Greig lensed it in the correct light, and we then had to back in the entire shot so it finished on that particular moment. That shot went through some interesting stages. All of the characters fighting are motion capture. We motion captured that out in Hungary using tens of stunties fighting. We actually motion captured Zendaya. We stitched her performance and all of the fighters together. We then took that to the studio at Digital Domain and brought Greig back in to compose with Denis. Greig had a virtual camera and was able to follow Zendaya through the move. We then re-lensed it based on all of the animation in there, and what you see is actually Greigs camera move going all of the way up to the point where he shot her in the Unite Arab Emirates. That shot took months and months to do. But again, we had a plan, so it was just going through it. It was a slow burn. It was a step-by-step progressive of giving notes. Thats how Ive always worked with Denis.A separate worm unit was created that spent three months to capture Paul Atreides riding the sandworm.Wind machines were used to blow the sand to the point where the stunt performer would turn orange by the end of shooting.When the sun was not cooperating, the worm unit had another assignment to complete, which was photographing the fetus of Paul Atreides sister Alia. In the corner of the studio in a tank was a prosthetic baby, which we shot that through the glass, Lambert reveals. This was a project in itself trying to get some beautiful textures around it. The idea was from that plate photography; I would add CG blood flow to give it some life. Every time you see it blink, its only CG around the eyes, but the rest of it is a prosthetic. Dune: Part Two is a film that tries to use the best technique it can for the particular visual. In that case, having a real prosthetic was the key.