Dune director Denis Villeneuve is no stranger to designing spaceships and vehicles unfamiliar to the human eye, whether that be the other-worldly egg-shaped behemoths from Arrival, or the neon-tech infused shuttles from Blade Runner 2049’s far future. Adapting Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi epic, Dune, provided a new set of challenges for Villeneuve, though.
How do you bring the wholly analog tech of Arrakis and its surrounding planets to life for modern audiences? It proved a tough balancing act, but one that the director never shied away from.
“It's a process I deeply love”, Villeneuve states. “It was quite challenging because Dune did inspire a lot of other movies in the past. The challenge was to try to bring something fresh to the screen. To do so, we entirely focused on the novel and the description that Frank Herbert did. I tried to go back to the image that I had in my mind when I was a teen when I read the novel the first time.”
“It was a long process,” he explains. “The good news is that we had a lot of time. I was not rushed. I did a lot of work that time, the proper time to bring things as precisely as possible in the concept art. So the effects crew will have everything they need. Not just the design, but even the atmosphere, the look, the quality of the light. Everything was precisely done in prep.”
In Villeneuve’s mind, no vehicle in the Dune universe was more important to get right than the Ornithopter. A merging of the mechanical and the animal kingdom, it plays a huge role in the story, and the vivid descriptions of it in the novel have been in Villeneuve’s dreams from a young age.
“I worked at the beginning with my storyboard artist, Sam Hudecki, where we did tons of sketches,” he says. “For instance, the ornithopters, how would you approach a machine that is described in the book as a flying machine that has wings, like a bird flapping in the air?”
“I was dreaming to have that shape inspired by a dragonfly, that would be muscular and feel realistic, and close to the spirit of a helicopter. It was important to me that all the vehicles obey the laws of nature, gravity, and physics, and that they not look like fantasy vehicles, but something closer to science fiction, to science, and all grounded in the book."
“There is something very retro-futuristic, because the world is analog,” he notes. “It’s a thing that I deeply love, the idea that we are dealing with a science fiction world where there's no computers and where the only intelligence on-board is the human brain. That triumph of the human spirit is something that is at the very heart of Dune. We try to keep that reality into the design of the machines.”
“For the cockpit of the ornithopters, I asked the crew to design something that will keep the characters in contact with the environment, feeling that they are, in a way, a bubble that allows us to always be in visual contact with the landscape and feeling the impact of the landscape seen from above. So they were really like aquariums that the characters were sitting in.”
Putting the designs to paper is one thing, but bringing them to life is another, especially when Villeneuve desired fully practical sets and CGI kept to a minimum.
“We had several ornithopters that were built full size, because we needed some of them to be in Hungary, some of them in Jordan,” he reveals. “They were meant to be practical. Inside the cockpit was functional. We were able to open the doors of the cockpit, the back door was always mechanical.”
“Other ornithopters were designed for onstage shooting. There was one which was called The Bucket, which was an ornithopter that was more like a Lego piece, that we can remove pieces so we could bring the camera inside and find the more interesting angles.”
“The only problem we had with ornithopters is that because they were meant to receive a lot of people inside, they were extremely heavy,” he explains. “I think, if my memory is good, it's 11 tonnes. To bring those machines into the desert was a big challenge. We had to use an Antonov, which is the biggest cargo plane available on Earth, in order to bring those ornithopters in Jordan, and then move them with the massive cranes into the desert to put them in the proper position. It was a bit painful, but quite rewarding to see them in position in the desert.”
“We actually made one fly with cranes,” he reveals. “There was a moment where Paul and Gurney are watching the worm engulf the harvester from above. In order to have the proper light and dynamic of the shot, we had to put one of the ornithopters with stunt guys... I don't know many feet in the air,, but it was quite a technical challenge to bring that machine with that weight and make it spin under sunlight to have the proper lighting on the characters. It was a really exciting shot to do, but very technically complex.”
“There's something about the utilitarian quality of it that I feel is quite appealing,” he says. “There's something fresh and very dynamic in the way we brought them to the screen.”
The challenges were immense, but the payoff is there for all to see. Dune’s signature ships sing across the sand whenever they’re on the screen, and only add to Arrakis feeling like a real lived-in world. But what about the finally confirmed Dune Part Two? What other-worldly vehicles is Villeneuve looking forward to bringing to life next?
“I think that there are some,” he teases. “But I will keep that for me because I would love to keep the surprises for the second part.”
Simon Cardy thought that Dune was absolutely spectacular. Come talk to him about giant worms on Twitter at @CardySimon.
Continue reading...
How do you bring the wholly analog tech of Arrakis and its surrounding planets to life for modern audiences? It proved a tough balancing act, but one that the director never shied away from.
“It's a process I deeply love”, Villeneuve states. “It was quite challenging because Dune did inspire a lot of other movies in the past. The challenge was to try to bring something fresh to the screen. To do so, we entirely focused on the novel and the description that Frank Herbert did. I tried to go back to the image that I had in my mind when I was a teen when I read the novel the first time.”
“It was a long process,” he explains. “The good news is that we had a lot of time. I was not rushed. I did a lot of work that time, the proper time to bring things as precisely as possible in the concept art. So the effects crew will have everything they need. Not just the design, but even the atmosphere, the look, the quality of the light. Everything was precisely done in prep.”
In Villeneuve’s mind, no vehicle in the Dune universe was more important to get right than the Ornithopter. A merging of the mechanical and the animal kingdom, it plays a huge role in the story, and the vivid descriptions of it in the novel have been in Villeneuve’s dreams from a young age.
“I worked at the beginning with my storyboard artist, Sam Hudecki, where we did tons of sketches,” he says. “For instance, the ornithopters, how would you approach a machine that is described in the book as a flying machine that has wings, like a bird flapping in the air?”
“I was dreaming to have that shape inspired by a dragonfly, that would be muscular and feel realistic, and close to the spirit of a helicopter. It was important to me that all the vehicles obey the laws of nature, gravity, and physics, and that they not look like fantasy vehicles, but something closer to science fiction, to science, and all grounded in the book."
“There is something very retro-futuristic, because the world is analog,” he notes. “It’s a thing that I deeply love, the idea that we are dealing with a science fiction world where there's no computers and where the only intelligence on-board is the human brain. That triumph of the human spirit is something that is at the very heart of Dune. We try to keep that reality into the design of the machines.”
“For the cockpit of the ornithopters, I asked the crew to design something that will keep the characters in contact with the environment, feeling that they are, in a way, a bubble that allows us to always be in visual contact with the landscape and feeling the impact of the landscape seen from above. So they were really like aquariums that the characters were sitting in.”
Putting the designs to paper is one thing, but bringing them to life is another, especially when Villeneuve desired fully practical sets and CGI kept to a minimum.
“We had several ornithopters that were built full size, because we needed some of them to be in Hungary, some of them in Jordan,” he reveals. “They were meant to be practical. Inside the cockpit was functional. We were able to open the doors of the cockpit, the back door was always mechanical.”
“Other ornithopters were designed for onstage shooting. There was one which was called The Bucket, which was an ornithopter that was more like a Lego piece, that we can remove pieces so we could bring the camera inside and find the more interesting angles.”
“The only problem we had with ornithopters is that because they were meant to receive a lot of people inside, they were extremely heavy,” he explains. “I think, if my memory is good, it's 11 tonnes. To bring those machines into the desert was a big challenge. We had to use an Antonov, which is the biggest cargo plane available on Earth, in order to bring those ornithopters in Jordan, and then move them with the massive cranes into the desert to put them in the proper position. It was a bit painful, but quite rewarding to see them in position in the desert.”
“We actually made one fly with cranes,” he reveals. “There was a moment where Paul and Gurney are watching the worm engulf the harvester from above. In order to have the proper light and dynamic of the shot, we had to put one of the ornithopters with stunt guys... I don't know many feet in the air,, but it was quite a technical challenge to bring that machine with that weight and make it spin under sunlight to have the proper lighting on the characters. It was a really exciting shot to do, but very technically complex.”
“There's something about the utilitarian quality of it that I feel is quite appealing,” he says. “There's something fresh and very dynamic in the way we brought them to the screen.”
The challenges were immense, but the payoff is there for all to see. Dune’s signature ships sing across the sand whenever they’re on the screen, and only add to Arrakis feeling like a real lived-in world. But what about the finally confirmed Dune Part Two? What other-worldly vehicles is Villeneuve looking forward to bringing to life next?
“I think that there are some,” he teases. “But I will keep that for me because I would love to keep the surprises for the second part.”
Simon Cardy thought that Dune was absolutely spectacular. Come talk to him about giant worms on Twitter at @CardySimon.
Continue reading...