In 2021, director Denis Villeneuve and crew successfully completed part one of a lifelong dream by bringing Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune to cinema screens. As we know though, any story is only as good as its villain. I spoke with multiple members of Dune’s production team to find out just how the menacing Baron Harkonnen was designed and brought to life through practical effects.
Before we get into how the Baron himself was built though, let’s talk about his home and the place that made him who he is. The Harkonnen homeworld, Giedi Prime.
“I wanted to have the proper time to bring things as precisely as possible in the concept art”, says director Denis Villeneuve. “So the VFX crew would have everything, more than the design power, but even the atmosphere, the look, the quality of the light. Everything was precisely done in prep.”
In the worlds of the Harkonnen and the Baron, it was kind of an other-worldly light.
“In Arrakis during the day, there's sun coming through light wells, so they're illuminated, or they're motivated, by sunlight,” explains Greig Fraser, the film’s director of photography. “In the worlds of the Harkonnen and the Baron, it was kind of an other-worldly light. This world was kind of motivated without motivation, it had to be dark and moody, but not so dark that you couldn't see what was going on.”
VFX supervisor Paul Lambert states that “one of the things which was very beneficial for the movie was that Denis had spent a good part of a year working with the art director, Patrice, trying to come up with the visuals for the movie. So when I joined the movie you had all of these fantastic visuals. Basically, we built those physical sets and I built those virtual worlds exactly like they were in the concepts.”
“When you read the book and you, and you read the script, it's something you want to feel his obscure presence in his lair”, says Patrice Vermette, head of production design. “So for me, the scale and the ribs came very, very quickly in the process. And yeah it felt like the interior of a whale for me.
“Dune did inspire a lot of other movies in the past”, states Villeneuve. “The challenge was to bring something fresh to the screen, so what we did was entirely focus on the novel and the description that Frank Herbert did of this architecture.”
Vermette notes, “The architecture was something that I played with from John Portman. He's an architect who did some hotels and it's a reinterpretation of those. I remember when I was 11 years old walking, I was with my parents in San Francisco and I was walking in one of his hotels. So I researched it again and looked at his multiple levels of galleries and of balconies, walkways that are in the central atrium. If you put that horizontal, then it looks quite interesting as a base.”
“As bizarre as it came, I was listening to Substance by Joy Division. I was listening to a lot of Joy Division when I was designing. I find my inspiration in music a lot, that's my process. So a song like Atmosphere, I was playing on loop. It was the heaviness, the bassline of it.”
As bizarre as it came, I was listening to Substance by Joy Division. I was listening to a lot of Joy Division when I was designing.
Influences can come from unexpected places then, and while there may have been no direct inspirations for the Baron himself, it does appear that subconsciously reference points were found. Especially when the time came for his on-screen reveal.
First impressions are crucial for villains. Just think of Darth Vader striding into Star Wars or Heath Ledger’s Joker unmasking himself in The Dark Knight. Fear needs to be instilled into the audience the first time we see a villain, and with the Baron this was no different.
“Denis always had this vision of a bald, very obese character wearing long dresses”, Vermette continues. “That's how it's described in the book. And that's also how his vision is about it. And Denis always had this vision of seeing him first in the mist. And obviously there's an inspiration from Apocalypse Now.”
Fraser reveals, “I remember having the conversation with Patrice and I said to him, "I don't recall having a reference for the Baron," because he's in the steam room and there's the shot of him wiping that thing off his brow, which is totally Apocalypse Now. But, again, it wasn't discussed as Apocalypse Now. It was kind of just these hands that had this chunky kind of meat behind them.”
“Stellan had such a scary presence on set”, recalls Lambert. “He's a big guy, right. With the visual of the Baron, he is a truly, truly scary character. He doesn't move around much. He's very subtle. But it's a very commanding performance.”
The Baron dominates every scene he’s in. And while he may not move much, when he does it’s captivating. He glides and floats across the screen, instilling menace whenever he does so. For a crew determined to keep the visual effects as in-camera as possible though, this led to some unique challenges.
Basically he sat on the end of a seesaw under his costume, and then some of the crew then pulled him up.
“We spent six months prior to the shoot having conversations about how we would achieve various visuals”, Lambert continues. “Having the Baron go down a very practical approach was a very conscious decision, because we wanted to avoid doing a CG version of it.”
“There is one shot where he rises really high up and says, "My Arrakis, my Dune." He's actually on a seesaw. Basically he sat on the end of a seesaw under his costume, and then some of the crew then pulled him up so that he then feels as if he's rising. We were able to do that with just basically wire cleanup, rather than having to do a CG version of the Baron.”
“So, our grip built a thing where he can literally put his weight against the beam and then drop him down”, Fraser explains. Every shot's different, the way we have to move him. So, to move him up, you just put him on a crane, like a seesaw, effectively, which is what a crane is, and you counterweight it and you just move.”
“We see the Baron in the dining room, move up from eating food, and then moving across the table. So, that was one of the first things that we'd done practically as a moving shot, so we wanted to figure out the best way to do that.”
Lambert adds, “basically the Baron has a contraption on his back, which we actually put on in post, so that's CG addition. But it's a suspensor basically, which allows him to defy gravity. It was very much a practical approach. When you see the Baron floating over the table and he's going towards the Duke, Stellan is actually on a rig on a wire on a Zipline, and he's being pulled along.”
Denis didn't want a visual effects spectacle of the Baron. He wanted you to believe that the Baron was actually real.
“Now, Stellan actually performed these. But there was one particular one, which he couldn't do, which was where you see the Baron up in the ceiling. That's actually a stunt, one of our stunt guys who's in the Baron suit. We cut some holes in the set and basically pulled him through those holes so that he's actually pulled up against the ceiling. And then after that in visual FX, we just painted out the wires. But basically, it was very much a practical approach. Denis didn't want a visual effects spectacle of the Baron. He wanted you to believe that the Baron was actually real.”
“There are some scenes that have been cut because we designed a rig in which we would see him crawl back down from that ceiling like a spider”, Vermette reveals. “That was the reference that Denis explained to us. He wanted the Baron to feel just like a scared black widow spider.”
Denis Villeneuve and his crew's dedication to creating as practical a villain as possible pays off hugely. Baron Harkonnen is undoubtedly one of the most intimidating characters put on screen in 2021 thanks to a deliciously sinister performance from Stellan Skarsgård and the team behind him that took inspiration from the pages of the novel, created concepts of their own, then brought him to life through masterful production skills.
Dune is available on digital download now and 4K UHD, Blu-Ray, DVD and VOD on 31st January.
Simon Cardy thought that the Baron was absolutely disgusting but can't wait to see more of him in Dune Part Two. Talk to him about disgusting barons over on Twitter at @CardySimon.
Continue reading...
Before we get into how the Baron himself was built though, let’s talk about his home and the place that made him who he is. The Harkonnen homeworld, Giedi Prime.
“I wanted to have the proper time to bring things as precisely as possible in the concept art”, says director Denis Villeneuve. “So the VFX crew would have everything, more than the design power, but even the atmosphere, the look, the quality of the light. Everything was precisely done in prep.”
In the worlds of the Harkonnen and the Baron, it was kind of an other-worldly light.
“In Arrakis during the day, there's sun coming through light wells, so they're illuminated, or they're motivated, by sunlight,” explains Greig Fraser, the film’s director of photography. “In the worlds of the Harkonnen and the Baron, it was kind of an other-worldly light. This world was kind of motivated without motivation, it had to be dark and moody, but not so dark that you couldn't see what was going on.”
VFX supervisor Paul Lambert states that “one of the things which was very beneficial for the movie was that Denis had spent a good part of a year working with the art director, Patrice, trying to come up with the visuals for the movie. So when I joined the movie you had all of these fantastic visuals. Basically, we built those physical sets and I built those virtual worlds exactly like they were in the concepts.”
“When you read the book and you, and you read the script, it's something you want to feel his obscure presence in his lair”, says Patrice Vermette, head of production design. “So for me, the scale and the ribs came very, very quickly in the process. And yeah it felt like the interior of a whale for me.
“Dune did inspire a lot of other movies in the past”, states Villeneuve. “The challenge was to bring something fresh to the screen, so what we did was entirely focus on the novel and the description that Frank Herbert did of this architecture.”
Vermette notes, “The architecture was something that I played with from John Portman. He's an architect who did some hotels and it's a reinterpretation of those. I remember when I was 11 years old walking, I was with my parents in San Francisco and I was walking in one of his hotels. So I researched it again and looked at his multiple levels of galleries and of balconies, walkways that are in the central atrium. If you put that horizontal, then it looks quite interesting as a base.”
“As bizarre as it came, I was listening to Substance by Joy Division. I was listening to a lot of Joy Division when I was designing. I find my inspiration in music a lot, that's my process. So a song like Atmosphere, I was playing on loop. It was the heaviness, the bassline of it.”
As bizarre as it came, I was listening to Substance by Joy Division. I was listening to a lot of Joy Division when I was designing.
Influences can come from unexpected places then, and while there may have been no direct inspirations for the Baron himself, it does appear that subconsciously reference points were found. Especially when the time came for his on-screen reveal.
First impressions are crucial for villains. Just think of Darth Vader striding into Star Wars or Heath Ledger’s Joker unmasking himself in The Dark Knight. Fear needs to be instilled into the audience the first time we see a villain, and with the Baron this was no different.
“Denis always had this vision of a bald, very obese character wearing long dresses”, Vermette continues. “That's how it's described in the book. And that's also how his vision is about it. And Denis always had this vision of seeing him first in the mist. And obviously there's an inspiration from Apocalypse Now.”
Fraser reveals, “I remember having the conversation with Patrice and I said to him, "I don't recall having a reference for the Baron," because he's in the steam room and there's the shot of him wiping that thing off his brow, which is totally Apocalypse Now. But, again, it wasn't discussed as Apocalypse Now. It was kind of just these hands that had this chunky kind of meat behind them.”
“Stellan had such a scary presence on set”, recalls Lambert. “He's a big guy, right. With the visual of the Baron, he is a truly, truly scary character. He doesn't move around much. He's very subtle. But it's a very commanding performance.”
The Baron dominates every scene he’s in. And while he may not move much, when he does it’s captivating. He glides and floats across the screen, instilling menace whenever he does so. For a crew determined to keep the visual effects as in-camera as possible though, this led to some unique challenges.
Basically he sat on the end of a seesaw under his costume, and then some of the crew then pulled him up.
“We spent six months prior to the shoot having conversations about how we would achieve various visuals”, Lambert continues. “Having the Baron go down a very practical approach was a very conscious decision, because we wanted to avoid doing a CG version of it.”
“There is one shot where he rises really high up and says, "My Arrakis, my Dune." He's actually on a seesaw. Basically he sat on the end of a seesaw under his costume, and then some of the crew then pulled him up so that he then feels as if he's rising. We were able to do that with just basically wire cleanup, rather than having to do a CG version of the Baron.”
“So, our grip built a thing where he can literally put his weight against the beam and then drop him down”, Fraser explains. Every shot's different, the way we have to move him. So, to move him up, you just put him on a crane, like a seesaw, effectively, which is what a crane is, and you counterweight it and you just move.”
“We see the Baron in the dining room, move up from eating food, and then moving across the table. So, that was one of the first things that we'd done practically as a moving shot, so we wanted to figure out the best way to do that.”
Lambert adds, “basically the Baron has a contraption on his back, which we actually put on in post, so that's CG addition. But it's a suspensor basically, which allows him to defy gravity. It was very much a practical approach. When you see the Baron floating over the table and he's going towards the Duke, Stellan is actually on a rig on a wire on a Zipline, and he's being pulled along.”
Denis didn't want a visual effects spectacle of the Baron. He wanted you to believe that the Baron was actually real.
“Now, Stellan actually performed these. But there was one particular one, which he couldn't do, which was where you see the Baron up in the ceiling. That's actually a stunt, one of our stunt guys who's in the Baron suit. We cut some holes in the set and basically pulled him through those holes so that he's actually pulled up against the ceiling. And then after that in visual FX, we just painted out the wires. But basically, it was very much a practical approach. Denis didn't want a visual effects spectacle of the Baron. He wanted you to believe that the Baron was actually real.”
“There are some scenes that have been cut because we designed a rig in which we would see him crawl back down from that ceiling like a spider”, Vermette reveals. “That was the reference that Denis explained to us. He wanted the Baron to feel just like a scared black widow spider.”
Denis Villeneuve and his crew's dedication to creating as practical a villain as possible pays off hugely. Baron Harkonnen is undoubtedly one of the most intimidating characters put on screen in 2021 thanks to a deliciously sinister performance from Stellan Skarsgård and the team behind him that took inspiration from the pages of the novel, created concepts of their own, then brought him to life through masterful production skills.
Dune is available on digital download now and 4K UHD, Blu-Ray, DVD and VOD on 31st January.
Simon Cardy thought that the Baron was absolutely disgusting but can't wait to see more of him in Dune Part Two. Talk to him about disgusting barons over on Twitter at @CardySimon.
Continue reading...