Denis Villeneuve's Dune blew audiences away with its gorgeous visual aesthetic and seamless use of CGI, resulting in the film winning Best Achievement in Visual Effects (along with five others) at the 2022 Academy Awards. His adaptation of the first half of Frank Herbert's beloved sci-fi epic explored the fall of House Atreides after their journey to the desert planet of Arrakis. Considering so much of the movie takes place on the fictional planet, it was essential for Villeneuve and Paul Lambert -- the movie's VFX Supervisor -- to bring its sun-scorched landscapes and colossal sandworm inhabitants to life in as convincing a manner as possible.
Villeneuve had a chance to learn from the mistakes of David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune, which relied heavily on blue screen and miniatures to create its rendition of Arrakis. Lynch's over-reliance on CGI was part of the movie's downfall, as the limited technology of the time has left Lynch's Dune feeling dated and awkward to modern viewers. Villeneuve and Lambert, on the other hand, blended practical locations and effects with minimal CGI to create a version of Arrakis that would have been deemed impossible in 1984 and can be considered timeless for generations to come.
Reproducing Arrakis' Scorching Surface
Part of what makes Dune's Arrakis feel so realistic and immersive is Denis Villeneuve's dedication to practical effects, capturing as much of the environment as possible in camera. As a result, the majority of the scenes on Arrakis were shot in the real desert of Wadi Rum, Jordan, also known as 'The Valley of the Moon,' after its striking red landscapes and enormous rock formations that make the desert look like an alien planet. The environmental conditions posed many problems to Villeneuve's shooting process, most notably the relentless sandstorms, which frequently cost the production days of shooting time. Dune's lead, Timothée Chalamet (Paul Atreides), has stated in interviews that they were often only shooting for four hours a day, early in the morning and late in the evening, due to the dangerous temperatures caused by the midday sun.
One of Dune's most iconic elements is the colossal, spice-producing sandworms that roam Arrakis' landscape. While Villeneuve had to rely on CGI to help bring these hulking creatures to life, he blended this with ingenious practical effects to showcase how the sandworms affected the surrounding environment. As the sandworms scoured the desert, their enormous size caused the surrounding sand to shake violently, causing anyone on the surface to begin sinking through as the grains shifted around them. To recreate this, Villeneuve brought in a vibrating metal plate, which he placed underneath the sand to practically create the displacement effect. Villeneuve also produced a lot of the wind-swept sand that filled the air of Arrakis practically. An alleged 18 tons of sand was used during Dune's production, as it was blown across the sets using industrial fans to make the artificial environments look realistic and produce a blurry visual for CGI elements in the backgrounds.
Dune's Lighting Was Crucial to Its Effects
Regardless of how realistic a computer-generated image is designed to look, if the lighting of the environment and the actors doesn't react with the artificial image, then the CGI will always appear unnatural to audiences. Even when shooting on location, most productions make extensive use of blue and green screens to provide a high-contrast backdrop on the actors and sets to make the visual effects editing easier. The problem with these screens is that their colors reflect an unnatural light on the actors and the surroundings, which usually breaks the immersion of the CGI. To combat this, Villeneuve employed the use of sand color screens during shots that would require post-production enhancements. Although this made it more difficult to key out the actors during the editing process, it made the light reflections appear realistic to audiences which massively sold the CGI images and maintained the suspension of disbelief.
Dune's accurate use of lighting was also crucial to its battle scenes. During the battle of Arrakeen, when House Harkonnen ambushes House Atreides at night, audiences are treated to a violent visual spectacle as soldiers from both Houses fight brutally as large explosions go off in the backdrop. The light emitted by the explosions also had to be replicated practically for the battle scenes to appear photo-realistic to viewers. Although Villeneuve didn't use real pyrotechnics to produce the explosive bursts of light, as this can become extremely expensive after many failed takes, he did replicate the effect with bright flashes of synthetic lighting. While explosions in the foreground brightly lit the soldiers as they fought, the distant replicated explosions in the background plunged the soldiers into dark silhouettes as they would in real life, greatly enhancing the immersive quality of the explosions added in post-production.
Dune's Ornithopters Referenced Real Helicopters
One of Dune's most impressive achievements is how realistic its iconic ornithopters appeared on-screen. Sadly, Villeneuve didn't contract engineers to build working ornithopters; however, for interior shots inside the flying machines, two wingless ornithopter bodies were brought out to the desert and used against the real locations. The two 12-ton ornithopters were mounted on high cliff tops and placed on gimbals, which allowed them to rotate while the actors performed inside to capture the realistic environments in the background. The glass windows on the ornithopters were also real and were paired with sand-colored screens to produce accurate reflections on the glass. Although the external shots of the ornithopters flying were achieved using CGI, Villeneuve and Lambert used footage of real helicopters landing in the desert as a reference for the movement of the ornithopters and to create the effect of the ornithopters blowing the sand of Arrakis around as they landed.
Another trademark of Dune's ornithopters is their distinct sound. Villeneuve reportedly wanted Dune to sound like a documentary, which led to sound designer Mark Mangini producing over 3,500 unique sounds for the movie -- 99 percent of which were organic. Mangini initially tried using the sounds of real helicopters; however, their rotors and propellors did not match the fluttering propulsion system of the ornithopters. Eventually, Mangini and his team landed on the sounds of a cat purring, a live beetle's wings, and tent straps caught in gale-force winds. The combination of these three effects resulted in the ornithopter's distinct and immersive noise, which was imperative to their realism.