When it came to returning to Arrakis for Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two,” the entire production had the opportunity to delve deeper into the Fremen culture as the story finds Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides embedded with the Fremen people for most of the runtime. That deep-dive into the Fremen provided both great opportunity and unique challenges for the filmmakers behind the $715 million-grossing sequel.
“The scene of the assembly chamber where Paul Atreides declares himself as Liasn al-Gaib is probably one of my favorites,” producer Tanya Lapointe told TheWrap for a new installment of How I Did It, presented by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.
“In Arrakis you don’t meet above grounds because it’s way too harsh,” Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser said of the scene as Lapointe noted that everything about the way the Fremen live is “based on survival and strength and loyalty and the collective effort of living together in very difficult conditions.”
Those difficult conditions were a challenge to capture, Fraser said, specifically when it came to the lack of light. Concept art by Patrice Vermette portrayed “shafts of light,” but there also had to be a “sacredness” to the space, Lapointe said.
“And in trying to fulfill Patrice’s vision of concept art that he’d shown us, unfortunately I didn’t think there were film lights that really would do us service. The ideal scenario would be to shoot with real daylight, but that wasn’t possible. So we used 20K molebeams angled in a very precise direction to make sure that every beam of light was the same.”
As for West, she worked “for weeks” fitting 300 people to appear in the scene.
“Denis was very specific on every aspect of their culture, how they lived, how they ate, how they slept, how they dressed,” Lapointe said. “In the north, the Bene Gesserit are dressed very simply, whereas when we are in the assembly chamber, the Bene Gesserit enter and they are wearing these ornate headdresses. Jacqueline West designed them as almost royal, and you understand that religion in the south is that much more revered.”
West added that the costumes were made to depict protections from the elements. “Most of it is with cloth. I had a friend hand weaving a lot of the fabric of the people very close to the camera, the people closest to Paul,” she said.
Fraser, for one, found it easy to light West’s costumes. “We had a lot of angles in that scene, and the great thing about Jacqueline’s work is that you don’t have to add light to her costumes for them to read every time we move people around, to kind of cheat people to be in the foreground. All the costumes were extraordinary, and textually they just were a joy.”
The scene in particular is pivotal for the entire “Dune” franchise as Paul not only gets people to believe he’s their chosen one, but he starts believing the prophecy himself.
“There’s a great part of the scene where Paul’s won them over, and the knives are kind of in the air, raised in the air, and we’ve been very particular about making sure that we can see Paul through those knives,” Fraser said. “It’s quite a symbolic image of Paul’s destiny, Paul’s future. That’s the pivotal moment. This is his reason to be there. He’s the Messiah.”
The cinematographer put it simply: “This scene is what the entire film is all about.”
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