Oscar winning cinematographer, Greig Fraser, breaks down the process of shooting Paul Atreides' first sandworm ride and having to film a lot of it in-camera using natural light and SFX.
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00:00My name's Greg Fraser, I'm the cinematographer of Dune Part 2.
00:16Denis and I had a very long run doing Dune Part 1.
00:20A lot of that film was set in Caladan, not on Arrakis.
00:24Some of the film was at the end, but it wasn't really that much set out in the desert.
00:28Denis was very clear about Arrakis is a character in our film.
00:33We need to feel the heat, we need to feel the torture that is being outside in Arrakis.
00:39But one of the things that really he was very precise about was the worm ride,
00:44because we'd only glanced at the worm in Part 1,
00:48and it really only made a sort of a small appearance.
00:50For Part 2, the worm ride is effectively Paul's perspective.
00:54We also have the perspective of Charney,
00:56who's acting as the perspective of the Fremen who are watching.
01:00But the camera and the lighting choices and the movement choices
01:04are all based directly on how those characters are feeling
01:07and behaving at that particular point in time.
01:09The main emotion we were trying to capture
01:12when we were filming the prelude to the actual worm ride
01:15was the nervousness from Charney, the emotional nervousness.
01:19And I think that's pretty well reflected in the way the camera moves.
01:22The camera has a little more movement, as in it's more handheld.
01:25It feels a little bit more emotional, but then we cut back to Paul.
01:28And a lot of Paul's work is a lot more still.
01:31It's him trying to sort of meditate, become one with the worm
01:34to try and make sure that he rides this thing properly.
01:37It was very important that the camera mirrored the character's journey
01:41and the character's emotional journey at that point in time.
01:43Early on in Part 1, we tested film and digital as two separate entities to shoot.
01:48We genuinely thought early on in the testing process
01:52that this was going to be a film shot on film.
01:54When we got into testing, we felt that film probably wasn't right for it.
01:57We shot digitally, but then did a film out process,
02:00which is something that I'd been toying with the photo cam
02:02for a few years before that to test the process
02:05of actually adding film to the process at the end rather than the beginning.
02:09What we found was that gave us an interesting look
02:11that was unlike film, it was unlike digital.
02:14It sort of creates its own little world
02:16that's different to anything else that I'd done before.
02:19And the same with Denise.
02:20So we decided that film out was a really important aspect of the look.
02:24We were able to create a LUT through a skip bleach process.
02:28The highlights became a skip bleach part,
02:30and then the shadows became a digital.
02:32So we were able to kind of combine a film emulation
02:36to create a LUT that creates a look that I've not seen before.
02:40For the film itself and this scene,
02:41we shot with the Alexa 65 and the Alexa LF.
02:44Both cameras were used kind of interchangeably
02:46depending on what we wanted to do with the ratio.
02:49The thought was that the whole film should be shot for IMAX and for that ratio
02:53because it's such a powerful, immersive format
02:57that we felt like it was the only real choice we could make for this journey.
03:06The IMAX ratio and the IMAX experience is unlike anything else.
03:11It's probably the most immersive experience that I've ever had in a theatre.
03:15If we're watching something in IMAX,
03:17then it becomes something that you forget where you're sitting.
03:20You forget where you are.
03:22You become immersed in the filmmaker's vision, effectively,
03:25because it meant that we really needed the audience
03:28to feel like they were part of Paul's journey
03:31and part of the journey that all these Fremen were going on.
03:34The lens choices were interesting because on part one,
03:37we had shot with anamorphic lenses for Caladan
03:41and we'd shot with spherical lenses for Arrakis.
03:43The camera needs to mirror Paul's journey, effectively,
03:46which is why we opened up to an IMAX ratio when Paul set foot on Arrakis.
03:51Natural light for Denis, for this film, and for myself was insanely important.
03:56Part of the reason why things took so long to make
03:58and we were so precise about things
04:00is because daylight had to feel real and natural.
04:03In the film world, we can kind of cheat
04:05where the direction of daylight comes from on actors.
04:07You'll watch a film and you'll rarely see somebody front lit.
04:10You'll mostly see people that are back lit,
04:12which is a little bit magical if you think about it
04:13when two people face each other and they're both back lit.
04:16For this particular sequence, it was really important
04:18that the sun came from one direction
04:20and it's very clear where the sun comes from
04:23because you have a lit side of the sand dune
04:25and you have a shadowed side of the sand dune,
04:27which means that we could not cheat his placement on a sand dune
04:30just to have backlight on him.
04:33We had to make sure that we had front light on the sand dune.
04:35Sandworm comes in through the lit side, through the sun side,
04:38and then he falls at massive speed
04:41and lands on the sandworm in shadow, in darkness.
04:45So it was a very important narrative choice to make.
04:48The sun became a really incredible, important part of the process
04:52and we felt like if we're going to be sort of going out on a limb
04:55and showing the world worm writing like this,
04:58that we may as well do it without anyone sort of fearing like it was false.
05:02So all of the worm writing was done with natural daylight.
05:05Let's play the scene back for reference.
05:12The R&D on that sequence was mixed.
05:14There were some shots that were very easy to get,
05:16but then there were other shots that took an inordinate amount of time.
05:20Like, for example, a shot of him standing up, riding.
05:23We couldn't get the shake of the camera right.
05:25He was obviously not moving,
05:26so we had to find a way to make the camera feel like it was tracking with him
05:30and have just the right amount of shake and just the right amount of movement.
05:33We shot it with a test, didn't work.
05:35Shot it again, didn't work.
05:37There were multiple shots that took many days
05:39or even weeks of R&D to get even a single shot.
05:42Some were easier than others,
05:43but then there were others that were insanely hard.
05:45Early on when we started talking about the sandworm writing,
05:48it was very, very hard to find reference for how it should look.
05:52We looked quite extensively at avalanche videos, surf videos.
05:56We tried to see what it would be like when Paul was literally under the water,
06:00but in this case, sand.
06:02Biggest challenges on this is that, you know, worms don't exist.
06:05But the elements that do exist, we were able to build.
06:09We're able to build what he is standing on and writing on,
06:12but we're also able to build and create the right amount of sand
06:17and the right amount of daylight.
06:18One of the great things about Paul, who's our VFX supervisor,
06:22he's a firm believer in creating as much in-camera as possible
06:26so that when he creates his magic, that it blends in really well.
06:30Anytime that you're seeing close-ups of actors,
06:31anytime you're seeing mid-shots of actors,
06:33that's all in-camera.
06:34Things beyond that, anytime there's an extension of the worm is VFX.
06:38But for the most part, we fought really hard
06:40to try and get things as much in-camera as possible.
06:47Given that this is the second outing with Denis,
06:50I think that the biggest takeaway that I learned
06:53was how in-tune you can get with your director
06:58and with the actors and with the crew.
07:00And with the actors and with the crew,
07:03when it comes to creating something of this scale,
07:06everything we did in this film was insanely hard.
07:09Like, there was not one easy sequence.
07:11I don't think, you know, Denis wrote one simple scene.
07:14Every scene had a level of complexity
07:16that was sort of way beyond what I've done before.
07:20When you make a film, you're so intimately involved
07:23in every single detail that goes into every single shot.
07:26It's very hard to remove yourself from the actual process
07:30when you watch a film.
07:31Generally, all I can think of is how we did things,
07:34what we were doing on the day,
07:35the conversations that we were having leading up to that,
07:37the conversations we were having after we'd shot it.
07:39There's a lot of emotional baggage that goes on
07:42as a cinematographer, for me, having shot this movie.
07:46Every time I watch this scene,
07:48I become completely immersed in it
07:49and I forget all about those conversations.
07:52I forget about every day that, you know,
07:54we were testing something and it failed
07:56or then it succeeded or every day
07:57that there was too much sand or not enough sand
08:00or every day that the camera move didn't work
08:02so we had to try a different way of doing it.
08:04There was a lot of R&D that went into this scene.
08:06It took months and months and months.
08:08But now when I watch it, I feel like we've nailed every part.
08:10There is not one part of any of those shots
08:13that I feel like has been compromised.
08:15Then combined with insanely incredible editing
08:19and sound design, all those things that Denis
08:21brought to the party as a director,
08:23I just think it's an incredible scene
08:24and I love watching it every single time.
08:27♪♪