Denis Villeneuve Reveals “Dune: Part Two” Sandworm-Riding Scenes Were Insanely Labor-Intensive
It’s no secret that co-writer/director Denis Villeneuve’s vision for his two Dune films was exacting and inspired. Arguably, the most technically challenging part of a very challenging film was the climactic early-ish moment when Paul Atreides (Timtohée Chalamet) finally rides one of Arrakis’s colossal sandworms. Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival this past Saturday, Villeneuve revealed just how hard capturing this moment truly was.
Speaking with Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein, Villeneuve detailed that scene, which he’d previously revealed took 44 days to film and required the “worm unit,” a specialized crew within a crew, to help him pull it off.
“I realized that the way I wanted to approach this, I didn’t want to compromise,” Villeneuve told Goldstein. “Most important with visual effects is, how will you shoot it? And I wanted to shoot it with natural light. And I realized it would take months to shoot it. Each shot was very complex. Each shot took sometimes half a day, sometimes a day, sometimes a week for one shot because of the complexity. If I had done it myself, I would still be shooting.”
One of Villeneuve’s key collaborators on this scene was his producer, and wife, Tanya LaPointe, who he said “understood perfectly my vision.”
Another key collaborator was Greig Fraser, Villeneuve’s cinematographer on both Dune films. In our two-part conversation with Fraser, he highlighted the difficulty of filming that sequence.
“It was such a complicated story, and those action set pieces were very complex,” Fraser continues. “I mean, riding a sandworm is very complex—so I tried to make sure that we were telling the story as concisely as possible, which allowed Denis and Joe [Walker], our editor, to hold on shots as long as possible. So I think the trick, for me, is simplicity. Every shot needed to be as clear as possible. To not confuse the audience with too much handheld or too much messiness, but keep things sharp and clear.”
Photo by Niko Tavernise
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