Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1529668
Part Two would provide the opportunity to discover the world of the Fremen, the imperial planet of Kaitain, dig a lot deeper into the Harkonnen world of Giedi Prime and since the city of Arrakeen had been carpet bombed at the end of Part One, it gave us the chance to re-think it as well. The next step was to check on the availability of my team of Concept Illustrators. Deak Ferrand, Paul Chadeisson, Yanick Dusseault, George Hull and Colie Wertz all raised their hand and called present! We basically had four months to design the bulk of the movie before we would start building the first big sets in Budapest. The clock was ticking but we had a shorthand having worked together before. The key is that everything in the design of the film needs to be a reaction, a conversation with the natural elements and the economics of each planet to define how those people live and what makes up their cultures. Design for design cannot exist. It needs to support storytelling, inform the viewer of the past, as well as the future and have a point of view. My approach has always been to make things believable. One needs to take it out of the fantasy and anchor it to reality. The actors have method acting where they put themselves in the position of the character they're playing, and here it's method designing. By February, Denis had approved a good number of the designs, and we were then ready to start drawing up construction plans and work on the budget with Supervising Art Director Tom Brown. By mid-March, construction was underway. Again, the Art Department used multiple tricks. Some of the sets were relatively straightforward to build because they're quite contained. Others, due to their sizes, were limited by their cost. To keep those sets immersive, we determined to build them as high as twenty-four feet. Above that line, we would then use fabric to complete or continue the sets. We kept the intended physical volumes by creating frames that we then wrapped with fabric and painted the average/general color of the set. This way, in a medium shot or close-up, everything behind is real. And in a wider shot, the fabric set extensions help the shot on a couple of levels. The lighting department has the correct physical areas to project light, and the shadows will fall in the right physical spots. There will be no light contamination that would happen using traditional green screens or blue screens. Still a couple of the sets were limited by the size of the sound stages, so the film then used exterior spaces between sound stages and backlots, where we applied similar set extension techniques and obvious help from Paul Lambert and his VFX team. Revisiting Arrakeen Since Arrakeen had been the center of the Harkonnen attack on House Atreides at the end of Part One and the emperor giving full reign to the Harkonnens over Arrakis, this allowed the opportunity to express how the conquerors would represent their total control over the population of the planet. This meant that not only would they rebuild the city but this time, they would implement their own culture in doing so. A black A. THE HARKONNEN RECLAIMING ARRAKEEN, IMPLEMENTING THEIR CULTURE ON THE EXISTING ARCHITECTURE. ILLUSTRATION BY DEAK FERRAND IN CINEMA 4-D AND PHOTOSHOP. B. ARRAKEEN SPACEPORT, RABBAN CEREMONY. ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICE VERMETTE AND DEAK FERRAND IN SKETCHUP, CINEMA 4-D AND PHOTOSHOP. C. GIEDI PRIME EXTERIOR CORRIDORS. ILLUSTRATION BY DEAK FERRAND IN CINEMA 4-D AND PHOTOSHOP. D. GIEDI PRIME, LADY FENRIG GUEST BEDROOM. STAGE BUILD AT HUNGEXPO, BUDAPEST. PRODUCTION STILL. E. GIEDI PRIME, CORRIDORS. STAGE BUILD AT HUNGEXPO, BUDAPEST. PRODUCTION STILL. PHOTOGRAPHY BY NIKO TAVERNISE A