'Dune: Part Two' Director Denis Villeneuve Breaks Down the Sandworm Scene

Hi, I'm Denis Villeneuve, director of Dune: Part Two,

and this is Note On A Scene.

[dramatic tense music]

[music intensifies]

This scene is a very, very iconic scene in the novel

where Paul Atreides will finally become a Fremen,

being fully accepted by the tribe,

by riding a sandworm for the very first time.

Riding a sandworm is something

that is part of the Fremen tradition,

is something that usually Fremen learn at a earlier age.

It's one of the scene where I tried as close as possible

to the actual dialogue of the novel.

You're brave.

We all know that.

Be simple, be direct.

Nothing fancy.

Nothing fancy.

I like in that dialogue

the fact that we feel strongly that Stilgar

became some kind of surrogate father to Paul,

that Stilgar was like a part of the healing process of Paul.

Hey, I'm serious.

Nothing fancy or you will shame my teaching.

I won't shame you.

I understand.

Shai-Hulud decides today if you become Fremen

or if you die.

There's something that I absolutely love about filmmaking,

is things that you write,

but then the actors bring something

even better than I was expecting,

which is I was looking for that kind of warmth,

feeling a bit of humor coming from Stilgar,

but the way Timothee reacts to the line

makes the scene even better for me.

So the way Timothee becomes a straight man

and the way Stilgar

introduced the ways of the desert to Paul,

there's something about the humor that is conveyed.

I thought that Timothee brought some kind of touch of humor

that I was, like, really pleased by.

Hey, Muad'dib!

[speaking in Chakobsa]

[Fremen laughing]

Chakobsa.

In Part One, we were introduced to the Fremen language.

There was a bit of it at the end of the movie.

But in Part Two,

the character Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica

immerse themselves in the Fremen culture.

It was very important for me

that there will be a prominent use of Chakobsa,

the Fremen language.

And David Peterson,

linguist behind the design of the language in Part One,

made a tremendous amount of work

to bring this dialogue to the screen.

It's a dialogue that is based

on the hints of what we have in the book,

but there was a substantial amount of it

that was created for the movie.

Hey, Muad'dib!

[speaking in Chakobsa]

[Fremen laughing]

Souheila Yacoub is an actress

that I was very excited to work with.

I love actor that feels free in front of the camera,

where I feel that there is no limit.

Shishakli in the novel is a young man,

but I wanted to increase femininity in the Fremen tribe.

Why?

Because Frank Herbert insists in his novel

to say that there's a equality between men and women,

that the women are as good fighters as men,

and that the responsibility in the tribes

are equally shared.

But the novel, it is expressed,

but doesn't show that.

[Fremen laughing]

[Shishakli speaking in Chakobsa]

When the first novel came out,

Frank Herbert was disappointed

the way the book has been perceived.

He felt that the reader were thinking that Dune

was a celebration of Paul Atreides,

but right the opposite.

His intention were to make a cautionary tale,

a warning toward messianic figures.

And in order to correct that,

this perception of the first book,

he wrote another book, Dune Messiah.

It's almost like a tiny book,

like a epilogue where we understand

what Paul really means to Frank Herbert.

What I did is that I transformed Chani's character.

I made her more prominent.

In the book, Chani kind of disappear,

dissolve into the shadow of Paul.

She's in the background, she's a believer.

There's nothing special apart that she's Paul's lover.

There was a strong opportunity there,

a character that could help me to have a distance,

a critical distance with Paul Atreides.

I love witness people that are listening in corners

or that you can just feel their presence without dialogue

and understand what they are going through,

and Zendaya is incredibly expressive with her eyes,

and she brought that strength

to the character that was required.

I wanted to see in her the power of the youth

and someone that wants to transform her world,

that she doesn't believe in the old ways

of seeing the world,

and she's a free character.

Through her eyes we understand what Paul becomes

and in which direction he goes

and which transform the movie, not into a celebration,

but as Frank Herbert was wishing,

more of a warning.

[Stilgar speaking in Chakobsa]

The eyes.

The prep of Part Two

was much more compressed than Part One,

because I wanted the movie to come out

as quickly as possible.

It is not a sequel, it's a second part,

so it was important for us

to bring the movie quickly to the world.

Now, saying this,

there's a tremendous amount of R&D

as we were doing Part One.

We knew the vocabulary, we knew the design,

there was something, we were on solid ground.

But there's still some technical advancement that were made.

And as in Part One,

the eyes were done hand by hand.

This time software were designed,

so the AI was like a way to help us

to bring the level of realism that I want.

The eyes of Part Two are much more precise

than what was made in Part One.

[Stilgar speaking in Chakobsa]

[Paul breathing heavily]

[sand thumping]

I am madly in love with a shot like that.

When I was drawing storyboards,

sometime with Sam Hudecki,

we were just doing a line with a tiny dot.

It's just like there's something about the purity,

and it's probably linked with my childhood

where I was raised with an horizon with nothing around.

But it's like there's something here

about bringing back the human

as its right scale in the landscape,

like a hand in contact with the immensity,

with the meditative impact of the desert

that I think is very powerful

Lower.

[sand thumping]

[Paul breathing heavily]

[sand hissing]

The sound here that has been done

is I asked Richard King to go back in the desert

and to make sure that we will hear that specific sound

of the hissing of the sand

that sounds almost like a strange singing.

I was very pleased with the sound crew

that were able to bring back that specific sound

that we were hearing all the time in the desert.

[sand booming]

[Paul breathing heavily]

[Paul] Okay, okay.

[wind whistling]

That is something that happens in the novel,

but what happens after

is what the movies bring to life.

[thumper thumping]

Here in the book it's written that Paul rides the worm.

It's very evasive about how a human being

could jump on such a beast.

I knew it would be a central scene,

probably one of the most important scenes of the movie,

and I knew that if this scene was a success,

I will have a movie.

There's some description, of course, in the book,

the Maker hooks and the thumper.

How precisely to bring that to the screen was like,

I had to figure that out

and to create a kind of seminar for my crew

where I taught them how to ride a sandworm

and I explained to them

how we will bring that to the screen.

When I did so, there was a silence around the table,

because what I was asking for

was like to bring a level of realism

that will require a tremendous amount of time.

I wanted to shoot everything on the real sunlight.

That was the key for the VFX.

[worm rumbling]

[Stilgar speaking Chakobsa]

[worm rumbling]

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

This shot where we see Paul walking,

I really love the tension

that is brought by a stillness,

being in front of a still landscape.

There's something here, to be honest,

that was inspired by Jaws,

the idea that what you don't see is more frightening.

It's knowing that there's something underneath

that might come soon

is a lesson that I learned a long time ago from Spielberg.

So the idea here is pretty simple.

A Fremen, in order to jump to ride a worm,

will put a thumper at the lower or side of the dune,

stand on top, and wait for the worm to catch

and get like that and will eventually jump.

But of course, it's the first time

that Paul is riding a sandworm,

so I had to find the right equilibrium,

the right balance to show his skills

and in the same time how difficult it is

and how he risks his life.

Having been in this desert in Part One,

I knew that there was those kinds of crater

in between sand dunes, those kind of vast flat space,

and I thought that a Fremen will use that flat space

in order to be able to calculate the trajectory

of the sand dunes.

I was pleased to find the right one

with the right sun position,

because we didn't use any artificial light in the desert

shooting Part Two like we did in Part One.

It brings a level of high realism

and a feeling of a strong tactile sensation

that you feel with the nature that I was looking for.

[worm rumbling]

[Maker hooks hissing]

Again, I tried to shoot as much as possible on camera,

meaning that the VFX would be blended

inside the reality of the landscape.

[worm booming]

What I can say about this moment

is how I was absolutely pleased with the sound design.

It was important for me that the worm

will not express itself

like some kind of ancient dinosaur or some kind of monster,

but that the sound that it will emulate

will be inspired by the friction of such a beast

against the rock and the sand.

You will feel almost like it's a bending building

against the wind or something.

[worm booming]

The sound of a lake, frozen lake in winter in Canada

where you have like those eerie, incredible singing sound

that I feel absolutely surreal,

and I wanted to convey that kind of where nature

goes in a direction with a sound

that is absolutely unpredictable;

that feels very grounded in the reality of the image,

but feels still there's a connection with the surreal.

Richard King absolutely nailed that.

[worm rumbling]

The idea was to convey the idea that Paul missed it.

The worm is not exactly where Paul intended it to be.

There's like a gap between his position and the worm,

and that to increase the fact that he's learning,

he's about to miss his Uber, technically.

[worm rumbling]

All these shots have been made in the real landscape.

I insisted that there will be no CG element here

apart from, of course, the worm.

[worm rumbling]

I wanted to create that feeling

when you are beside a waterfall,

the relationship in the subconscious

that it brings with death.

[worm rumbling]

This first part of the sequence

has been shot in the desert in Abu Dhabi.

The problem we were facing is that Greig Fraser and I

wanted the worm to come in on the sunny side

and get out on the shadow side.

Sounds ridiculous, but there's not a lot of sand dunes

because of the wind pattern in Abu Dhabi.

The abrupt side of the sand dune

don't face the right side in the right way,

so we had to create our own sand dune

in order to do that specific shot.

There was sand dunes that were created

according to the right sunlight.

This is real until here, of course.

The idea here is that manmade sand dune,

and there is after that a set extension

where the worm is getting out.

[worm rumbling]

[Paul] Okay, okay!

[Paul screaming]

It is by far one of the most difficult shot I've done.

The idea to have a stunt man running on a specific sand dune

and at a perfect sunlight

that will disappear, collapse in the sand dune.

So in order to do so,

what we did is that we created a sand dune

where there were, like, three massive cylinders,

giant cylinders.

Each cylinder will pull by a truck.

And the stunt was running this way

and the idea was to have, at the perfect timing,

we had to pull those tubes under the sand dune

in order for the sand dune to collapse.

And the stunt needed to be perfectly,

to land perfectly at the right spot at the right time,

and that we could only shoot early mornings

because of the direction of the sunlight.

And it sounds easy, but those trucks were massive trucks,

and in order to find the proper speed

over the course of many days,

in order to arrive at the perfect timing

that I was looking for,

where we have actually saw a human being running

and seeing the world collapsing under his feet,

which I think is a absolutely nightmarish event

and that I was trying to do

with as much realism as possible.

When the trucks moved forward, one after the other,

and after they were moving in a certain order,

they were not moving all in the same time,

but with a split second each other,

so the collapse was progressive.

Once the tube were gone,

the stuntman was landing on mattress

that were hidden under the sand.

[sand whooshing]

[wind whistling]

How did we do that?

Quite simple in theory, but it was difficult in practice,

because I wanted, again,

to shoot that all under natural light.

I asked my production designer

to create a gigantic platform.

A reproduction.

We tried to build the biggest platform possible

with the sandworm skin.

This platform will be on a gimbal.

It's a machine that allow us

to move the platform in one way or the other.

The platform can modulate like that at different speed.

It's something that is used in action sequences

in the airplane or sometimes for a car accidents

or things like that,

but this time it was like a specific one

that could move quite faster

and it required a lot of engineering from Gerd Nefzer,

which is one of the best in the business

regarding special effects.

The way we did that is that we had

like what they call the dog collar,

and the gimbal was like here.

And this was oriented according to sunlight.

We were shooting each shot

at specific moment of the day

when the sun was specifically in the right direction.

Each shot needed a specific programming in the platform

to convey different moment of the worm ride.

That was, like, one of the approach.

The other one was on the building of the sound stage,

we put the platform at different angles like that

when the character is falling.

We had also one platform that was vertical like that,

with the gimbal.

That was used for the shot you're seeing here

where I wanted the character

to lose contact with the platform,

like as if the platform was falling,

so the platform goes from this to this angle

so the character will fall into the worm.

And that's like a game with gravity

that I was very excited to do,

but that required my crew to work many days

in order to find the right speed and the right angle.

[wind roaring]

[Paul] Whoa!

[worm rumbling]

[wind roaring]

I wanted to make sure

that the sandworm riding will be as edgy as real.

It will look dangerous,

but also some kind of a feeling of heroism,

and despite his clumsiness,

that Paul will succeed finally being one with the desert,

that this idea that Fremen have the ability

to be in total harmony with the desert,

and that it's like humans finding the right balance

and being in one.

It's a very important moment in the book

and it's a fundamental moment in the movie.

[wind roaring]

When we designed the sandworm skin in Part One,

for Patrice Vermette, my production designer, and I,

it was important that the sandworm will feel prehistoric,

like that all the design of the worm

will be in direct relationship with this environment.

A bit like the way the novel was written,

that you could explain from it's biology

how it feeds, how it evolve,

how it lives under such harsh conditions

and it's a beast technically that lives under the sand

at a tremendous heat,

and it's like we tried to create

the most believable being as possible,

still having that kind of godlike quality to it

that is so important for the Fremen psyche.

In the book, we understand that a Fremen can ride a worm

by exposing a sensitive part of its skin.

The worm has like some scales,

and when you lift one of them,

you expose sensitive skin.

The worm, trying to protect itself,

will stay at the surface.

I felt that it was not enough.

I needed something to express to the audience

that sense, that vulnerability,

and I come with this idea of vents,

part of this breathing system,

that once exposed, you will understand

that the worm feels vulnerable this way.

[wind roaring]

The platform was surrounded by massive fans.

We were throwing an insane amount of dust on the stunt.

Tons of dust were used in that sequence.

I wanted really to feel that the character

is going through waves of sand

and disappear into the dust

and to feel that he has to master the elements,

the action of sand riding

involve lot of violence and danger.

[wind roaring]

[sand whooshing]

[Maker hook clanging]

[dramatic tense music]

One of my favorite moment in the movie

where I wanted to bring some, again, heroism,

but also a feeling of a sacred moment,

that from the Fremen perspective,

this will be one moment

that will fulfill one of the element of the prophecy

where a boy will be able to tame a giant sandworm,

one of the biggest ever seen.

A boy from the other world

would be able to be in relationship with Shai-Hulud.

And I wanted that to be conveyed in in the music,

that feeling that something very special is happening,

something almost sacred from the Fremen perspective.

[dramatic tense music]

In order to convey that speed,

the plates were shot with helicopters,

but the character actually is shot with a long lens

and a rig that goes at high speed

in order to feel that instability on the character

as if he was passing by.

[dramatic tense music]

[Fremen speaking Chakobsa]

[Fremen cheering]

There's like a precise shift

where we see that it will go

from Paul being celebrated by the Fremen

because he succeeded, obviously,

but we will see from Chani's perspective,

the Fremen will go from celebration to adoration.

When I decided to make this adaptation of the novel,

the first artist that I approached

to help me to do so was Hans Zimmer.

Hans is like me, a massive fan of the novel.

Hans gave me a warning.

He says, Is it a good idea to tackle your childhood dreams?

Are we meant to fail?

You cannot bring to the screen

the full potential of the dream of the teenager.

There was a lot of wisdom in that,

and I kind of frankly agree with him,

that was the challenge.

That was the specificity of this project,

was to try to go back in time

and bring back those images to the surface.

And now that both movies are completed,

take me a lot of time to digest this experience,

I will say that there are some sequences,

like this one, the worm ride,

that is very, very close to the dream.

Others are quite different

because of the process of the adaptation.

It will take me a while to digest them,

to make peace with that.