‘Dune: Part Two’: Oscar-winning technical wizards discuss the ‘clear vision’ of Denis Villeneuve
“ The thing with Denis is we kind of professionally grew up in the same circles in Montreal. We come from independent films,” remembers production designer Patrice Vermette about filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, with whom he’s worked on multiple films, most recently Dune: Part Two. They teamed up on a relatively smaller scale at the start of their collaborative relationship over a decade ago. In 2013, they made the mind-bending indie Enemy and the studio crime thriller Prisoners. “ The relationship it’s like, we looked at each other like two kids still playing with Legos, that type of thing.” Then they thought, “Let’s push it a bit further … and every movie we dream a little more.” Eventually, you’ll be building whole planets and societies.
Gold Derby has spoken with Dune: Part Two technical wizards Vermette, Shane Vieau (set decorator), Jacqueline West (costume designer), Paul Lambert (visual effects supervisor), Greig Fraser (cinematographer), and Joe Walker (editor) about their work on the film and their collaborations with Villeneuve. Vermette, Lambert, Fraser, and Walker won Oscars for their work on Dune: Part One. West was Oscar-nominated for Part One. Vieau just joined the team for Part Two, but he previously won an Oscar for The Shape of Water. Surprisingly, though, Villeneuve didn’t earn an Oscar nom for directing Part One.
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“ I was very nervous meeting him for the first time,” Vieau admits. “ When you first hear his voice, it is so iconic, it reminded me of someone like Darth Vader … When he speaks, you just want to listen.” But the filmmaker “ welcomes everyone into his world and is such a gentleman. He knows exactly what he wants, and he is very ingratiating.”
Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
Fraser agrees with Villeneuve’s intentionality. ”Denis is a very focused director,” he says. Villeneuve had “laser-focused storyboard ideas and shot ideas and creative ideas,” just as he demonstrated in Part One. “I think he enjoyed that we already established the story. We’d established the setup for the story. In which case, he, as a writer and director, could just explore some of the fun parts about shooting in the desert.”
“ Denis has such an evident vision of what the film should be,” adds Lambert. “ He’s a visionary. One of my first experiences with Denis was on the Blade Runner set, which was so huge for me that there were days when I’d be watching the video feed for specifics for visual effects. He’d come wandering up — because he’s also a pacer, he’ll pace around the set and stop and talk to people. We’d look at the frame, and then he’d explain all the negative space to me. You think, oh my goodness, this man sees things which you have to look twice to find.” But “ even though he has a vision, he will listen to other ideas and hone everything in.”
He was incredibly open to ideas from the costume department. “ He gives me a lot of freedom,” West recalls. “But he has a powerful vision of what he wants. He doesn’t always articulate it but knows when he sees it. When I walk him through, I see he has a gut reaction to clothing and costume. He knows they’re right for the character he’s trying to portray on screen. So he’s very visual and very detail-oriented, which I love, and very collaborative.” And West wasn’t satisfied until Villeneuve had exactly what he needed. “ Until I get that ‘I deeply love it, Jacqueline,’ I don’t stop.”
Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
While editing, Villeneuve usually “ sits behind me on a black sofa over there with a strong coffee,” recalls Walker. Together, they “dug into the intimate scenes: the little scenes between Paul and his mother, the scenes between Paul and Stilgar, and the scenes between Chani and Paul. They attracted the most of our discipline.” For the grand spectacle of the effects-intensive scenes, Walker benefited from “ the amount of planning that he and his team put into these things right from before the shoot.” And when the director was available, “ he’d come over to the cutting room, and we’d work together and pick a take and see how it fit together,” which was a “kind of elaborate process. But I benefit hugely from the vision of the filmmaker here.”
Villeneuve has been nominated for three Oscars: Best Director for Arrival (2016), Best Adapted Screenplay for Dune: Part One, and Best Picture for Dune: Part One. Though the Directors Guild didn’t recognize him when they announced their nominees on Jan. 8, he does contend for Best Director at the upcoming Critics Choice Awards. He has been cited for his writing and directing by various critics nationwide. Dune: Part Two ranks sixth in Gold Derby‘s odds for Best Picture as of this writing, so Villeneuve is likely to be an Oscar nominee either way. But he’s also in our top 10 for Best Director, so we can’t rule him out there, either.
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