Alec Newman acting in front of a "green screen"
"The teamwork on any movie is important," Farino states. "It's almost a cliché, but on a project of this scope that has so many fantastic elements that can so easily go wrong, everything has to really come together. My responsibility is to work with the director, the cinematographer, and the production designer, to plan everything out very care-fully so that once we get onto the set we all have a clear idea of what needs to be done. From that point on it's a case of monitoring to make sure there are no unexpected problems."
"There are three visual effects companies providing the principal visual effects for ‘Frank Herbert’s Dune,’ Area 51, Netter Digital, and AI Effects. Then there are some additional companies doing other effects, or matte paintings, including Digital Firepower, E=mc 2 Digital and Title House Digital. Basically the effects companies will take the live action scenes that we have photographed in Prague, whether it is a ‘green screen’ or just a normal scene such as a hangar location or on the desert set. They will then process that footage in a way that integrates the images, for instance, of the sandworm, or the Thopter, that they have created in the computer or have animated with the live action footage to make one complete and seamless image.
"It will take approximately eight to nine months to complete all of the visual effects. This includes some of the work that was actually being done while we were still shooting the mini-series such as modeling the worm and the Thopter and various other development work and design work.
Riding a sandworm in front of a "green screen"
"I think the biggest challenge to a project like this," Farino pointed out, "is the fact that you are creating a fully functional science fiction world. That's not to say that hasn't been done before, but nevertheless it still poses considerable challenges and problems given the size and scope of this production. How do you create something that's interesting and different, yet believable enough so that the audience can fully accept this fictional world and enjoy the story?
"I think Kreka did a wonderful job creating the sets and giving us the environment to work with. Now with the visual effects, we add the last elements to Vittorio’s beautiful photography and hopefully complete the realization of John’s vision for the movie."
A Heighliner
NETTER DIGITAL:LAUREL KLICK
Spaceships,Folding Space,Water of Life Sequence, Dream Imagery
Netter Visual Effects Supervisor Laurel Klick described some of their contributions to "Frank Herbert’s Dune." "We're creating all the spaceships and shuttles, and a sequence of shots during the Fremen ‘Water of Life’ ceremony when Jessica Atreides transforms the water from a drowned worm to become a Reverend Mother."
Designing spaceships for a world twenty-three thousand years in the future that did not look like those in other science fiction films required that new approaches be taken.
"More than anything, the ship designs were defined by going as far away from the Star Wars look as we could," Laurel said.
Netter was also responsible for the sequence in which the Navigator folds space and the end of the movie sequence, which has vortexes, cosmic storms and giant tornadoes.
A four-photo sequence showing a Heighliner folding space.
"The Navigator is actually a puppet created by KNB. We are adding its environment and creating the ‘folding space’ effect," said Laurel. Folding space is an unusual effect which they designed from the ground up. "This is a pretty amazing effect. We're interpreting a way of traveling that no one knows for sure what it would actually look like—to have space folding in on itself. We wanted to give the audience a sense of the sky and the atmosphere being sucked in and that everything twists along with the shuttle and then when space unfolds everything comes back to normal in a very organic motion."
the interior of a Heighliner
the interior of a Heighliner
Netter Digital Technologies credits include Impostor, BASEketball, From Dusk Till Dawn, Mousehunt, Mr. Magoo, Babylon 5, Bats, Nutty Professor II, Mystery Men and the TV mini-series Storm of the Century.
Lady Jessica in the Water of Life ceremony
The Arrakeen Palace
DIGITAL FIREPOWER & E=mc2 DIGITAL
Matte Paintings:Arrakeen Palace,Harkonnen City
Charles Darby and Bob Morgenroth
The visual effects companies Digital Firepower and E=mc2 Digital worked to provide composited digital matte paintings of the Arakeen Palace and Harkonnen City. Unlike matte paintings, which for years were painted on glass (in order to be back-lit) or realized with other similar methods, digital matte paintings are done on the computer.
As Bob Morgenroth, Visual Effects Producer for E=mc2 explained, "The digital matte painter for 'Frank Herbert's Dune' is Charles Darby of Digital Fire Power. He has established himself as one of the premiere digital matte painters. He did a majority of the paintings of the Titanic in the James Cameron film that did not involve animation, such as digital matte paintings of the ship in the harbor."
"Myself and my team at Digital Firepower worked on various concepts for both Harkonnen and Arrakeen, incorporating strong primary colors to better emulate the beautiful production design. Inspired by various sources including William Blake and the architecture of Lebbeas Woods, we formed paintings that were designed to portray the character of those who live in the cities we created," said Charles Darby, Matte Supervisor.
For the Arrakeen Palace and Harkonnen City, Darby started by painting a watercolor of the initial concepts. He and Bob then got together with Visual Effects Supervisor Ernest Farino and Director John Harrison to look at the watercolors.
"The watercolors are done relatively quickly, then John, Ernie, and I would make comments as to what direction things need to go in," Morgenroth explains. "The view, for instance, whether it needs to be closer, or wider or taller or farther away.
"The next stage is making the gray scale illustrations. They’re done in black and white and incorporate the changes based on the comments on the watercolors. These images will be scanned into a computer and then digitally embellished with color and detail, ultimately creating the final digital matte painting. The watercolor itself is never used in the actual finished product; it serves as the jumping off point."
While the digital matte paintings were being refined, the earlier, gray scale versions were given to the director to use as "temp shots" during his early editing stages on the project.
"When Digital Firepower finishes the digital matte painting, we take that computer file [which is fairly huge because we're doing this at high definition resolution] and start adding other elements that either we create or Ernie gives us from other visual effects houses and then composite everything into what will be the final shot."
A detail of the Arrakeen Palace
Preparing a Translite for a scene
TITLE HOUSE DIGITAL:CHIP POTTER
Desert Landscape Enhancements, Color Correction of Scanned Negative
Title House Digital did key scenes intended to establish the important exterior vistas on the desert planet Arrakis using a process called "Landscape Enhancements." The process takes the live action sequences filmed on the sound stages and makes them appear more like real exteriors.
As Chip Potter of Title House Digital explains it, "We're using some very sophisticated 3D packages to create digital landscapes that match the angles of the existing sites that were shot.
Translite showing the landscape of Dune
"With the advent of better scanners and higher resolutions, you're now basically able to create a photo montage of what you would like your backdrop to be. You're getting a cross between what the old scenic painters could do, where they would create a realistic backdrop drawn from memory or their artistic skill, and the Translite which is literally a composite of photographs assembled into one giant image.
Translite showing the landscape of Dune
"The Translites were physically seamless and they were beautifully
lit and shot, but there is still limitations to shooting on a stage against a Translite. For instance, in the computer we've incorporated a camera move so that we can start off way out in the horizon, move over, crane down and look at our actors who are walking through the sand that was shot in live action on the sound stage. The result is the creation of huge vistas."
The blank screen in the background will be replaced with a landscape image.
Title House Digital has other highly technical tasks to perform on "Frank Herbert’s Dune." They are handling the color correction on the negative that gets scanned for use by all of the visual effects houses. This is a bigger job than it may sound like. That is because cinematographer Vittorio Storaro conceived a unique color palette for the film in which the lighting is not only keyed to specific characters, but to the mood and tone of a scene. In order for this to work the colors must be consistently applied throughout the movie.
Note the illusion of vast depth in the Translite.
Potter said, "What makes the color corrections so interesting is that Vittorio’s color sense, and the way that he sees his imagery, is very brilliant. Very saturated. He may start with a scene that's very orange. I mean overly orange, and then we may go to another scene that's in all deep blues and greens. Just really gorgeous stuff. You go so far as to say that the color is almost a character. The result is that the color is helping to tell the story. But in having to deal with that color on a technical side, it’s somewhat of a challenge. We have to take the imagery from the film and translate it into computer data and make sure that Vittorio’s same choice of color comes up in the computer.
"The main challenge is to maintain the consistency and the look that they've tried so hard to capture."
Lady Jessica performs the "weirding way."
AI EFFECTS
WEIRDING WAY, HUNTER SEEKER, DEFENSIVE SHIELDS, HOLOVID
Frank Isaacs,VFX Producer A.I.FX
AI Effects, Inc. was formed in 1994 by Frank H. Isaacs and Tony Alderson. The duo have a combined total of over 35 years of visual effects experience in film, television, commercials, spec-ial projects, and the new world of computer graphics. Their credits include work on HBO's From the Earth to the Moon, True Lies, Terminator II, Near Dark, Fright Night II, Super Mario Bros., The Abyss, Coneheads, Star Trek-The Next Generation, Dracula, and The Last Action Hero. AI is also one of the leading companies involved in stereoscopic imaging.
"Ernie Farino and I go back all the way to Roger Corman's studio out in Venice back in 1979 when we were working on Galaxy of Terror," recalled Frank Isaacs. "That's where we met, and in 1983 I supervised my first feature and Ernie came on to assist in doing a lot of the roto-scoping. Since then we've been on quite a number of shows together."
Two views of a deadly Hunter Seeker
The primary big sequences AI Effects worked on were the hunter-seeker, the defensive shields, and the "weirding way" sequences. Their other effects work on "Frank Herbert’s Dune" included a holovid shot of Dr. Yueh, all the muzzle blasts, and all the gunfire because they didn't have real working weapons on set. They also did the bulk of the split-screen shots where they take multiple elements that were shot on set and then assemble them into a shot.
The weirding way shots are unusual. "There are three shots, two of Paul and one of Jessica. They have this capability of, in a sense, jumping ahead of real time. Then after they get to where they want to, and turn off the weirding way move, we see multiple images of themselves catch up and get ‘absorbed’ into them. It's kind of a stutter effect," Isaacs explains, "and it's a very cool effect."
Another effects shot they did involved the Hunter-Seeker, which is the miniature weapon left to try to kill Paul Atreides in his bedroom of the Arrakeen Palace.
"We developed a head for the Hunter-Seeker, and then a segmented body behind it and the whole thing is roughly three inches long" says Isaacs. "The assassin sends this weapon out and it moves on its own propulsion and floats towards its target. Once it is in the room, it senses any movement in the room and it moves to whatever it's tracking. Its mouth opens up. But instead of like our jaw, which only opens with a top and bottom, it opens up in four pieces. Then a needle comes out of the mouth."
The personal defensive shields used by the Atreides and the Harkonnen were also done by AI Effects.
"Ernie wanted the shields to be form-fitting. Almost like a little bubble. It's only up there briefly—just for the time that the mechanism feels that the body is threatened. One of the cool shots is near the end of the sequence when Paul is fighting Gurney. Paul gets an advantage on Gurney and he's slowly putting the knife towards Gurney's throat. When the knife approaches his throat, the bubble forms around Gurney's head and face, but because the knife is moving so slowly, the defensive shield mechanism feels that it's not threatening, and so the shield collapses on itself, and fades away.
"One of the things that is our strength is that we do shots that really become seamless. What Ernie likes is that we make shots look like they're not effects shots."
Lady Jessica in front of a table, note that the table is blank
Dr. Yeuh (Robert Russell) in front of a green screen
the Dr. Yeuh hologram image on the table.
A full scale Thopter
AREA 51: TIM CHUGH
Sandworms, Thopters
Area 51 is the company responsible for the shots involving the sandworms and the Thopters. Visual Effects Supervisor and Producer Tim McHugh is the founder of Area 51. Tim's company was brought on to "Frank Herbert’s Dune" because he'd worked with Ernie Farino before. "We did From The Earth To The Moon together a couple years ago, and that was a great project. That was easy because every-thing had to look real. There weren't a lot of opinions on what a Mercury capsule has to look like. You just build a Mercury capsule. But with Thopters, sandworms, strange creatures and beasts there's a little interpretation involved. This one has a lot more detail work that we have to go fishing for."
The sandworms and Thopters Area 51 did for Dune were all done in Computer Generated Imaging (CGI).
Lady Jessica in front of a wrecked Thopter
"The crew in Prague built a full scale Thopter which they dragged around on the set for a number of shots," Tim stated. "They built an interior and exterior, and that works for all the live action surrounding shots, but any time you see it fly, or if you see more than one of them on the screen, that would be us."
The Thopter is an unusual aircraft. Short for Ornithopter, Frank Herbert defined it as an aircraft capable of flight by flapping its wings like a bird.
In describing the version seen in the mini-series, Tim McHugh is more detailed in his description of what it is and isn't, and what it can and can't do on screen.
production sketch of Thopters
"The Thopter is almost like a giant housefly. We went around and around on the propulsion system. I believe in the book that they actual-ly flap their wings. We did a few tests on that which unfortunately tended to look rather silly, so we modified the design a little bit. What we came up with is something kind of like a vertical take off and landing craft. There's a large spinning propulsion unit in each wing. The two wings tilt up and down independently and reorient themselves in flight as if they are a steering mechanism. So you do see the wings essentially moving, but they do not flap like a bird."
Area 51 also built the Harvester, which is the giant machine that goes out to harvest Spice in the desert.
production sketch of Thopters
"We had interesting problems because the difference in scale of the sandworm to the Harvester, to the Thopter and to a human being was so enormous. I told the director John Harrison that it's like trying to put Bambi and Godzilla in the same frame—you tend to shortchange one or the other. So we've had to bring them a little closer to, I hate to call it reality, but so that you could get the same scale. For instance, if we had a worm that was a mile long, which is in the book, just the wake it would create in the sand—you'd see the guys disappe
ar under the sand long before they got anywhere near the worm. So we had to work on that a little bit, and I think we've been successful."
With the sandworms themselves Area 51 tried to come up with something that really looked like a gigantic alien worm, but not like an oversize snake.
"John very much wanted to avoid any kind of snake-like movements on the part of the sandworms," McHugh said.
Vittorio Storaro
WRITING WITH LIGHT AND MOVEMENT
The Cinematography of Vittorio Storaro
Vittorio Storaro was born in Italy in June 1940, and his work as a cinematographer is as legendary as the movies he's shot. They include Apocalypse Now (1979), Reds (1981), One From The Heart (1982), Ladyhawke (1985), The Last Emperor (1987), Tucker: The Man And His Dream (1988), Dick Tracy (1990), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), Bulworth (1998) and many others.
The Secrets of Frank Herbert's Dune Page 5