![]() Some of the most complicated sets were constructed on soundstages in Budapest, leveraging the skills of hundreds of artisans but also deploying some visual sleight of hand. That meant filming in IRL locations, like deserts in Abu Dhabi and Jordan (the crew spent four weeks in the Wadi Rum valley) for scenes set on Arrakis, and wooded, coastal terrain in Norway for the scenes on Caladan. I think it helps everyone on the team get into the mood of what we’re doing.” ![]() “Denis’s approach has always been about creating the most immersive sets and the most immersive environments for the actors. Not so with Vermette’s set: “We went old-school Hollywood,” he says. With Dune’s breathtaking scenery and immersive environments, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was all captured using a green screen. The spokes-which tower more than 24 feet above the ground-are actually made of cloth, which allows the visual-effects team to create texture using CGI. This Brutalist-tinged environmental lab on Arrakis was a particularly challenging set to create, given its complex structure. The team also found architectural inspiration on Planet Earth as well, notably in World War II–era bunkers and Mayan temples-with a bit of Brazilian Modernism thrown in for good measure. “The idea is that it’s designed around light shafts so that there is never any direct light,” Vermette explains. (“Would you really settle your city in the middle of the desert? No.”) Vermette and his team gave the buildings sloped, thick walls that would withstand whipping winds and keep the interiors cool during the day-not dissimilar to passive design principles. To that end, Arrakeen, the sprawling imperial city in the film, is positioned strategically in a bowl of mountains to ward off sandworms. “Architecture and design should respond to an environment and also respond to the storytelling,” he says. Armed with those realities, Vermette and his team reverse-engineered the sets to imagine what the buildings might have looked like. On the desert planet Arrakis, for instance, Vermette knew that the planet’s inhabitants faced extreme temperatures, 500-mile-per-hour winds, and, of course, hungry, angry sandworms. But after revisiting the text, he realized, “there’s nothing very specific about anything.” But there were clues. ![]() Like Villeneuve, Vermette had also read Dune as a kid. Buildings on Arrakis feature thick, sloped walls to ward off the elements-and the sandworms.
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