Whilst the first part of filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” dealt with plenty of interiors and locations on other planets, the majority of “Dune: Part Two” unfolds in the rocks and dunes of the desert world of Arrakis.
That required a whole bunch of location shooting for the production, with filming taking place in Wadi Rum Jordan and the Liwa desert in the United Arab Emirates to capture the vast landscape in-camera.
Villeneuve and his team, including returning cinematographer Greig Fraser and production designer Patrice Vermette, were insistent on not repeating themselves. That meant there was a lot of location scouting going on during the project’s pre-production phase.
In fact, those few weeks of finding the right desert locales took a toll on Villeneuve mentally. He tells Empire Online (via Slashfilm):
“For my mise-en-scene, I’ll want a particular shaped dune. But Greig Fraser, on the other hand, will need that same shape to be in a specific light. So Patrice spent weeks and weeks casting sand dunes in the desert! We looked like madmen. I still find [sand] every morning in my shoes. We’re sand-traumatized, for sure.”
Meanwhile, Vermette tells the outlet he carried around bottles of desert grains to ensure the dunes on Arrakis looked consistent. He added: “We didn’t repeat a single location. We found completely fresh spots to tell our story this time around.”
“Dune: Part Two” will arrive in cinemas on March 15th 2024.
