‘Dune: Prophecy’ Keeps the Films’ Epic Scope Thanks to Some Canny Lens Choices — and an Alum
If anyone was primed to emulate Greig Fraser’s approach to the cinematography of “Dune” and “Dune II,” it’s Pierre Gill. The Canadian DP shot additional and second unit photography on Denis Villenueve’s “Dune,” “Arrival,” and “Blade Runner 2049” before taking on three of the six episodes of Diane Ademu-John’s prequel series, “Dune: Prophecy.” So he was ready to create a visual language that fit inside Villeneuve’s “Duneverse.”
There’s a weighty deliberateness to Villeneuve’s pacing and a stark geometry to Fraser’s framing that makes the “Dune” films look as big on a screen as Frank Herbert’s story feels in prose. Gill wanted to retain that cinematic symmetry. But he and fellow cinematographers Richard Donnelly and Nikolaus Summerer have crafted something that’s deliberately more of a cousin than a cinematic twin to the films.
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Just as the more mass a planet has increases its gravitational force, the increased runtime of television storytelling inevitably pulls us closer and closer to a show’s characters. Gill’s priorities for “Dune: Prophecy” were finding the right lenses, framing, color, and movement choices that would make the show’s Bene Gesserit sisters and scheming Imperials feel embossed atop the landscapes — distinct and compelling to the eye but still part of that epic sweep.
“The first thing for me, right away, was don’t shoot with the same camera and lenses. Bring it somewhere else,” Gill told IndieWire. “Keep the characters [in view] and their body language. I love to do that as much as we can. Even in close-ups, we keep the characters’ necklines. We see how [at ease or uncomfortable] they are in the world. And they all have these incredible costumes that are part of them, part of the world. I kept telling my operators, go back, it’s too close!”
A perfect example of Gill’s approach happens in the last 20 minutes of Episode 1, “The Hidden Hand.” After the engagement of Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) and after the faux-pas of her 9-year-old intended (Charlie Hodson-Prior) letting a little lizard toy — technically one of the outlawed thinking machines — run amok, Emperor Javicco Corvino (Mark Strong) broods. He’s joined by decorated war hero and survivor of Arrakis Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) with a flask and a willing ear. A simple enough dialogue scene.
Gill frames the emperor so that we never lose sight of the lapels and epaulets on his uniform signifying the weight of his office, and yet plays with the depth of the casual — well, imperial casual — cliffside outdoor fountain so that Hart sneaks up on him. As the two sit to talk, the coverage is wider but not so that it feels distant. It’s so we can see how Fimmel turns cocking his head and leaning into his chair into a thesis on confidence, and it’s so we notice, even if subconsciously, the rigid way Corvino moves back and forth, depending on how far Hart has or has not reeled him in.
“I love that scene because it’s very simple. But the lenses make you feel [that relationship]. The characters sit down. We don’t move too much; the camera barely moves at all. But you feel when they’re moving forward and backward. You feel it,” Gill said. “[The characters] stick out of the frame as much as possible, and we’re close to them.”
We also always feel how the size of Salusa Secundus looms over both characters. Getting that relationship between character and environment right was a big challenge for Gill and his fellow cinematographers because the sets of “Dune: Prophecy” were of a pretty galactic scale — so big Gill and his camera team often found there was little room between the end of the set and the studio wall for them to light some truly cavernous spaces.
Wallach IX, the training ground for future members of the Bene Gesserit, was further complicated by the grim, fortress-like construction of the sets. “The windows were about 1 foot wide, and the walls were 2 feet thick. So you cannot bring in light from the outside. And the set was 45 feet high… and I had 20-50 actors down in that space. That was a very big challenge,” Gill said.
Gill and his team had to build custom rigging and soft/big boxes of lights they could bring down. “I had to make sure I was able to take care of [lighting] the faces properly, as much as I could in a huge place,” Gill said. “We built a lot of technical stuff so we could bring the lighting down, often like 3 feet from the head of the [actor].”
Camera and lens choice also contribute to how Gill and his team sculpt the imagery, whether in the austere coolness of Wallach IX or the sweaty nest of vipers that is Salusa Secundus. He went with the Alexa 35 and a set of vintage anamorphic Hawk Class X lenses, which add an almost velvety softness, especially around the edges of the image. “It’s what DPs love a lot because it focuses the image to narrow more towards the characters and adds this nice quality for the skin,” Gill said. “It makes it not perfect.”
Imperfection is all the more noticeable in a vast, symmetrical world like that of “Dune: Prophecy.” And that is what makes it an interesting continuation of its filmic forebear. Gill’s camera captures both the false, dangerous perfection of the world and the desperate imperfection of the characters.
“[The show is set] like 10,000 years in the past, so we could have gone down a very different path,” Gill said. “But it was very important to stay in the same family and then say, ‘OK, let’s follow the story.'”
New episodes of “Dune: Prophecy” premiere every Sunday on HBO through the Season 1 finale on December 22.
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