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Production designer Patrice Vermette promises the third and final instalkment in the “Dune” franchise is going to be “a major spectacle.” “You know when you go see fireworks, and they put everything in, and at the end,
it’s ‘Oh, we have this one.’ It’s going to be like that,” he teases.
“Dune: Part Three” opens on Dec. 18. The film sees Timothee Chalamet return as Paul Atreides, continuing the story after his ascent to power at the end of “Part Two.” Inspired by Frank Herbert’s novel “Dune Messiah,” the action takes place 17 years after the events of the previous film and explores the consequences of Paul’s rule as emperor.
Vermette was this year’s recipient of Variety’s Creative Impact Award presented at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. During a conversation with Variety’s Senior Artisans editor Jazz Tangcay, Vermette was mindful about revealing anything too specific.
The one directive he had from director Denis Villeneuve was “not to repeat sets.” And he didn’t.
Vermette shared some insight into how he pulled off the film’s opening sequence, which he says was a “crazy idea.” “The illustrations that I had made showed an expanse of black sand and ships attacking a planet.” One spaceship weighed 55 tons.
“We needed to put it underground and bury it. For the whole scene, it rains. So, we had spider rigs and touch spinners, and it’s a big battle sequence. We only built one ship that you see the interior and exterior 360 degrees. Every two days, we had a crane during the day coming in, lifting it. And obviously, we had a pump system to take all the water out.” The results, he says, are “worth it.”
Sharing their process, Vermette said, “The fun thing about working with Denis is we never want to repeat ourselves. Even though we’re in the same world.” They have a motto: “Let’s challenge each other. Let’s make it different.”
Before getting into “Dune,” Vermette talked about getting his start in the industry working on music videos. He started collaborating with a director and realized he had found his comfort zone: “I understood the vision of the director.” It also gave him an adrenaline rush.
As for working with Villeneuve, he and Vermette shared the same circle of friends and they had worked on commercials together in the early 2000s. The production designer was a huge fan, but their schedules never aligned for them to work together on a feature.
“I was supposed to do ‘Dallas Buyer’s Club,’ and Jean-Marc Vallée tells me, ‘Patrice, that movie’s going to be pushed a year.’” When Villeneuve heard that, he sent Vermette a text. Vermette recalled, “That text message changed my life.”
The two were finally able to collaborate on the 2013 film, “Enemy,” Villeneuve’s first English-language movie.
When Villeneuve proposed “Dune,” Vermette knew how much Herbert’s book meant to the filmmaker. “He started storyboarding for it when he was 15. He knew exactly where he wanted to be,” Vermette said.
After receiving the first 100 pages of the script and revisiting the book, Vermette took plenty of notes. But he also knew from their collaboration that “things need to have a reason to exist. Whether it’s ‘Sicario,’ ‘Enemy,’ ‘Dune’ or ‘Arrival,’ it needs to tell a story. If it’s an object that exists in this fantasy world, it needs to be grounded in reality.”
Discussing his process, Vermette explained it’s a collaborative process with other department heads, and together they figure their logistics out.
“Dune” required Vermette to bring the planet Giedi Prime to life. For that dark, black world of the Harkonnens, industrial septic tanks served as inspiration. He also had to build the Atreides Castle, as well as the planet of Arrakis, where he built the Imperial Nexus Laboratory.
Pulling off the lab was another challenge, but the collaborative process with cinematographer Greig Fraser and other department heads meant they could execute the scene without cheating sunlight. “Moral of the story: never give up on crazy ideas.”
Artisans From ‘Obsession,’ ‘La Bola Negra’ and ‘Clarissa’ on Why Collaboration is the Key to Strong Filmmaking
If there is one takeaway from Variety’s 10 Artisans to Watch panel at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, it’s that collaboration, across all departments, is the key to strong filmmaking.
“Our favorite films and TV series are not created by soloists,” Kathleen Radomski, Chair of Production Design at SCAD, said while introducing the panel. “They take a village. Departments and sub-departments, sometimes separated by thousands of miles, are all dedicated to a singular vision. This community is the height of collaboration and the essence of the entertainment industry’s massive global footprint.”
Each year, Variety presents 10 artisans who use their varied skills to make an impact on their craft in recent movies and TV series. From big-budget blockbusters like “Project Hail Mary” to box office surprises like “Obsession,” the list celebrates talent from makeup, casting, editing, sound and music and more.
This year’s recipients included Anne Jimkes, supervising sound editor of “The Mosquito Bowl”; Aulo Licinio, animation supervisor of “Project Hail Mary”; Landon Lott, art director and concept illustrator of “Pluribus”; Blair McClendon, editor of “Clarissa”; Adam Newport-Berra, cinematographer of“The Invite” and “Club Kid”; Raül Refree, composer of “La Bola Negra”; Jessica Ronane, casting director of “Elsinore”; Allie Shehorn, make-up and hair department head/ special makeup effects department head of “Obsession”; Grace Snell, costume designer of “Sense and Sensibility”; and Danny Vermette, production designer of “Backrooms.”
The honorees joined Variety’s senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay during the festival to break down their approaches to their respective projects and give advice to future filmmakers.
Several panelists, including Lott, echoed Radomski’s sentiment about teamwork on “Pluribus,” especially when creating and designing the ice hotel, which drew inspiration from real Norwegian ice hotels.
“There wasn’t just one person that designed this set,” Lott said. “There was a collaboration that went into it with not only the murals that were painted or carved on the wall, but with just the architecture in general.”
Jimkes collaborated closely with “The Mosquito Bowl” director Peter Berg to balance loud sound and silence to make the film “as authentic as possible of an experience for both the actors and the audience,” she said.
“It was essential that the audience was going to be in it and experiencing it along with the four main actors who portray these four real Marines or young men who back in the 1940s were all American football players,” Jimkes said.
Strong collaboration also requires frequent communication. McClendon, who was attached to “Clarissa” before filming began — a circumstance he prefers — found his early involvement and open dialogue with directors Arie and Chuko Esiri to be quintessential to his editing process.
“It was the kind of [shot] that I could only ask for because we had been talking about it for so long, and I was on it so early that I was like, “Oh, this is the exact kind of material in this thing that you’re going to want here,” McClendon said.
Refree similarly got a head start on his score for “La Bola Negra.” Directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi came to Refree requesting composition “while they were writing the script because they wanted to get inspired by the music.” He also worked closely with Penélope Cruz, who has a large performance scene in the film. “I could see her building up the character, building up how that singer would be in the film,” Refree said.
Ronane shared the same privilege of “building the world” when casting “Elsinore.” “We spend our lives interacting with actors,” she said. “I think everybody in the film I’ve seen on stage within the last two years. It’s a cast who are so well-placed to tell that story.”
For Licinio, developing and animating a celestial being from scratch for “Project Hail Mary” was a bit more challenging. “We really had to work a lot into finding this personality of Rocky, ” Licinio said. “A lot of that came on set, a lot of mannerisms, a lot of little things.” After consulting the source material from the novel of the same name by Andy Weir, they referenced old slapstick movies and silent comedy legends Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton to “see how body language would evolve into getting into performance.”
While Rocky’s body language was a unique obstacle, one shared challenge some of these artisans faced was budgeting. “There’s this pie in the sky of what you want to do and then what you end up actually doing due to budgetary constraints,” Lott said.
Shehorn approached makeup and gory visual effects in “Obsession” with that same practicality. “We only have so much money, so how do we pull this effect off collectively as a team using each department to make it look as realistic as possible?” she said. The result was only having two takes to get it right. “They couldn’t go back to like, ‘Okay, now let’s try it again from no blood,’” she added.
For “Backrooms,” blood was not the problem, but “building the space, the sheer volume, was probably the biggest hurdle,” Vermette said. In fact, the team had to bring in a second rug that was a slightly different tone than the first because there simply wasn’t enough material. Vermette and director Kane Parsons ultimately adapted this restriction to be a symbolic transition in the film.
Snell had to adapt historical garb in “Sense and Sensibility” for a modern audience: “If you’re not familiar with how [historical garments] are worn and put together, they’re sort of on a pedestal in a way. There’s a wall up somewhat because you don’t understand these garments and what they mean. So for how I could bring everybody in was if I did contemporary styling so that you could actually see yourself in these characters. How we might wear clothing today, which might be undone or somewhat mismatched, slightly self-styled,” she said.
While they all had their unique challenges to overcome and different approaches to their individual tasks, each artisan concurred on the importance of collaboration, inviting emerging filmmakers to be kind and work together.
“Think like a filmmaker,” Jimkes said. “You need to be able to talk to a producer in their language about budgets and schedules. You need to be able to talk with a director about the story. You need to be able to talk to your coworkers, for me, sound designers, composers, in their way of speaking, in their language. Be a filmmaker, learn about all the aspects. It’ll help you navigate the politics.”
The only way to do so, Lott added, referencing Nike’s iconic slogan, is to “just do it”
“Always be making shit,” Vermette echoed. “That’s a big part of it. Just keep going. Grab your buddies, go make a film. Just never stop. You don’t get good by sitting around wishing to be good. Just go out and practice, practice, practice.”
