Production designer Patrice Vermette works with director Denis Villeneuve's 'no green screen' mandate to construct intimidating buildings and fierce war machines.
Fascist architecture. Insectoid war machines. Desert hellscapes. These are just a few of the hypnotically desolate “Dune” scenarios configured by production designer Patrice Vermette. After collaborating with
The weirdly angled building, made from wood and high-density Styrofoam, draws in part from the Brutalist school of midcentury architecture once popular in Iron Curtain countries. “There’s also influence from Egypt, from Mesopotamia’s ziggurat architecture, from Aztec architecture and from World War II bunkers, which is the first thing Denis showed me,” Vermette says. “It’s a big mix because, for us, design should always be responding to reality.
Caladan’s Canada-inspired color palette contrasts mightily with the sun-baked Arrakis. “We go to Arrakis and bam! Paul’s squinting in this harsh light like he’s been shaken by the shoulders,” Vermette says. While location-scouting in Jordan with Villeneuve and line producer Joe Chacon, Vermette realized the desolate Wadi Rum desert would provide an utterly inhospitable setting for Arrakis.
The pallid skies of Jordan-as-Arrakis serve as backdrop to airborne war machines inspired by Vermette’s fondness for insects. One tiny predator resembles a high-tech cockroach. An ovoid-shaped airship calls to mind a 1920s-era zeppelin, although Vermette explains, “It’s basically an armadillo that’s been squashed.”And for the wing-sprouting helicopter-like war machines known as Ornithopters, Vermette gave concept designer George Hull a simple directive. “My brief to George was: dragonfly.