Imamacuser
Veteran
I just watched Dune Part II last week and have a few random thoughts.
It was interesting to watch a big budget Sci-fi movie, but the story wasn't engaging enough for me to rewatch semiannually like I do with Star Wars.
I never read Frank Herbert's books, so I have no idea if the movie's visuals were faithful or not.
I was surprised to see shallow DoF on wide vista shots that I thought should have had deep DoF.
My expectation for desert shots was something reminiscent of Lawrence of Arabia or Star Wars Tatooine, with clear blue skies, saturated colors, and rust colored rocks, but Dune just seemed muted, hazy, and low contrast, like watching an old faded film print.
I think they could have got some really nice looking otherworldly shots with the following filters:
Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue Polarizer (probably best for background plates).
Tobacco filter
Graduated Blue filter (an upside down Grad Tobacco for the sand dune and a Grad Blue for the sky)
Polarizer
Blender/Attenuator NDs & Graduated NDs
It didn't look like they used filters for selective color or contrast, so if they used any of the aforementioned filter, the final grade was too muted to tell.
Another technique that would have looked cool is Matthew Rosen's nanometer transmission hack, where you shoot tungsten film with two stacked 85B filters, and correct out the extra warmth in color timing, which leaves you with a navy blue sky.
The Harkonnen home world shot in IR monochrome didn't work for me. Even though I know it was shot with digital cameras, my first thought was too bad they ran out of money for color film.
I think it would have looked cooler to put a 665nm filter on a camera that retains a Bayer filter but has the IR cult filter removed, and pair that with a regular camera in a stereoscopic 3D rig with 0 interocular distance. This would allow swapping color channels, and selective compositing IR elements with the normal footage.
It was interesting to watch a big budget Sci-fi movie, but the story wasn't engaging enough for me to rewatch semiannually like I do with Star Wars.
I never read Frank Herbert's books, so I have no idea if the movie's visuals were faithful or not.
I was surprised to see shallow DoF on wide vista shots that I thought should have had deep DoF.
My expectation for desert shots was something reminiscent of Lawrence of Arabia or Star Wars Tatooine, with clear blue skies, saturated colors, and rust colored rocks, but Dune just seemed muted, hazy, and low contrast, like watching an old faded film print.
I think they could have got some really nice looking otherworldly shots with the following filters:
Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue Polarizer (probably best for background plates).
Tobacco filter
Graduated Blue filter (an upside down Grad Tobacco for the sand dune and a Grad Blue for the sky)
Polarizer
Blender/Attenuator NDs & Graduated NDs
It didn't look like they used filters for selective color or contrast, so if they used any of the aforementioned filter, the final grade was too muted to tell.
Another technique that would have looked cool is Matthew Rosen's nanometer transmission hack, where you shoot tungsten film with two stacked 85B filters, and correct out the extra warmth in color timing, which leaves you with a navy blue sky.
The Harkonnen home world shot in IR monochrome didn't work for me. Even though I know it was shot with digital cameras, my first thought was too bad they ran out of money for color film.
I think it would have looked cooler to put a 665nm filter on a camera that retains a Bayer filter but has the IR cult filter removed, and pair that with a regular camera in a stereoscopic 3D rig with 0 interocular distance. This would allow swapping color channels, and selective compositing IR elements with the normal footage.
