On Arakis, the planet at the heart of Dune’s story, the Fremen have some very special traits. Upon touching Spice, their eyes turn a mysterious blue and glow with a supernatural aura. Spice, also called mixture, is a substance produced on Arrakis by sandworms, whose secretion it is.
This is a kind of drug with the ability to prolong life and strengthen the immune system. Spice also allows guild navigators to travel interstellar. This leads to a form of prophecy without which interstellar travel is impossible. Therefore, it is the most valuable substance in the universe.
Contact lenses or digital effects?
How did Denis Villeneuve and his teams caress the eyes of the actors? Were they forced to wear contact lenses or did the digital effects prevent it?
Who better to answer that question than Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Lambert himself? Denis Villeneuve had already collaborated with him on Blade Runner 2049 and the first Dune. A great specialist in digital effects, he notably worked on Harry Potter 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Benjamin Button and First Man.
“We used all kinds of techniques for this film. For example, since there are many more Freman characters, we should give all their performers this very nice blue, especially since there are more than a thousand shots in this film, in other words. much more than in the previous opus”points out a technician quoted in the Dune 2 press kit.
A new method
“We developed a new method using what we had previously learned from hundreds of blue eye footage from the first game: it’s a machine learning system, an algorithm fed by this footage from the first movie that can see a human eye. An image that gave us a matte shade for different regions of the eye”Paul Lambert explains.
The visual effects supervisor, assisted by his team, then used this base with various matte shades to tint the eyes blue. According to the artist, some responded better than others, and for those that were less convincing, the team changed them manually.
“Sometimes it felt like we were coming full circle because we had to remove certain blue eyes that were generated for non-Fremen characters instead of adding them because the algorithm was just recognizing eyes that are Fremen eyes. Harkonnen or Sardaukari! But it was a radically new technique.”concludes Paul Lambert.
No contact lenses for the actors whose eyes were spared thanks to the magic of special effects! Hitting theaters on February 28, Dune 2 took off at the French box office with over 260,000 releases.
Source: Allocine
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
