I’m Denis Villeneuve. I’m the director of ‘Dune, Part Two’. So this scene happens exactly after the introduction of Feyd-Rautha, where we saw him as a psychopath. And here, we bring this character into his political environment, where it would be a strange celebration of its birthday, where in Harkonnen culture, the prince will have to fight slaves in order to prove himself in front of the audience. And the whole scene has been designed as a dance between Feyd-Rautha, played by the great Austin Butler, and the crowd. Austin created a cross mix between, I will say, an Olympic sword fighter, a serial killer and Mick Jagger. He brought tremendous sex appeal to the part. And Feyd-Rautha being one of the most iconic characters of ‘Dune’, Austin had big shoes to fill. And I’m very proud of what he brought to the screen. One aspect that I love about Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ is all the books is also a study of the impact of the environment on humans. How nature shapes human psyche, behaviors, culture, technology, politics, et cetera. You want to know about the Fremen? You look at the desert. But for the Harkonnen, it’s a bit more tricky because they completely destroyed their natural world. And I was looking for environmental hints, ideas, clues that will give me some hints about who they are exactly. And I thought about, what if their sunlight was subtracting color instead of revealing them? What if they were coming from a black-and-white world? That would give us some idea from where that binary, fascist, cruel behaviors are coming from. As my cinematographer, Greig Fraser, and I were brainstorming together how to bring an alien sunlight that will be black and white to the screen, Greig had the idea to test infrared. And infrared is the light wavelength that is usually blocked into cameras because it’s considered as noise. And we modified the cameras to let only that wavelength come through and block the other colors. And it created that eerie, strange, alien, nightmarish atmosphere I was dreaming of for Giedi Prime.
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