00:18at the end of the day june is a
00:22i thought that i visually allowed them
00:24to make the movie look as familiar as
00:27possible for the audience trying to go
00:29away from exotism trying to find
00:31images that would be strong but that
00:33will feel strangely familiar linked with
00:35our own relationship with nature but the
00:41psychedelism if such a word exists in
00:43english is with sound
00:55getting a call from denise is i think
00:57akin to an actor getting that call there
01:01that they got the role you know it's
01:03that thrilling moment where you know
01:05you're about to have a great adventure
01:08while you're working with denis
01:09villeneuve you're pinching yourself
01:11saying is this really happening are we
01:13really experiencing this because
01:15you are experiencing filmmaking in a way
01:18that you don't experience anywhere else
01:20so when you get the call from denis
01:24i got it in the form of an email very
01:27simple hey mark we're gonna make dune i
01:29want to get the band back together again
01:31and i was like yes it's gonna be that
01:33same little group creative group of joe
01:38theo green ron bartlett doug hempel and
01:43and i i just couldn't have been happier
01:46because i knew we were going to go
01:47through this this process of again of
01:50building a movie together building a
01:51soundtrack together and doing it in very
01:54non-traditional ways we use very much
01:56the same method as we did on blade
01:59me starting as they were shooting in the
02:01studio in budapest so that joe walker
02:05could start integrating the sort of
02:07sounds that he could never find in a
02:08library and use those to
02:11accompany scenes of the worm of the
02:14the shields and the voice
02:16denis always wanted to find a way that
02:18we could collaborate all parts of
02:20post-production that normally would not
02:21be involved in a shoot but he brought us
02:24all out to budapest so that we were able
02:26to feed our ideas together so that's the
02:28sort of thing that denise always
02:30encouraged he did on blade runner
02:33it worked so well that of course he
02:34wanted to do it again for dune
02:36i mean the key is denis really i mean
02:41the top of his game he's one of the best
02:44and i just love working with him and i
02:48want to bring my a-game every day for
02:50this guy i would do anything because and
02:52mark and theo everyone will tell you the
02:54same thing but this group of people
02:59and we all speak the same kind of
03:01language with that we've all known each
03:04but denis expects you to bring your a
03:06game there's no joke about that you know
03:09it's like he wants you to bring it it's
03:11like show me what you got
03:13what better place to do that than on
03:15this movie with these people and uh
03:18that's what's so much fun when i was
03:20working in a smaller budget movies it's
03:23something that i was very frustrated by
03:25you wrote a screenplay for years
03:27you shoot you take your time you have
03:29time to edit the movie and right at the
03:31end you rush to do the sound and then i
03:33remember my first movies
03:34all of them i have moments that i i
03:37didn't have the time to think enough
03:39to digest enough to work
03:42to to make sure that the the sunlight
03:45deep enough roots to make sure that the
03:47ideas will hold the test of time
03:50like the rest of the film process where
03:52i feel i was feeling comfortable with
03:53everything but the sound
03:55and and i knew that the answer to that
03:56was was to bring the sound right after
03:58the screenwriting and and to start to
04:00work on the sound as we were shooting
04:02and it's just to have space to explore
04:05to experiment and to make mistakes which
04:07is crucial to find new ways of doing
04:09things you have to to take risks it
04:11means that the sound that you are
04:13hearing in juniors all the sound to me
04:15some that i got used to it rejecting
04:17them bringing them back modifying trying
04:20things they have been
04:22tested multiple times and now i'm very
04:24comfortable with them and i know they
04:26are the right ones but for that it takes
04:36the way we approach the sound in the
04:38movie there was this idea of having a
04:40contrast where instead of trying to make
04:42a sci-fi movie we were trying to make a
04:46i mean it's like we had brought the
04:48documentary team into the world of
04:50iraqis that with the boom guy that will
04:52try to capture the sound
04:54there and it's just this idea of having
04:57a feeling of being immersed
04:59and uh not trying to impress the
05:02more more to feel that they are there so
05:05that was a bit the main spirit of the
05:07sound design when i first got the script
05:09i decided to go and stay in a hotel in
05:13where there was a nearby sand dune
05:14called mesquite sand
05:17not only did i get something of the
05:19atmosphere of dune but also
05:22i wanted to know what it sounded like to
05:24stand in silence on a sand dune i wanted
05:26to know what that sand sounds like when
05:28you're climbing up a deep powdery
05:31and i wanted to experiment with the
05:33sounds of sand dunes that i'd heard are
05:36re-recording mixer doug hemphill had
05:38recorded these incredible sounds of what
05:40he called singing sand dunes
05:42um this is something you know you can
05:43find clips on youtube and we did plenty
05:45of research and realized that this is a
05:47audio phenomenon that not many people
05:49know about that sand dunes make a sound
05:51of their own it's a singing or a
05:53groaning however you want to describe it
06:07they must be resonant like a musical
06:09instrument so i wanted to plant
06:12microphones under the ground i wanted to
06:14run on the sand all the things that i
06:16was reading in the script i wanted to
06:17know both the human things and
06:20potentially something unhuman like the
06:23worm what that's going to sound like and
06:25experimenting with sand was a huge part
06:27of it that's one of the few things on
06:31that we can have an equivalent for on
06:33earth we can go and do the research the
06:36trope in cinema sound is that oddly in
06:40the desert we often hear wind and i
06:43think that's an uninspired and
06:47in sound because in fact until late in
06:50the day in the desert there is no wind
06:52and and yet that's somehow been
06:55an established trope to say
06:58hot or warm or something to that effect
07:00and we spent a couple of days in death
07:04burying microphones to capture thumper
07:07sounds and things like that but we also
07:09did a number of really kind of cool
07:11furrowing sounds we we would take
07:13microphones and kind of jam them through
07:16the sand and as if mimicking the the
07:19worms motions and then we would knowing
07:22we would bring those sounds back into
07:24the studio and process them to make them
07:50the presence of the worm when you hear
07:52it coming from a distance is described
07:54in the books and in the script as worm
07:56sign denis had always described that to
07:59myself and mark mangini as almost like
08:01an insect fluttering its wings something
08:04so small at first that you wouldn't know
08:06that there's a huge beast coming our
08:09early experiments with the worm were
08:15traditional we didn't quite understand
08:17that the worm wanted to be seen as a
08:19creature of reverence
08:21and we were building godzilla and in our
08:24early experiments with the worm um
08:27we didn't get that denite did not want
08:29to frighten the audience with the worm
08:31we wanted the audience to be in awe of
08:36we did experiment a little bit and it
08:38was quite early on that we realized that
08:40if the worm travels through sand it must
08:41be vibrating that's the only thing that
08:43would liquefy the sand enough for it to
08:45be able to make a path through
08:48we tried various ways of vibrating sand
08:51and that's one of the things that we did
08:55fast vibrations and we also had
08:58wonderful visuals to work with that
09:00denny had shot with greg fraser the
09:03so that idea of worm sign and a
09:05fluttering sand becomes like a signature
09:07for a distant worm it's making the whole
09:09desert shake i asked uh mark and tio to
09:14that would be in total contrast with the
09:15bees something that would be kind of a
09:17you don't know if it's an insect or a
09:19bird or something small that at the
09:22beginning that will announce the
09:23approach of the the worm like a strange
09:26the native will definitely
09:29recognize but that uh someone that is in
09:31the desert will think it's a small
09:32animal or something that just like
09:34something delicate to to as a warning
09:36that would be a beautiful contrast and
09:38once the the warm is outside i didn't
09:40want it to sound like a monster i wanted
09:43to be like god like entity something
09:48feel a very strong presence like a
09:53intelligence but i didn't want to look
09:55monstery i wanted it to be like when you
09:59it's almost a spiritual experience
10:09one of the notes that denise gave me is
10:11this is the driest thing on the driest
10:13planet this is not a gurgling monster we
10:17sounds but more importantly than that
10:19it's not meant to be a monster that
10:21scares you necessarily in fact this is
10:23a godlike creature you could say that
10:25it's the god of the planet arrakis
10:27one idea that came later on was
10:30what we call the gunk gunk which is this
10:32sound you occasionally hear coming from
10:37and it sounds very much like the sand
10:40thumpers which the freyman used to
11:00so there's this idea that
11:02perhaps in the same way that whales call
11:05sand worms have a way of communicating
11:07but it's this deep thumping sound
11:09and that's why they respond to the
11:11thumpers once we had established that
11:13sound we realized denis realized i got
11:16to get this to vfx and he animated i
11:19don't know if you remember in the shot
11:20you could see the epiglottis or whatever
11:22that deep in the maw
11:24that was animated too so sound drove
11:26what we did visually and that was very
11:32the desert is uh at the very heart of
11:35the of the movie of course and it the
11:37desert bring with it this uh sound
11:39quality that where you are like as much
11:42visually you have infinite in front of
11:48of the heat and thing brings
11:50sound very very close to you it becomes
11:56experience and anything that you can
11:58hear sometimes your breathing and your
12:00heart beat and there's so many elements
12:03in the book so many details so many uh
12:06and and uh we could have easily crushed
12:10the audience with exposition and instead
12:13to use uh cinematic devices to in order
12:16to explain or to act i feel that the
12:19feel who will recognize will feel more
12:21and more familiar where some aspect of
12:23the movie one of them is the spice and
12:26sound was definitely a way to give it
12:27its personality and something that
12:30people who are not familiar with the
12:31book will recognize that despise to feel
12:36that's why we brought that kind of very
12:38ethereal very delicate
12:40the dune soundscape is really about
12:43it's all a junior is all about extreme
12:45and we try to do the same with the sound
12:46so you have that very very delicate
12:49in the vastness of that big silencer
12:52it's quite a moment in the film where
12:54there it's like a rescue basically
12:56because the the worm is coming he's
12:58going to take over the crawler and all
13:00that but that's the first time paul
13:01really experiences it he takes off his
13:05gets nailed by this it's like an acid
13:10feeling the sense of the particles is
13:12one towards that kind of light
13:14glistening kind of feel
13:16but it's also taking away stuff
13:35okay we built this whole thing up and
13:37then this big wave of sand comes across
13:40which has the spice in it that's going
13:42to overtake him and it's a big frequency
13:45roll-off that doug did is a great trick
13:48like that and it just we just sucked
13:50everything out so it's like really
13:52pulling the rug out and then
13:55i took all the more ethereal
13:57musical elements and and spin them
14:00around the room and then in comes all
14:02these benny jesuit voices and layers of
14:05that that i put all sorts of delays and
14:08and the delays are spinning and it's
14:10just to make him feel like you know if
14:13you're overwhelmed by something like
14:14that you're to be disoriented it's one
14:17of my favorite sequences in the movie
14:39there are many aspects to the spiritual
14:43there are the there's the internal world
14:45of paul especially when he's
14:47experiencing visions
14:50and then when i saw the film and how er
14:53central those visions are
14:55and how it really depicts the spiritual
14:57world of paul and the benny jesuits i
15:00started recording a lot of voices in the
15:03head i mean ultimately this is a story
15:06a person who is told that he is going to
15:10and who hears voices in his head
15:12this is not necessarily a good thing
15:15so i wanted to create a world inside
15:18paul's head there were multiple ideas on
15:21the table you know it was a very
15:23exciting thing to design but for me the
15:26most important thing is that there was
15:28this idea that as you're doing the voice
15:31all the identities coming from your past
15:34from the being benedict it means that
15:36you are like in contact with
15:38your uh ancestors that you can channel
15:41those uh and and i'm always obsessed by
15:43this idea that we are struggling as
15:48our genetics or our education but
15:50very about the genetic there's something
15:52about struggling with the voices from
15:54the past i'm not talking about
15:56schizophrenia i'm talking about
15:58subconscious influence you know outcome
15:59that we have portions or impulse to do
16:01things sometimes that feels totally
16:03illogic but our strong
16:06influence on the the way you take your
16:08decision that you you direct your life
16:10and this idea that someone using the
16:15channel power from the past and will
16:18feminine power and and i was obsessed
16:20with the idea of very powerful
16:22old voice and what's incredible about
16:25that is that once we had the concept we
16:29leveraged it in so many other ways that
16:31we never knew we were going to be able
16:32to do so once he signed off on the idea
16:35that oh you mean paul could speak with
16:37someone else's voice it could be this
16:41authoritative woman speaking instead of
16:44paul either as him or with him or not
16:47with him and the ideas just tumbled out
16:51basic concept that came from nowhere i
16:53wouldn't i don't know where creative
16:55ideas came from but it hit me and i had
16:56to tell him and that would not
16:58necessarily look like witches but like
17:00very powerful strong women from the past
17:03that will be your force inside you it's
17:06something very personal to me it deeply
17:08speak to me and and and
17:10so i tried i asked my son team to to
17:14we did casting we found those voices and
17:16but that was like experiment that was a
17:18laboratory that was not done over a
17:21weekend to find the balance
17:22and also to play with the subs the way
17:25um play with the with the power of the
17:28sound system is is to find that balance
17:30was a it was a long process
17:35you dismissed my mother in her own house
17:43how dare you use the voice on me
17:46mark mangini and i made a lot of
17:48recordings with different voice artists
17:51gene gilpin and even marianne faithful
17:53was involved in recording we wanted
17:56voices that reminded us of
17:59let's say an ancestor it could be a
18:03so as paul's spirituality develops he's
18:05learning to use a new technique um that
18:10the idea of what's going on inside
18:13paul's mind is very important but also
18:16he's learning how to project that
18:18and in projecting the voice
18:20the resonance of a person's voice is
18:22increased especially in the bass to the
18:24point where the room
18:35so it was all about layering all of
18:37these elements but it's so short when he
18:40says you know give me the water for
18:42instance it's a short phrase and you
18:44have to convey all of that in this like
18:48so it was uh experimenting by moving it
18:51out of sync at first and paul's not very
18:53good at it yet so his took a while to
18:56develop and it didn't quite work all the
18:58way she goes halfway over the water
19:00whereas later when you hear the reverend
19:03mother do it it's just bang on and
19:05you're gonna get it because it's a
19:06weapon and she's so good at it because
19:09she's developed it over centuries kind
19:13so it's in sync it's powerful it's
19:19but it's just bang on you know really
19:22nails you in the chest so and then it
19:23draws him in like that it's it takes
19:52that's something which i learned a trick
19:54from lee scratch perry who i worked with
19:56in switzerland about 10 years ago
19:59he's the pioneer of dub reggae which
20:01must be the genre of music with the most
20:03bass and one of the tricks that he used
20:10and then to play it back through a huge
20:13in a room that's resin and record that
20:15so it enhances the resonance of the bass
20:17you also hear something of the shaking
20:20so that was one of the tricks that we
20:25a very tactile sense to this
20:28spiritual adventure that paul's going on
20:30once we discovered what we could do with
20:33the voice with paul we discovered other
20:37possibilities now the ancient voice
20:42subtext and text and tell story even
20:45when it's not being deployed as the
20:47voice as you heard in many of those
20:49dream sequences we had the ancient voice
20:52saying you know paul rise up rise up and
20:55all of a sudden it unlocked a
20:56storytelling tool for denise that he
20:59loved and i'm really proud of
21:02how that came about and how we
21:04found that but it did take a year and a
21:07half of development to really find it
21:11there's a lot of ideas in doing about
21:13the geopolitics about the religions
21:17a lot of characters and i wanted the
21:19design and the technology to be to feel
21:21familiar to the idea and something that
21:25recognize right away you will believe
21:26right away you will you will not
21:29and it will just you will embrace it
21:30spontaneously okay that looks like a
21:32helicopter okay let's listen to what
21:34those characters have to say now i
21:36didn't want it to be distracting more
21:38important i want it to look as real as
21:58there's nothing more powerful than an
22:00insect i think that if a fly was the
22:02size of a helicopter it could uh grab a
22:06truck or i don't know what it's like
22:07those are very powerful beings
22:09i decided to make them look like a
22:12dragonfly i know that it's something
22:14that an idea that brian albert loved too
22:16that uh so we both agree on that and i
22:19wanted to look muscular military
22:21something that was designed to go into
22:23very difficult environments
22:25and then mark and theo came with i i
22:29the sound of it needs to
22:30it's just about things flapping in the
22:32air it needs to feel like
22:34real it will sound close to the spirit
22:36of the helicopter it must not sound like
22:38a helicopter but in the same family and
22:40they came with those
22:41the exploration of the use real beetles
22:45familiarity that was the goal
22:59successful in our sound design
23:02when we start it with acoustic
23:05recordings the reason for that i think
23:07and this is a hypothesis i'm not a
23:09scientist is that uh subconsciously
23:13there are embedded elements of acoustic
23:15recordings that tell the brain this is
23:17real and it's all about the time arrival
23:19to the ear and the acoustic environment
23:21that a sound lives within that
23:23synthesizer synthetic or electronic
23:26sounds don't inherently have you you can
23:28add them in post-production by adding
23:30reverbs and delays and things like that
23:31but they're never as complex or as rich
23:34as the acoustics that you get in real
23:38everything that we built the
23:40ornithopters out of started life as a
23:42real thing as a real
23:44thing that could have done something
23:45it's you know a wing
23:48of for the ornithopter started life was
23:50something that was kind of flapping up
23:53and the the motors were made out of
23:56things that were buzzing
24:00allows the brain to quickly and
24:02subconsciously suspend disbelief because
24:05we're presenting you with a sound that's
24:07decontextualized from what it really is
24:10and presented in a new context and the
24:11brain doesn't have to know what it was
24:14it just knows well gosh that sounds real
24:16to me well that's one of the reasons
24:18it's organic and it's acoustic
24:26so shields are very important in dune
24:29you might wonder why people don't have
24:31guns or some sort of space weapon in the
24:33future and why they're fighting the
24:36everyone in the dune universe has a
24:38shield that can protect them against
24:40fast blows so it's a universal
24:43it's something that we really wanted to
24:45sound very different from
24:47force fields and other shields that
24:48we've heard in other movies we didn't
24:51constant hum or a drone we only see it
24:54when it's really activated
25:06so the initial idea that i developed was
25:09a sort of deep purring sound it actually
25:11started as a filtered out machine gun
25:14denis liked the effect but felt maybe it
25:16wasn't edgy dangerous
25:18weapon-like enough and it wasn't until i
25:21had an accident with a synthesizer where
25:23it started to create a glitching and
25:41when i first played that to denis he
25:44we needed to craft a few details like
25:46what it sounds like when the blade cuts
25:49maybe we show how that works when you're
25:52cutting through the shield and we make
25:54it explicit with a red flashing um from
25:59and a beeping tone like an alarm
26:15denny was able to come up with extra
26:17functions that the shield would have a
26:19vfx were able to hear the sound that
26:21we'd had that we'd made
26:25the visual effect of the shield pulsate
26:27in exactly the same rhythm as the
26:29clicking sound of the shield
26:31so again an idea that wasn't fully
26:36when we started work on the sound
26:39they were able to hear what we did they
26:40were able to contribute new ideas denis
26:42was able to moderate those ideas and
26:44come up with new ones of his own
26:47we never embark on these projects
26:48knowing what the final landing place
26:51is i think if we did we wouldn't be
26:54artists because then it's all canned and
26:56it's all premeditated
26:58that's the joy and the fear of being an
27:00artist is that you you go in feet first
27:04saying i'm gonna trust this
27:07and i'm gonna just see what comes out at
27:11and you can't be objective while you're
27:14doing it so today i feel relief because
27:18i think it sounds good
27:20and we did achieve something really
27:24every film that i start i wonder why did
27:26i subject myself to this this is
27:28terrifying and then i get here today in
27:30front of you and i feel like
27:34wow that was so good
27:38dune is like a story of a character that
27:40goes deeper deeper into a landscape and
27:43the deeper he goes the the deeper you go
27:45into his own consciousness getting
27:47closer closer to a part of itself that
27:49was hidden that revealed slowly to
27:51himself a part of his identity so that
27:55is brought by the sound and that was the
27:57first time i was working this way and it
27:59was very exciting it's like if
28:01the sound almost represents the
28:03subconscious of this character