Challenge

Dune: Part 2 continues Denis Villeneueve’s stunning adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel, with Greig Fraser returning as cinematographer. The filmmakers would face challenges very familiar to the characters in the film: heat and power.

Fraser wanted to create large-scale, realistic hard sunlight for the soundstage sets. Traditionally, this would require arrays of traditional tungsten or HMI lights. To match the scale of Patrice Vermette’s concept art as faithfully as possible, dozens of lamps would be needed, and the power draw would be a sobering 200,000kW. The lamps would generate an enormous amount of heat, putting a strain on the stage’s already-taxed air conditioning system.

This led to experimenting with many types of HMIs, Tungsten, and LED fixtures. Fraser says. “I was really staying with LED and away from tungsten, but the LEDs and even Dinos weren’t getting us the light we needed. I called up Aputure and said, ‘Whattaya got?’”

Solution

The Aputure team sent Fraser fifty Light Storm 1200ds, the brightest point source LED light on the market at the time. The filmmakers used 42 of these lamps to build one of the LED array “suns” used on stages. The array drew just 60,000kW of power and output a fraction of the heat a tungsten array would have.

Fraser liked the Light Storm 1200d’s skin tone rendering, output, and dimmability so much that he also used them for the shafts of light in sets like the Fremen Communal Dome Room, the Emperor’s Tea Room, and Bene Gesserit Mohiam’s Office.

Results

Even at a blockbuster scale, Fraser and his team showed that modern LED lighting allows for new and accessible solutions without sacrificing quality.

Dune: Part 2’s acknowledgments for cinematography include nominations from the Academy Awards, the American Society of Cinematographers, the British Academy Film Awards, the British Society of Cinematographers, Critics’ Choice Awards, and many more.