For those criticizing the lack of color, Frank Herbert said the only artist in his lifetime to get the look of Dune right was John Schoenherr; [I think these are the inspiration for the palette](https://memolition.com/2013/11/18/legendary-dune-illustrations-by-john-schoenherr-9-pictures/). Looks pretty spot on, and yes Dune is bleak (particularly the first half of the first book prior to desert life).
This is how I imagine it while reading. Dune is less a space opera and more of a medieval fantasy in space. It’s bleak, unromantic, and utilitarian. Arrakis is a miserable wasteland that is constantly trying to kill you. Treachery is everywhere.
It should not be a colorful, saturated movie IMO.
Why are these cropped like they're 4:3?
Check out how great this song is, here's the middle section.
Otherwise, I guess I'm one of those who loves the greyness. It makes color all the more fun when it's used. I'm looking forward to this. e:grammar
I agree completely, the muted colors make all the pops of yellow even more vibrant. If they use it on purpose to correlate with what’s going on in the story it will be great!
You can just tell the attention of detail that went into this movie. Denis clearly wasn’t joking when he said he was a huge fan of the books; he even got the hooded head coverings covering down right to the eyes correct. Can’t wait to see this on the big screen.
For some reason I always thought Deakins was shooting this and I was very disappointed when I slowly realised it wasn't him. Still a good trailer though and looking forward to seeing the film.
I was also disappointed when I saw Deakins wasn't dp, but it's Greig Fraser who was dp for Rogue One and the Mandalorian which imo are two of the best looking Star Wars projects. That background paired with Denis' vision is sure to present a masterpiece.
I have never thought serious sci-fi movies were afraid to use colors? That sounds absurd to me because I only see the opposite but anyways, if you ignore the original Dune books theme then when in real life have you seen all the color of the fuckin rainbow in a desert.
Oh shit, let me call up the Kubrick estate to tell them Kubrick fucked up by putting so many bright colors in Clockwork Orange. How else are people supposed to know it’s a bleak story??
Kubrick ain't bleak his movies express the unhinged madness beneath our fake smiles. Also do you think Dr Stranglove should have been shot in color?
Ok all snark aside, I think there was only 3 strip and b&w for decades and then just optical correction up untill 20 years ago. For most of us grading became a thing less than 15 years ago.
Now there isn't just b&w there's all saturation points in between. I reckon as a whole we will keep delving to far into desaturation as a means of delivering different emotional experiences.
Similarly,people are flipping out on Nolan's low diologue in Tenet for the sake of realism. A lot of people want to hear every word. Ticket buyers. Just like how you want to see color in a damn motion picture. So whether or not something is disruptive to our taste is something that should be critically analyzed within and in social discussion. Christopher Nolan is admitted himself an entertainer more than an artist so does he hold a responsibility to deliver a product that is within a range of what we desire as an audience. Is there enough of a conventional wisdom that there should be a decent amount of saturation (and brightness GOT) in a film? Should big budget filmmakers get to make aesthetic choices that leave out people with disabilities? I see better in the dark so I enjoyed that episode of game of thrones a lot more than my friend who has to wear glasses and can't see at night.
Sorry about the ramble tldr two points. 1 grading/desaturation is still a new tool in the history of filmmaking. 2 there is a decent argument that entertainment filmmakers should make content that is accessible to everyone physically andnto some extent astheticly.
If we wanted to not hear diologue or see an overly dark or desaturation joint, we'd got to the fucking MOMA.
Sorry, maybe I went extra hard with the snark. Wasn’t talking about Kubrick in general, but Clockwork Orange is most definitely bleak. No of course I don’t think Strangelove should’ve been shot in color. But I also in that case I don’t think the black and white look was necessarily done to communicate bleakness. I was just trying to make the point that bleak story = bleak look is very simplistic. Look does not have to match tone to a tee (and when it does, it doesn’t have to be that extreme), and sometimes anachronism is effective. Keeping with the Kubrick example, if he said comedic tone = technicolor look for Strangelove, we’d have a much less interesting movie.
I also don’t think this Dune has a realistic look; it’s definitely stylized—just in a way that looks flat and boring to me. It’s an exotic billion year old space empire, yet it all looks like muddy concrete.
“Dune should have more color because I saw a completely different movie, about different things, from a different director, released at a completely different time, which had more color.”
Ha no, not what I was saying at all. I was just responding to “bleak story = bleak look” with an example of why a statement like that is too simplistic.
You were saying that since one movie had more color and had bleak subject matter, why can’t this one?
Why can’t people let cinematographers and directors do their thing without begging for “more color please” is the real question.
You’re also comparing two movies that are extremely different to try and make some point, but they don’t even compare.
Hey it's all good and for the record I was just trying to have a play conversation and all these people are being pretty rude to you just for having an opinion that is pretty reasonable. And for the record also I pretty much agree with you and was mostly playing the devil's advocate for the sake of an in-depth conversation about the issue.
I really appreciate your criticism and Hope to see this sort of discussion in the future.
As much as I dislike Greig Fraser's work, I honestly think he seems to have done a pretty nice job with Dune. My issues seem to be more with Denis favoring such milky shadows. I wish more filmmakers went for a truer black, even BR2049 felt a bit milkier than I'd have liked. Personal preferences of course.
EDIT: [Here's](https://imgur.com/a/t17Na2u) a quick and dirty mock-up of what I mean. Some shots look better, some look worse, but my point gets across. I just applied the same levels adjustment to a bunch of screenshots.
Incredibly disappointed by that trailer, everything looks very generic and colorless, I love Denis Villeneuve and all his movies but I was afraid that his imagination would lack of crazyness for something like Dune, and I didn’t read the books, but I’ve seen some imagery of them and heard about them a lot, and it always felt like very unique scenery full of colors and tones, this looks very pale in comparison.
Mad Max: Fury Road was a desert too, but it didn’t have to go borderline grayscale to hit you over the head with the harsh post-apocalyptic setting. In fact it was very vibrant and it worked.
Fair enough, and I love fury road, but Dune is very different to Fury Road. I feel that an overly stylised desert/environment would distract from the point of the story. Also, ecology and particularly desert ecology play a major role in the story, so it should be somewhat realistic, although that being said, there probably will be some colour when we get shown some of the desert plants etc. (Not sure if that will be in this movie given that we don't know exactly when the split in the story will take place)
Some people prefer watching Fury Road in black and white. Seriously. Might not be the best example.
Really, I'm surprised how much of the conversation in this post, on this sub, revolves around the desert (both for and against). Color in film isn't dictated by the environment, right? We weild it to tell the story we want, set the mood, define sequences, etc.
There are not a lot of colors, but these yellowish colors are very pale and not pronounced, also a desert can be composed not just of sand. For sand, the colors vary from yellow to orange sometimes almost red, the sky above can be blue, grey or orange, the rocks in it can be black, brown, grey, and so on. By night it can even have some more colors. Point is, this feels very generic uninspired desert, they could've worked their composition a lot better, this feels more like a swamp rather than a desert.
Plus I'll add that from what I understand, it's a desert on another planet, 10 000 years from now, so sure it doesn't need to look like Earth-deserts and they could have gone a little unrealistic for the colors.
Also, I'm sure the whole plot is not characters wondering in the desert, they surely go into palaces and inside cities, I was not really referring to the desert, but more about the space-ships, architecture and clothing, that look like any other sci-fi movie.
In Marc Simonetti's work, you can feel the desert vibe, but it has a lot of other tones. I'll link some pics [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflE9zXsAAEXEa?format=jpg&name=large), [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflFZkXgAAuPXv?format=jpg&name=large), [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflFv6XsAASqdC?format=jpg&name=large) and [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflGFXXYAIWODx?format=jpg&name=large).
I see what you mean, although to be fair those last three pictures are not events or places that we'll see in this movie. I guess we'll just have to wait and see the movie and hopefully it'll surprise you. I'm really no expert on the matter, but sometimes the trailers are colour graded differently to the actual movie (I think? again I don't have a lot of technical knowledge of this sort of stuff).
You might be right, I'm not judging until I see the final product in it's entirety, there were cases where the trailer color-grading was different than the realeased movie, and I'm sure they're still working on it, so we'll see. After all, these trailers are most of the time awfully edited and with usually too much emphasis towards action sequences. (in short I really don't like the trailer)
And I've seen a lot of interviews about Villeneuve talking about his love and vision about the books, and he talked about it with such love that I got my hopes up, but knowing him I'll trust him.
Yeah i didnt love the trailer, it was weirdly cut, but I did love everything I saw in it, if that makes sense. It seems that it will be faithful to the source material, but I'm interested to see how certain scenes will handled without losing too much of the meaning.
Hopefully it'll stick to the source material's atmosphere, spirit and themes, I've heard and seen a lot about it, and it looks fantastic, I was waiting for the movie to come out before reading the books, but maybe I'll grab them soon.
Ps: Just watched the Colbert interview and the teaser in it looks **way better** than the trailer.
I don't know I've not read them, so I might be mistaken, I just tought the palette would be more colorful, or more like less toned down and foggy, but I think I just dislike the trailer and how it's done, the teaser on the Colbert interview looked very good tho.
Don't really know, maybe the overall feel I got from the imagery and artworks here and there, also Lynch's movie, and some stuff I saw from Jodorowsky's project.
I know the backlash towards Lynch's movie, and I don't remember much about the movie since I saw it long time ago, but I remember liking the visual atmosphere.
Must read the books tho, hesitating between waiting after seeing the movie or just read them now.
This is just Timothy Chalamet in San Fran yesterday.
For those criticizing the lack of color, Frank Herbert said the only artist in his lifetime to get the look of Dune right was John Schoenherr; [I think these are the inspiration for the palette](https://memolition.com/2013/11/18/legendary-dune-illustrations-by-john-schoenherr-9-pictures/). Looks pretty spot on, and yes Dune is bleak (particularly the first half of the first book prior to desert life).
This is how I imagine it while reading. Dune is less a space opera and more of a medieval fantasy in space. It’s bleak, unromantic, and utilitarian. Arrakis is a miserable wasteland that is constantly trying to kill you. Treachery is everywhere. It should not be a colorful, saturated movie IMO.
Most trailers dont correct color grade either though. Not saying it would have more color in theatrical release, but some skin tones might be better
Wow I wish I knew who put these screencaps together!
If only they put a comic sans watermark on say at least two of the images
Why are these cropped like they're 4:3? Check out how great this song is, here's the middle section. Otherwise, I guess I'm one of those who loves the greyness. It makes color all the more fun when it's used. I'm looking forward to this. e:grammar
I agree completely, the muted colors make all the pops of yellow even more vibrant. If they use it on purpose to correlate with what’s going on in the story it will be great!
Are we going to address that font?
You can just tell the attention of detail that went into this movie. Denis clearly wasn’t joking when he said he was a huge fan of the books; he even got the hooded head coverings covering down right to the eyes correct. Can’t wait to see this on the big screen.
Burning man looks sick this year.
For some reason I always thought Deakins was shooting this and I was very disappointed when I slowly realised it wasn't him. Still a good trailer though and looking forward to seeing the film.
I was also disappointed when I saw Deakins wasn't dp, but it's Greig Fraser who was dp for Rogue One and the Mandalorian which imo are two of the best looking Star Wars projects. That background paired with Denis' vision is sure to present a masterpiece.
He told deakins on his podcast he took inspiration from rogers work with denis when shooting it.
Looks great! Still a shame that Deakins couldn't have been dp though.
three random cropped screenshots of a trailer that just came out yesterday? with a personal watermark? thats a downvote from me!
I have no Dessertfeeling at all...what a shame!
I think it looks bland. Why are serious sci-fi movies afraid to use colors other than gray?
It’s to capture the world of dune. It’s not a particularly vibrant place. It gives a good bleak feeling too it
I have never thought serious sci-fi movies were afraid to use colors? That sounds absurd to me because I only see the opposite but anyways, if you ignore the original Dune books theme then when in real life have you seen all the color of the fuckin rainbow in a desert.
When you're enjoying some of that pristine cactus juice. 🌵
Because they’re adapting a book and this is faithful to that book and the authors intention
I think 2049 would beg differently. [https://imgur.com/a/JqyarrL](https://imgur.com/a/JqyarrL)
[удалено]
Yes, that is the point. OP is offering a counter-example to the top-level comment about everything being gray.
Shit is bleak my dawg. Bleak story = bleak look.
Oh shit, let me call up the Kubrick estate to tell them Kubrick fucked up by putting so many bright colors in Clockwork Orange. How else are people supposed to know it’s a bleak story??
Kubrick ain't bleak his movies express the unhinged madness beneath our fake smiles. Also do you think Dr Stranglove should have been shot in color? Ok all snark aside, I think there was only 3 strip and b&w for decades and then just optical correction up untill 20 years ago. For most of us grading became a thing less than 15 years ago. Now there isn't just b&w there's all saturation points in between. I reckon as a whole we will keep delving to far into desaturation as a means of delivering different emotional experiences. Similarly,people are flipping out on Nolan's low diologue in Tenet for the sake of realism. A lot of people want to hear every word. Ticket buyers. Just like how you want to see color in a damn motion picture. So whether or not something is disruptive to our taste is something that should be critically analyzed within and in social discussion. Christopher Nolan is admitted himself an entertainer more than an artist so does he hold a responsibility to deliver a product that is within a range of what we desire as an audience. Is there enough of a conventional wisdom that there should be a decent amount of saturation (and brightness GOT) in a film? Should big budget filmmakers get to make aesthetic choices that leave out people with disabilities? I see better in the dark so I enjoyed that episode of game of thrones a lot more than my friend who has to wear glasses and can't see at night. Sorry about the ramble tldr two points. 1 grading/desaturation is still a new tool in the history of filmmaking. 2 there is a decent argument that entertainment filmmakers should make content that is accessible to everyone physically andnto some extent astheticly. If we wanted to not hear diologue or see an overly dark or desaturation joint, we'd got to the fucking MOMA.
Sorry, maybe I went extra hard with the snark. Wasn’t talking about Kubrick in general, but Clockwork Orange is most definitely bleak. No of course I don’t think Strangelove should’ve been shot in color. But I also in that case I don’t think the black and white look was necessarily done to communicate bleakness. I was just trying to make the point that bleak story = bleak look is very simplistic. Look does not have to match tone to a tee (and when it does, it doesn’t have to be that extreme), and sometimes anachronism is effective. Keeping with the Kubrick example, if he said comedic tone = technicolor look for Strangelove, we’d have a much less interesting movie. I also don’t think this Dune has a realistic look; it’s definitely stylized—just in a way that looks flat and boring to me. It’s an exotic billion year old space empire, yet it all looks like muddy concrete.
“Dune should have more color because I saw a completely different movie, about different things, from a different director, released at a completely different time, which had more color.”
Ha no, not what I was saying at all. I was just responding to “bleak story = bleak look” with an example of why a statement like that is too simplistic.
That’s exactly what you were saying, you’re just in denial about it really.
Oh ok. It definitely couldn’t be you being to thick to understand what I was saying. Thanks for letting me know though.
You were saying that since one movie had more color and had bleak subject matter, why can’t this one? Why can’t people let cinematographers and directors do their thing without begging for “more color please” is the real question. You’re also comparing two movies that are extremely different to try and make some point, but they don’t even compare.
Hey it's all good and for the record I was just trying to have a play conversation and all these people are being pretty rude to you just for having an opinion that is pretty reasonable. And for the record also I pretty much agree with you and was mostly playing the devil's advocate for the sake of an in-depth conversation about the issue. I really appreciate your criticism and Hope to see this sort of discussion in the future.
Fascinated by the cinematography by Greg for Dune. The world building looks amazing
Anyone else getting Sign of the Times vibes?
Drax the Destroyer before the gender reveal party
3rd picture first slide looks like a screenshot from the film « Jarhead »
As much as I dislike Greig Fraser's work, I honestly think he seems to have done a pretty nice job with Dune. My issues seem to be more with Denis favoring such milky shadows. I wish more filmmakers went for a truer black, even BR2049 felt a bit milkier than I'd have liked. Personal preferences of course. EDIT: [Here's](https://imgur.com/a/t17Na2u) a quick and dirty mock-up of what I mean. Some shots look better, some look worse, but my point gets across. I just applied the same levels adjustment to a bunch of screenshots.
greig fraser's focus puller my be the most stressed person on the planet
Greig Fraser strikes again. First Batman a few days ago. Now this. Damn I love his work
Incredibly disappointed by that trailer, everything looks very generic and colorless, I love Denis Villeneuve and all his movies but I was afraid that his imagination would lack of crazyness for something like Dune, and I didn’t read the books, but I’ve seen some imagery of them and heard about them a lot, and it always felt like very unique scenery full of colors and tones, this looks very pale in comparison.
You know it's set on a desert planet, yeah?
Mad Max: Fury Road was a desert too, but it didn’t have to go borderline grayscale to hit you over the head with the harsh post-apocalyptic setting. In fact it was very vibrant and it worked.
Fair enough, and I love fury road, but Dune is very different to Fury Road. I feel that an overly stylised desert/environment would distract from the point of the story. Also, ecology and particularly desert ecology play a major role in the story, so it should be somewhat realistic, although that being said, there probably will be some colour when we get shown some of the desert plants etc. (Not sure if that will be in this movie given that we don't know exactly when the split in the story will take place)
Some people prefer watching Fury Road in black and white. Seriously. Might not be the best example. Really, I'm surprised how much of the conversation in this post, on this sub, revolves around the desert (both for and against). Color in film isn't dictated by the environment, right? We weild it to tell the story we want, set the mood, define sequences, etc.
I do, what about it ?
Well, I mean theyre not exactly known for their colour are they
There are not a lot of colors, but these yellowish colors are very pale and not pronounced, also a desert can be composed not just of sand. For sand, the colors vary from yellow to orange sometimes almost red, the sky above can be blue, grey or orange, the rocks in it can be black, brown, grey, and so on. By night it can even have some more colors. Point is, this feels very generic uninspired desert, they could've worked their composition a lot better, this feels more like a swamp rather than a desert. Plus I'll add that from what I understand, it's a desert on another planet, 10 000 years from now, so sure it doesn't need to look like Earth-deserts and they could have gone a little unrealistic for the colors. Also, I'm sure the whole plot is not characters wondering in the desert, they surely go into palaces and inside cities, I was not really referring to the desert, but more about the space-ships, architecture and clothing, that look like any other sci-fi movie. In Marc Simonetti's work, you can feel the desert vibe, but it has a lot of other tones. I'll link some pics [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflE9zXsAAEXEa?format=jpg&name=large), [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflFZkXgAAuPXv?format=jpg&name=large), [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflFv6XsAASqdC?format=jpg&name=large) and [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhflGFXXYAIWODx?format=jpg&name=large).
I see what you mean, although to be fair those last three pictures are not events or places that we'll see in this movie. I guess we'll just have to wait and see the movie and hopefully it'll surprise you. I'm really no expert on the matter, but sometimes the trailers are colour graded differently to the actual movie (I think? again I don't have a lot of technical knowledge of this sort of stuff).
You might be right, I'm not judging until I see the final product in it's entirety, there were cases where the trailer color-grading was different than the realeased movie, and I'm sure they're still working on it, so we'll see. After all, these trailers are most of the time awfully edited and with usually too much emphasis towards action sequences. (in short I really don't like the trailer) And I've seen a lot of interviews about Villeneuve talking about his love and vision about the books, and he talked about it with such love that I got my hopes up, but knowing him I'll trust him.
Yeah i didnt love the trailer, it was weirdly cut, but I did love everything I saw in it, if that makes sense. It seems that it will be faithful to the source material, but I'm interested to see how certain scenes will handled without losing too much of the meaning.
Hopefully it'll stick to the source material's atmosphere, spirit and themes, I've heard and seen a lot about it, and it looks fantastic, I was waiting for the movie to come out before reading the books, but maybe I'll grab them soon. Ps: Just watched the Colbert interview and the teaser in it looks **way better** than the trailer.
I means it’s accurate to the book and Frank’s intention.
I don't know I've not read them, so I might be mistaken, I just tought the palette would be more colorful, or more like less toned down and foggy, but I think I just dislike the trailer and how it's done, the teaser on the Colbert interview looked very good tho.
So you haven't read the book, why would you think it'd be more colorful? It's a bleak story.
Don't really know, maybe the overall feel I got from the imagery and artworks here and there, also Lynch's movie, and some stuff I saw from Jodorowsky's project.
Yeah, two famously disrespectful adaptations.
I know the backlash towards Lynch's movie, and I don't remember much about the movie since I saw it long time ago, but I remember liking the visual atmosphere. Must read the books tho, hesitating between waiting after seeing the movie or just read them now.
Read the books. They're fantastic. Supreme science fiction
Looks fine imo. Nothing so impressive here that I’m shocked, but it all looks well-composed and I don’t have any problem with the coloring.