Thursday, November 25, 2021
Deconstructing the psychedelic sound design of 'Dune'
www.fastcompany.com: The book series Dune is one of the most celebrated sci-fi epics of all time, full of technological motifs like shield belts, hovering gadgets, and space travel. But for director Denis Villeneuve, who released the latest film remake in 2021, “at the end of the day, Dune is a psychedelic journey.” It’s a drug-fueled exploration of the desert itself.
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For such a hyped-up franchise, I am realizing I actually do not know a lot about it. I know there is sand (coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere), and something about worms? Really big sand worms? And the books look exceedingly long. I also know Timothée Chalamet is in it, along with Oscar Isaac, and Zendaya (but for a disproportionately short amount of time). Anyways, the reason I clicked on this article is because in my film studies class, my professor was asking "Why would you want to watch Dune in theaters? Why wouldn't you watch it at home?" And the answer was essentially "the experience." Big screen, big graphics, big opportunity to escape from reality for a while. Before he said "the experience," I was really close to raising my hand and saying, "I don't have subwoofers at home." I've heard the Dune sound design is phenomenal. Definitely want subwoofers for that.
I thought that the sound design of the movie Dune was pretty good, but I found myself with a couple of complaints during the movie itself. It was extremely hard to hear conversations and I needed subtitles to be able to know what was happening at all. The composition and sound effects were stunning and they were perfectly loud enough, I just thought the voices were not mixed in very well. I thought that the music composed for the movie captured the essence of the story so well and really enhanced all of the dramatic and intense moments in the movie for me. The sound effects and the way that the visuals were affected by the sound and vice versa was very impressive to see and worked together so well. This movie’s design elements were particularly amazing, I just wish I could hear the voices a bit better. I also watched the movie on HBO Max, so it may have been mixed better for the theater version.
I've been a big fan of Dune for many many years and I've not been able to see the movie because I'm so afraid it'll ruin the images I have of it in my head. As soon as I saw how much they were pushing their star casting and how much money was going into marketing I was skeptical of the quality. I heard from those that did see it that while the music/soundtrack was definitely interesting and extremely well done, the sound mixing was severely subpar. I heard that subtitles were needed to really understand the dialogue and that the balance of volume was just overall not well executed. Which for such a big budget movie, is a major faux paus. I do generally disagree with their assertion that dune is just a drug filled exploration of the desert. While spice is a big part of what fuels all the tensions on Arrakis, it is definitely not the only or most important part of the story or it's details.
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