#Denis Villeneuve Drew Storyboards For Dune As A Teen, Because Of Course He Did

“Dune” pairs Villeneuve with cinematographer Greig Fraser, but he has also worked several times with Roger Deakins, and both he and Fraser have appeared on the Team Deakins podcast. Like Villeneuve, Deakins’ other frequent collaborators, the Coen Brothers, are known for their storyboarding, yet Deakins has noted on more than one occasion that the Coens have a way of giving their actors freedom while somehow bringing them back around at the end to the scene they envisioned in their storyboards.

In some cases, being wedded to the framing of elaborate, pre-planned storyboards could prove restrictive to the spur-of-the-moment creativity of actors and other members of a film’s crew. However, according to Patrice Vermette, the production designer of “Dune,” Villeneuve takes a somewhat multiple-choice approach to storyboarding. Vermette told THR:

“Denis has different storyboard options for every scene, and he lives with those up on his wall during preproduction — experimenting with the mood, economy of shots and the tempo — until he knows he’s got it exactly right.”

While a teenager with an iPhone might devise some creative fan-film solutions for depicting the world of “Dune” onscreen, there’s ultimately no way they could make an effects-heavy movie with the scale and quality that Villeneuve has. If you’re someone who dreams of telling big stories but has limited filmmaking resources, you could always do what Villeneuve did and draw up a storyboard first.