In the book “The Art and Soul of Dune: Part Two,” from authors Tanya Lapointe and Stefanie Broos, Greig Fraser explains much of what went into capturing the opening battle scenes. According to the cinematographer, an Infrared cut filter was used to remove some blue and green from the color spectrum and “lean more into the red wavelength.” But it seems the biggest helping hand Fraser and the crew got came not from camera additions or VFX, but nature itself.

As the DP went on to explain, neither he nor any of the team had planned to capture a real eclipse on film, but while on-location in Jordan, that’s exactly what transpired. The event, which took place on October 25, 2022, lasted for around two hours and 25 minutes, and saw 35% of the sun obscured by the moon. This allowed Fraser and his camera operators to shoot directly into the sun and capture the eclipse in real-time. One of these shots is featured early in the opening battle in “Dune: Part Two,” and acts as a way of motivating the change from the regular daytime light to a more red-tinged hue.

Not only was the shot of the real eclipse used during the battle, a wider shot was also used earlier in the movie during the initial opening sequence. In this version of the shot, visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert and his team used CGI to create a second moon, which was then added to the eclipse footage to give the appearance of Arrakis’ double lunar bodies gliding around the sun.