Much like the Baron and his project to conquer Arrakis, with “Dune” and “Dune: Part Two,” Denis Villeneuve found himself confronted with a truly gargantuan task. Luckily, he had his own trusted foot soldiers who could help him bring his epic vision to life. One of the most important was cinematographer Greig Fraser, who truly pushed the limits of what a DP is required to do on a movie like this.

Fraser joined Villeneuve and production designer Patrice Vermette in planning scenes down to the finest detail. While Vermette was bottling sand from various places in the deserts of Abu Dhabi and Jordan, Fraser was, as noted in the book “The Art and Soul of Dune: Part Two,” using “3D Unreal Engine software, photogrammetry, drones, and ground lidar scanning” to pre-visualize every shot of the film and plan the perfect time of day to shoot in certain locations. Capturing a real eclipse in the Jordanian desert was about the only thing that seemingly happened by chance; everything else was meticulously laid out beforehand.

The Arena battle was no different. Set on the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime, the clash takes place in the open air beneath a black sun. It’s the first time audiences see the exterior of Giedi Prime, and in order to depict what is described in Frank Herbert’s novel as a monochromatic environment, Fraser decided to shoot the whole thing in black and white. But this wasn’t as simple as desaturating the footage in post. No, to create the ominous, otherworldly monochrome of the arena battle, Fraser decided to shoot in infrared.