There’s so much more than went into creating Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies. For instance, “Dune” avoided using greenscreen by building sets out of fabric so as to ensure the right light environment. Elsewhere, after locating the ideal sand dune for the intimate conversations between Paul Atreides and Zendaya’s Chani, Greg Fraser was adamant that the crew could only shoot during the morning golden hour, to capture that reflective, somber tone. That meant some of the shortest scenes in “Dune: Part Two” took three entire days to shoot.

In a ScreenCrush interview, Villeneuve explained how important the ideal setting was to him, saying:

“That set that we choose, the sand dunes that are chosen … we look like fools! Crazy people wandering in the desert, picking out specific sand dunes. Why? Because they have a certain shape that I want, or they have the perfect sun orientation that Greig [Fraser] needs.”

You can imagine that if you’d spent huge amounts of time tracking down the perfect sand dunes for your sci-fi epic, you’d want to make sure the sweeping landscape wasn’t perturbed in any way, right? Say, by footprints? But with such a massive production, keeping the dunes pristine was never going to be easy. Asked how minimized footprints, Villeneuve said:

“It is a nightmare. It’s funny — it’s not funny, but I remember Greig Fraser and I going ‘Oh no, not again!’ We have to instill a lot of discipline in our film crew. We have to make very tight corridors and try to protect our sand. So those sand dunes become very precious for us, and protected by a whole team. It requires a lot of discipline, because once you break one, it’s done. So, yeah, it’s like a puzzle.”