THE INSANE DESIGN OF DUNE

maybe you could be fman listen again I need the denos oh no you kiss your dad of the mouth I wanted Italian [Music] rationalism what's good everybody my name is carsten craning and today we are talking about Dune and more specifically the costume and set design in Dune cuz usually I don't really make content about movies but the art Direction and set design and costume design of Dune is based off of a lot of really unique design movements and a lot of the fashion and architecture that it references is what I make content about so today I want to switch things up talk about the fashion and architecture design in Dune what makes it so special and what it's inspired by and who better to make content about Dune than someone who was once described as a sad AI copy of Timothy Shalom because now there are a lot of things which make Dune really unique as a film it's amazing cinematography lighting sound design acting but what I think really sets it apart is how it recontextualizes traditional sci-fi Aesthetics you see while most Sci-Fi movies look like well a sci-fi movie Dune doesn't it utilizes its own unique aesthetic so normally sci-fi has two camps that it falls in in terms of Aesthetics the first is the more traditional classic Sci-fi Aesthetics these date back to well the beginning of sci-fi films in Hollywood and they were really developed around the 50s and 60s the way these designs and Aesthetics work is that they highlight the sort of new technology of the film and then they sort of surround it with a lot of Art Deco or mid-century modern design and then add chrome to whatever is going on the aesthetic is very utopian clean optimistic in general and this sort of aesthetic would be the groundwork for series like Star Wars Star Trek the jet sins now the second big aesthetic Camp I want to talk about is cyberpunk Aesthetics and these were really developed 20 years after after the original back in the80s these are a lot grittier dirtier and way less idealistic the two series I think which really paved the way for this aesthetic was Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell and these present an overall more negative view on technology and the future there's also a much bigger influence on the aesthetic with technology that involves entertainment because while during the'80s the effect of technology which delivers entertainment consumption to humans and how that affected The Human Condition we're becoming more and more apparent the horrors of Technology during this era were no longer just about AI Killer Robots but AI Killer Robots and also the addictive nature of 4D virtual reality space gooning sessions this is really the more contemporary aesthetic you see these days and it's important that scify has Aesthetics overall you can identify what it is and the themes that are in it Dune however does not employ the Aesthetics of traditional scii which is fascinating and this was very intentional the design director of Dune after designing every single piece of concept art would show it to his 16-year-old son who was a big fan of sci-fi video games and movies a gamer if you will and if his son said any of the art he designed felt like something he'd seen before in sci-fi he would redo it to make it intentionally not feel like anything from SciFi but this wasn't just being unique for the sake of being unique this goes a little bit deeper than that you see at the core of the two traditional sci-fi Aesthetics is technology technology is at the core of the design and while Dune does have a lot of really cool technology in it it's not at the core of the Aesthetics of the design instead what's at the core of dune's design is the architecture and the costumes and these really communicate the unique identities of different cultures and this is really intentional because other sci-fi films are about humans relationship with technology and so technology is at the core of that design Dune is really about hum's relationship with other human cultures and so those cultural signifiers is what is at the core of the design the unique design of Doom architecture and fashion is really about communicating its [Music] themes so the first one I want to talk about is the Harkins and I'm not going to lie the whole reason I'm making this video is because of the design of this planet and the characters on it mainly because when the second Dune movie dropped I suddenly got a whole bunch of people in my comments saying I was a Harkin in and thank God the reason wasn't actually just because I'm really pale but actually because of the architecture and clothing that inspired the Harkins is the architect texture and clothing that I enjoy and make a lot of content about so the hinin have this very dark and postmodern feeling to their aesthetic and much of their architecture is based off of brutalism in fact a lot of the architecture in Dune is based off of brutalism but the heinens especially have this very interesting brutalist Neo futurist world brutalism is an architecture style that was developed in the 20th century brutalism is meant to be more practical than any other style of architecture it mainly uses concrete because concrete is easy to use it's cheap however it makes the architecture look very Barren and that's not to say that brutalism is bad or without intentionality however people feel it's not super aesthetically pleasing and I wouldn't necessarily say it's Without Beauty there are a lot of people like myself who really appreciate how it plays with the form of the buildings and the shapes in unique ways however a lot of people really hate brutalism because it just kind of goes against the traditional beauty standards of architecture traditional architecture that's seen as aesthetically pleasing has more adornments or embellishments and definitely has more diverse use of materials especially natural ones and so there's a sort of stigma or connotation that brutalist design is massive uncaring uh hulking and represent a sort of callousness or meaninglessness of human nature and in this case the style of brutalist architecture is supposed to represent the characters of the harinen and how the Harkins are these Savage uncaring brutal people however the heinens don't just utilize brutalist architecture but also Neo futurist architecture for example it's not just traditional cement there's a lot of this black metal material and this obsidian looking Stone and that's sort of in tune with Neo futurist design Neo futurism literally just means new future which doesn't tell you a lot but Neo futurism is just a contemporary style of architecture and there's sort of a slickness to it and for Dune specifically John Portman was the Neo futurist architect which who his sty and his designs they sort of blended with the brutalus style a lot of the furniture in the sets of the Harkin's Interiors also is inspired by brutalist designer Le kaber there's also just a room dedicated to the baron getting oiled up which I like there's this Gothic element to the Harkins and the Creator who did all the art design around the Harkins said he was really inspired by Joy Division and so he sort of created this really Gothic postmodern uh race of people now the costume design and the design of some of the heinens themselves were inspired by Rick Owens now Rick Owens is a fashion designer who is really inspired by Gothic Aesthetics Neo futurism and of course brutalist architecture so it's no surprise why some of his work would be heavily sampled as it fits right in with the other elements that Define the hearkening people Rick himself has some very famous brutalist minimalist residen that he often photographs his clothes at and most of his Runway shows are at these very famous brutalist settings but overall Rick's design philosophy around clothes fits right in with the world that was created for the Harkins also the character design of a lot of the Harkins are just really similar to a lot of models that Rick Owens has casted you'll notice that some of these characters look honestly almost identical let's talk about oracus and the fan now to start off with oracus there's the architecture that has been built by the native freman people or there's the architecture that has been built by the colonizers in the cities where the spice mining operations are let's start off with like the colonizer cities of arus and this is where Paul and his family move when they go to mine the spice and let's particularly talk about the insane Palace which they move into but obviously this is again influenced by brutalist architecture not exactly brutalist architecture that we are used to seeing where it's regular concrete but it's this strange like brownish tinged concrete that's a little bit less cold than an imposing and the building is also based off of ziggurats which are traditional Temple structures from the Middle East these structures and buildings actually predate Islam they kind of look like pyramids with the tip cut off and the design of these zigurat is really what this Palace is based off of now we see a lot of the interior of this place I think most of the first dune movie takes place in this Palace and first and foremost where we see the most influence of design is actually Frank Lloyd Wright for example some of the more ornamental elements of the Interior especially some of his work that he did in his mind period that he built in Los Angeles but mainly where you see the Frank lyd influence is how natural light is used okay so most architecture that you and I are going to encounter on a daily basis don't really have a lot of thought into them when it comes to the environment that's surrounding them but Frank lyd wri's whole philosophy of design was being mindful about how the world around the place being built could be brought into the design he believed architecture should be in harmony with the landscape and both should complement each other and one of the ways he did that was how he used natural light he often designed windows in conjunction with the sun and the stars and their movements so the windows would let natural light in in these very Dynamic and interesting ways and that's what you see in this Palace where the windows are built in such a way that they let natural light in in very Dynamic ways which not only makes it sort of in harmony with the planet but also makes for some really cool Dynamic shots the general shape of the structure of the building is so aggressive with the Interiors they try to balance it out with some more humble warm interior design it kind of reminds me of wabisabi Japanese design where there's a lot of naturall looking Woods that they try to put in there these copper bronze fixtures bronze frescos in particular are really reminiscent of some Chinese Asian designs instead of just dragons you have sandworms also some of the wood furniture appears to be based off of at tansu which are these Japanese movable chest guests and cabinets but let's move on from there and talk about the people who actually inhabit araus and that's the fman fmen are very much based off of uh Middle Eastern um architecture and very interestingly a lot of the design references of the fman people are to pre-islamic design which is probably intentional on the director's part to remove some of the um perhaps two on the nose references to Islam for example most of the fman architecture and the cities that they live in are in these carved out walls of stone which is much like Petra in Jordan Petra is a city in Jordan which has all these structures carved out of these uh Cliff faces these were done around 2 Century BCE now the Interiors of these fman cities are very interesting our friend Rick Owens who served as the main inspiration for the dress of the hekinan people also happens to make furniture particularly some of his vases and vessels actually show up in some of the Interiors of the fman Cities as decorations Fan's costumes are really interesting because they have to wear these suits that are supposed to preserve the water in your body which many people have pointed out uh looks like airsofting gear and there's an interesting reason that that might be the case because a lot of the design references for these sort of suits of body armor is from clothing designed uh under the guise of American Military contracts one of the biggest clues for this is that the gloves that they wear were actually Oakley gloves and Oakley like many companies in the late '90s and early 2000s were rapidly developing new technology around performance Weare and one of the biggest applications of performance Weare is military contracts so a lot of companies like Oakley were developing these very modern looking prototypes of new military gear which had new performance textiles polymer body armor elements and for the most part the US military did not purchase any of these concept designs and so companies like Oakley um sent all of this future F istic looking military gear to the civilian Market to hobbyists to airsofters the point isn't necessarily that these characters look like airsofters but that the design of these suits is really based off of concepts for military gear also these scarves or head wraps which are very obviously supposed to mimic Middle Eastern headwear but the material of them is very unique and interesting and makes me think of YY Miyaki particularly there may have been a reference in spring summer 1984 iy Miyaki lady Jessica when she is around the fman people also wears sort of fan dress which is inspired by North African styles when she's around the atres uh before she becomes one with the fman people she's more influenced by Parisian fashion like uh Balenciaga and Chanel there are also the other cultures which comprise the great houses these are again the colonizers that are coming to Dune Fort spice and these cultures are all a little bit more similar to each other as far as costume design goes these characters are supposed to be dressed in a little bit slightly more dramatic and certainly more Almost Royal medieval European style of dress Florence Pew's character is clearly inspired by jonov AR there is a culture of people which just kind of wear a take on papal dress I call these people the space popes the Ben of jesset were mainly inspired by 1950s Balenciaga gowns but with these period head veils covering them which make them sort of resemble people in more morning and then of course there is in the architecture of it the atres home planet of kaladan the atres castle caladan you again have brutalist architecture Frank Lloyd Wright design again is in here where there's this harmony with nature and the surrounding especially in the lighting kaladan is also a little bit of a different climate as kaladan seems to be more influenced by like a Scandinavia so you have a different way that nature and the landscape are in harmony with the design one of the more interesting notes though is there's a lot of Chinese architecture influence where you have these windows and doors which are circles and in Chinese architecture these are called Moon Gates another interesting thing about castle caladan is you have these window lates which are very similar to Chinese Windows Chinese window luses are very complex and there's a lot of different types of Chinese Windows which represent different things just in how uh different styles of columns in Western architecture represent different periods and different things things as well now another really interesting place that we get to see a lot is the emperor's Planet which again is sort of similar to Castle kaladan and this was mainly filmed in the Brian tomb in Italy which is a private postmodernist brutalist tomb in Italy some really interesting things about the Brian tomb and the emperor's planet is that they have these circular openings that are again similar to Moon Gates and again the emperor's planet where he is most the time is probably the most traditionally brutalist all of this design is just so well thought out and genius and looks really beautiful I mean if there's anything you should get out of this video besides maybe learning a few more things about architecture and fashion it's that in summary the design of Dune is beautiful and gorgeous the art design the set building the locations these things alone take the story out of the equation make Dune worth watching with that being said I hope you learned a little bit in this video my name is Carson craning give me a follow give me a like if you want to see more videos like [Music] this

Channel: Karsten Kroening

Views: 61,896

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Id: aUmE1IJPh6E

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024