Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Shares One Item He Bans On Set

Denis Villeneuve ensures the actors are fully present whenever they shoot scenes for his movie. To make this happen, he bans one item that could steal their attention away.

Villeneuve is a popular and sought-after filmmaker. He is known for his work on Incendies (2010), Enemy (2013), Prisoners (2013), Sicario (2015), Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and the Dune trilogy. Villeneuve shared some details about his approach to filming, especially how he ensures that the actors’ attention is fully on set and what they do. His technique is similar to that of Christopher Nolan.

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Villeneuve recently sat down for an interview with the Los Angeles Times. He compared humans’ behavior to AI circuits and how people are disconnected from each other, saying that “it’s frightening.” He added that there’s “something addictive about the fact that you can access any information, any song, any book. It’s compulsive. It’s like a drug.” The Dune 2 director was alluding to the use of mobile phones before announcing that he banned the device on set. “Cinema is an act of presence,” he explained. “When a painter paints, he has to be absolutely focused on the color he’s putting on the canvas. It’s the same with the dancer when he does a gesture. With a filmmaker, you have to do that with a crew, and everybody has to focus and be entirely in the present, listening to each other, being in a relationship with each other. So cellphones are banned on my set too, since Day 1. It’s forbidden. When you say cut, you don’t want someone going to his phone to look at his Facebook account.”

Nolan, who directed Oppenheimer (2023) and The Dark Knight trilogy, also felt the same. Nolan banned the same item during filming. In 2020, there were rumors that the British-American filmmaker banned chairs from his movie, and his spokesperson denied it, naming the two items he didn’t allow on set. “For the record, the only things banned from [Christopher Nolan’s] sets are cell phones (not always successfully) and smoking (very successfully),” Nolan’s spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak of ID said in a statement, per IndieWire.

Nolan and Villeneuve have good points about banning mobile phones on movie sets. Nowadays, most people are glued to their phones, making them distant and disconnected from the people around them. This is evident when one steps out: couples sitting together at the table but not talking because they are on their phones, parents letting their kids play on their mobile phones because they are also enjoying their own screen time – checking social media sites like Instagram or Facebook. The technology that should have brought people closer together somewhat disconnects those who are already together.

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Source: The Los Angeles Times