Lensing Dune: Part Three. How Atlas Lens Co. rose to the challenge

Atlas Lens Co. built spherical IMAX lenses for Dune: Part Three. CEO Dan Kanes explains the brief and the deadline.

No spoilers, but Dune: Part Three is where it all starts to go a bit pear-shaped on Arrakis. Based on Frank Herbert's second book in the series, Dune Messiah, it's a much darker and less optimistic tale than before, and is probably one of the least upbeat titles we can remember a major film studio releasing as its holiday season lead.

How Atlas got the call for custom IMAX lenses

All that's for another story (though we will say that if you're tempted to read the books, you should stop after the third one, Children of Dune; we wish we had). Today, we're talking lenses. Or rather, Atlas CEO and co-founder Dan Kanes is as he gives an entertaining walk-through that starts with Dune: Part Three cinematographer Linus Sandgren dropping by during prep for Wuthering Heights and asking whether Atlas could make custom lenses for the film.

“The first question that came up was, ‘How soon do you need to do this? Because it takes time to do this stuff'," says Kanes. "Maybe like nine months or so, and we’re like, ‘That’s a very short timeline, but why don’t we see?’

"In our industry, certainty is not something that we’re used to. Whether you’re a cinematographer or even if you’re in craft service, people say you don’t know you have the job for sure until the day that you show up on the film set. And in a way, that was how it was making these custom lenses with Linus and Denis and Forrest and the team for the movie. We had an idea, and we believed we were going in the right direction, and it’s just sort of about checking how far along we are on the road map, and is this still what we think we’re doing?”

What the filmmakers needed from the lenses

The initial plan was to shoot 15-perf IMAX and some form of 5-perf 65mm film. Kanes says Atlas did not want to build lenses just to say it had, so its first question was what the existing IMAX and other 65mm lenses were not doing for the filmmakers. The answer came down to full illumination of the IMAX frame without vignetting, a very specific color and style of flare to help tell the story, and lenses that could be used interchangeably across IMAX formats.

Alongside the 15-perf IMAX cameras, the production ultimately chose Panavision System 65 cameras for the 5-perf work, plus some digital cameras, so the lenses also had to give a similar look across platforms. Dune: Part Three opens worldwide on December 18.