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CONTENTS: INSIDE THE FX OF: THE GRINCH RICK BAKER BICENTENIAL MAN X-MEN DUNE 6TH DAY WHAT LIES BENEATH THE PATRIOT FX NEWS

According to Writer/Director John Harrison this new "Dune" was shot using a system that the Director of Photography Vittorio Storaro invented himself called "35mm Univisium" and is a three-perf film system formatted 16:9 designed for wide screen theatrical format.  In addition, according to Harrison the sci-fi Channel is going to air in that wide screen format.  Harrison says, " I did not want to use voiceover or narration and so the trick was to find ways of externalizing those thoughts into conversations and dialogue, that was most difficult.

The cast and crew all confer that this is a very "faithful to the book" rendition to which Harrison states that " I had no interest in redesigning the book or excerpting the book from my own point of view." Harrison also says that "I think the center of this adaptation is the epic journey of Paul Atreides from his boyhood to enlightenment. And the terrible consequences of that odyssey."

It takes time to write any script and this one was no exception Harrison says, "Once I got the story adaptation down, which took a few months, the first draft of the script took about 4 and ½ months from there.  Then I did a set of revisions and that was another couple of months. All in all, it took me about a year.  That was to adapt the script into the screenplay that we shot. Of course, once we started prepping, I had to do some minor rewrites to accommodate production situations.

Early pictures put up on the sci-fi Channel's web site (seen here) where taken down.  Many fans didn't understand why but it seems that there was a direction change from the original thought on the "look" of the worms.  Harrison himself has stated that, "the look of the sand worms in this version will be different then any I've seen so far … on film or in books." And added "I worked very hard on this with my production designer, Kreka, and my special effects wizard, Ernest Farino.  Together with the magicians over at Area 51, I think we've come up with a completely unique, frightening and definitive version of the worm."