The arrival of the Atreides family at Arrakeen was accomplished using a beautifully detailed foreground miniature constructed by one of the masters of the technique, Emilio Ruiz del Rio. The process uses a model placed close to the camera (in this case on a high tower in the parking lot of the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City) which is strategically placed so that background action in the distance can be photographed through gaps in the model, creating the seamless illusion of live action in a set which would be too difficult and expensive to build full-size.
Blasts from the past
Carl Franklin’s One False Move (1992): Criterion Blu-ray review
Lionel Rogosin: On the Bowery (1956)
Leonard Cohen, Robert Altman and an elegy to a national myth
Criterion Blu-ray review: Giuseppe De Santis’ Bitter Rice (1949)