We asked Ridley Scott to pick one favorite shot from each of his movies, as well as one from any other film. The director of Dune, Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, Sicario, and many others breaks down each shot for us and explains what makes each so special to him.
Enemy (2013)
“I will say that it's definitely the spider at the end. I was trying to convey a sensation of massive inner terror. It's Jake Gyllenhaal's character finally facing his inner self and there's something about the way that shot was designed and done that I'm still deeply in love with today.
We didn't have the budget and the technology was not advanced enough to create that spider. So the way it was made is that the guys created a tiny mock-up of the room on green screen, and shot a real tarantula with the hi-res cameras, and then the tarantula was blown up and put in the real room. That for me is one of the best special effects I've seen in my life because you feel it's real. And that's why I think that so many times I’ve been insulted because people were very angry at me as they were too afraid. But it's a powerful shot, yeah.”
Prisoners (2013)
“There's a shot that I did and it was like a very strong instinct to do that shot, a shot that was designed on set that still today I feel is absolutely the right shot to do to express what I wanted to say. But it is a very simple shot. There's a moment where we are stepping away from the characters at the beginning of the film. It's a shot that expresses the pressure of time and wants to bring the idea that something ominous is about to happen. It's a dolly that moves toward the bark of a tree, and it's like that pressure on the bark, that pushing on the tree, is one of my favorite shots of Prisoners.”
Sicario (2015)
“I remember when we were doing it with Roger Deakins, Roger and I had thought that it would be nice to see Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro's squad as the Delta Force were going into the night, and how to convey the idea that they were going in the underworld. They will leave reality and go into a zone of danger and they will be beyond law and they will do something that is illegal. The idea was to embrace the sky and have the characters diving into pure darkness. It's a dolly shot that moves slowly and we pan at the same time and as the platoon is going into the shadow, they are like silhouettes going into the dark and so on. That, I thought, was pretty cinematic.”
Arrival (2016)
“In Arrival, I think one of my favorite shots is when Amy Adams needs some kind of relief after having a strange experience in the tent. As she's studying the language, she starts to have some kind of weird effect coming out of learning that language and she goes outside and it's a very naturalistic shot where we close up on her as she's trying to catch her breath and calm down, and you just see the silhouette of the ship out of focus behind. That's beautiful sci-fi shit.
There was something about the whole movie encapsulated at that moment where you have that woman being absorbed with emotions that she cannot process as you have at the same time the surrealism of a ship behind, which feels a bit like those nightmares where you feel a presence. That was the tension I was looking for.”
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
“There's a shot right at the beginning of the movie where we are just above Ryan Gosling's shoulder, where he sleeping in the spinner. The intimacy of the shot, that idea came from the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? To see that cop that is a replicant sleeping at the beginning as he is on the journey heading toward violence, that shot and the shot right after of his hand being still and of a sleeping being that I thought was absolutely moving for me to shoot.”
For a film like Blade Runner, a lot of people will pick out the big landscapes, the colorful shots, and the silhouettes. But why do you feel like you connect with those smaller, intimate shots?
“Because there's so much humanity in these shots and intimacy that I was looking for. I feel that right at the beginning I have a window. There's nothing more vulnerable than being asleep and being close to a sleeping character like that. I felt that I immediately connect with him in the most simple way.”
Dune (2021)
“There's a shot that I'm really fond of. We see his (Paul’s) first footsteps in the desert. Time becomes still, and I tried to create it as if it was like the first footstep of the man on the moon. It's the idea that a character will suddenly immerse himself in a new dimension, stepping into the unknown and feeling the compression of time in that moment where you just follow one footstep after the other. The camera is just above the sand, and then you see him kneeling in the sand and grabbing up a scoop of sand in his hand.
There's something so honest about feet and hands in the way it's absolutely pure. I love shots of hands for that. It's like there's something there. You cannot lie. It's like a direct relationship with reality. The action and reality conveyed by the hands I love.”
Dune: Part Two (2024)
“There's a shot where Paul finally rides on the worm. It's a shot that we see his foot and finally he stands up and finds his balance on the worm for the very first time. It's a bit like where he becomes a Fremen, where he becomes an adult. It's barely described in the book and I had to imagine the technique. How he will be physically able to jump onto a worm, making that look real, dangerous, and edgy? It required a tremendous amount of time and research and development, and it was by far the most complex sequence I have ever done in my life.
I will be reluctant to dive too much into the technicality of it because I love to keep the magic. So I will say to you, I try to cast not too much of a big sandworm in order to make sure that it would not be too dangerous for Timothée.”
Any other film…. Seven Samurai (1954)
Seven Samurai, Kurosawa. A samurai is waiting, sitting at the bottom of a tree. He knows that thieves are coming his way and he's looking at flowers. The way he's sitting and looking at flowers and that precise moment for me, still today, is one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen that absolutely had a tremendous impact on me.
DUNE: PART TWO will be released in cinemas and IMAX 1st March, 2024
