During pre-production, Denis Villeneuve and I spoke about the value of authentic Fremen and Harkonnen languages and, to a lesser extent, Sardaukar. The script, as well as the books, indicated character(s) would be speaking in those native tongues but contained only the English equivalents. I felt we needed to experience the “otherness” of those cultures through language and advocated bringing on a linguist to create them. I had been impressed with the invented languages of GAME OF THRONES and recommended their linguist, David J. Peterson, to Denis.
David came on in pre-production and created full lexicons, including linguistic road-maps for what and how to speak Fremen and Harkonnen, translating all text from the script, and creating pronunciation guides for the actors to follow. David did an extraordinary job of bringing life to these characters and cultures. Not only did we get phonetic pronunciations in text form, David created MP3’s recordings of himself speaking the lines as exact references for pronunciation.
Sardaukar was another matter. The script never indicated that the Sardaukar spoke a unique language. In fact, they didn’t speak much at all. There were a few lines that the Sardaukar soldiers needed to say, from behind blackened helmets but, otherwise, not much else. In lieu of specific translations, the actors on set spoke those lines in English, as written in the script. This worked well during filming but it became apparent these characters needed something more exotic. We needed to feel their culture (or lack there-of) through their words that only a unique language could convey. David had created the rudiments of Sardaukar language) mostly pronunciation templates, but didn’t do any of the translations save for the High Priest chant in the Selusas Secondus sequence. Even then these rudimentary chants were replaced by Hans brilliant Tuvan-esque throat singing.
As the rough cut was coming together, Joe Walker would often ring up Theo and I and asked if we could mock up a rough voice just to fill out the edit temporarily. One of the first requests was to replace the English spoken by Commander Bashar with a Sardaukar version in the scene where he makes the deal for troops with Piter de Vries. The idea was good: have this character speak in Sardaukar, befitting of the arrogance of his warring race and indifferent to anyone understanding him. When I saw Joe’s request to do a temp recording, it was early in the morning, when my voice is a particularly gravely, and I recorded a rough, temporary version. As happens so often in these matters, the track I would send Joe was my first take and it stayed in the cut through the final mix.
It should be noted that an essential characteristic of the roving-band-of-gypsies that we had become was our willingness to try/do anything ourselves before we asked someone else to do it better. As such, all of us: Joe Walker, Mary Lukasewicz (first Assistant Picture Editor), Theo Green and I would do any and every voice we were willing to take on to get us through a temp mix and flesh out the track till we could bring in professionals to do them properly. Mary is a particularly gifted mimic standing in for Rachel, Luv and others on Blade Runner 2049 and Lady Jessica, Rev Mo, and Kynes on Dune (and part of the insect voice for the Hunter Seeker!). Theo Green himself, did a pretty mean impression of Rev Mo. when needed and all of the Harkonnen language spoken. Often these lines were so good, they stayed in the cut till the last minute when we could actually bring those actors back to do ADR we had been planning for a year. For anyone who’s been in the editorial trenches, this will not only be SOP but the prelude to these lines finding their way into the film in spite of their lack of provenance. Temp love. Need I say more.
And, as such, did I end up re-voicing Commander Bashar and inventing Sardaukar along the way.
Long before I was a Sound Designer, I was a foreign language major in college, studying to be an interpreter. I used to be fluent in Spanish, Russian and Italian. Not so much any longer but the tools and rudiments of language and their construction are still with me. In the case of Commander Bashar, I was restricted to a phonetic variation of Sardaukar as I was replacing the original sync dialog that was spoken in English on the set and, as such, had to follow the actors pronunciation and lip sync very closely. Denis felt dramatically it was more interesting for him to speak natively and Piter, the Mentat, would automatically understand.
The remainder of the Sardaukar spoken by the non-essential characters was completely invented. I used simple terse statements that leveraged harsh consonants and exaggerated prosody that followed traditional grammatical and dramatic rules.
Feeling emboldened by this success, I did a Sardaukar translation for the soldier who confronts Kynes before they are consumed by the worm in the desert. Once we had crossed that line, it seemed all Sardaukar needed a voice of some kind. I would end up voicing all of the Sardaukar soldiers and inventing interesting character motivations such as this one as the helmeted leader has Duncan by the throat “Mada, Eedahoe” (Die, Idaho).
There are rumors that the Sardaukar language was an adaptation of English. Well the efficiency idea is true to the book and the Sardaukar. Time spent chatting is time not spent killing. However the language has no relationship to English. I completely made it up.
Other fun voices to look out for: Theo is the brutish Harkonnen in the Ornithopter kidnapping scene with Paul and Jessica. Ron Bartlett, Theo and I are the panicked Spice Crawler workers on the radio as Leto and company arrive to the rescue and, in an unlikely twist, I am the voice the of the female oil-bath attendant helping Baron Harkonnen recover.
We never intended for any of these lines to stick as long as they did but a confluence of COVID and familiarity with them conspired to keep them in the cut through the final mix.
