The mouth of the sandworm in ‘Dune‘ was based off live footage of an Australian beatboxer, according to the movie’s VFX head.
DNeg’s Global Head of Animation, Robyn Luckham, revealed the tidbit in an interview with Corridor Digital.
“So we found this really uncomfortable footage of a camera in the throat of a beatboxer. That footage is disgusting,” Luckham explained.
“I showed it to Paul [Lambert] and he’s like, ‘This is disgusting, but I can see how amazing could be.’
“It has a nice contrast, because I wanted to work out how the muscles could work inside the worm that could produce sound or anything. So all the muscles inside the mouth, which you can’t really see, actually are driven and they move and they articulate.”
The ‘disgusting’ footage they reference is that of Ipswich beatboxer Tom Thum, who shared the clip to Instagram:
In 2017, Thum produced a YouTube series called ‘Live from the Larynx’.
Love Hip Hop?
Get the latest Hip Hop news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
In episode one he visited renowned ENT doctor and Laryngeal surgeon Dr Matthew Broadhurst, to find out how the inner workings of his throat differed between beatboxing and normal speech.
He followed the series later in the year with a TEDx Talk with a difference – delivering the world’s first live laryngoscopy of a beatboxer on stage.
The performance was simply called, ‘What Happens In Your Throat When You Beatbox?’ and has been viewed over 4.5 million times on YouTube.
“It was a lot of planning, and a lot of failing, and a lot of gagging, and a lot of anaesthetic but yeah, I just really wanted to do it and when I have an idea I just obsess over it, so I pushed and pushed and pushed and got there in the end,” Thum told Music Feeds.
“It was a 15-minute performance with anaesthetic in my face and a camera in my nose for a good chunk of it.”
Corridor Digital co-host Wren Weichman was shocked by Luckham’s admission.
“What?!” he exclaimed. “I just imagining that’s how it makes liquefaction, just this giant worm beatboxing and liquefying the sand.”
