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While I like the PT, I think they ruined fans’ idea of how Star Wars should look

Who knows if that was intentional, but if it was, inverting the colors is great symbolism of being on the outside now. It also reminds me of the shape and color of the Separatist symbol, but that might be a stretch too far!

Edit: 'inverted' is the wrong word, I should have said 'just with more of a blue emphasis.'

A lot of people on here say it's just a quality sci-fi spy show with Star Wars tacked on to be marketable, but it wouldn't make sense in any other universe. There's going to be hard currency, there's going to be minimal surveillance, there's going to be living beings doing jobs that should have been droidified long ago, because ultimately, it's a product of the 1970s. No matter how far you go from BBY0 in either direction, the Star Wars universe is bound by a certain retrofuturism, as well it should be. Andor doesn't have fewer plot holes than other shows of the Disney era, it just lets the viewer see them without apologizing for them.

Recently decided to give Endeavour a watch, imagine my delight when these two turned up unexpectedly.

The series is a detective programme (prequel to Inspector Morse) so O'Reilly and Dillane only appear for one episode, but the series has a deep bench of guest actors and over the course of the series there were guest appearances by Col. Yularen, Pono (the guy who shuts down the feed of Mon's speech) and Runai Sculdun played siblings, and probably more I've forgotten.

Perhaps most notably, Anton Lesser also has a main role as Superintendent Bright.

The episode in question is Arcadia (S03E02), and is findable on YouTube with a search for the series and episode name, if anyone's interested in having a look.

Thank the Maker notes part 3

The Visual Effects of Rogue One (TJ Falls, Mohen Leo, Yannick Lorro)

Leia and Tarkin: it was a case of maintaining the nuance in the performance of the new actors putting it “onto a dead guy” (!!)

Yannick - Jedha was a big favourite of his and all three of them were really proud of it. Full 3-D digital design. Gareth Edwards could “location scout” virtually. Would “find” a corner of the city rather than make it. Same technique was used for Coruscant in Andor too.

Desctruction of Jedha was very much inspired by the concept art rather than the 3-D render. Concept was visually inspired by the Victorian artist John Martin.

Final work on the film was very much based on the logistics. eg. the Scarif tower in the background would bring in questions like “could you run there in 15 minutes?”… geography is very important in R1. “It took a while to get there” ( this obviously influenced the decision to make it one location, explaining why all the trailer shots of the Jyn and Cassian running across the beach with the plans didn’t make the final version)

The space battle: camera shots were intended to be documentary style even there. Placed where a real camera man could feasibly be rather than rule of cool / eg. in the middle of an explosion.

Reason for the shield going down hadn’t been worked out. So some ideas were brought in and the Corvette pushing plus the two ships colliding idea was John Knoll’s. Mohen: the story ideas “didn’t take a linear path” and this one came in quite late.

Very collaborative. Thought of themselves as “work wives” :)

The Electronic Design and Animatronics of R1 and Andor - Josh Lee & Matt Denton

Pic of the team in truck waiting for Iceland rain to stop for that one clear image of the agricultural droid. Waited for days just drinking coffee and eating biscuits.

It’s a case of getting animatronic that looks good, does the movements and is robust enough to work in the rain etc. Most other shots you can see its raining.

Would have pressure of a “it’s $2000 a minute, guys!” from assistant directors kind while setting up cameras etc but they were always ready before cameras were.

At one point K-2SO was going to be entirely animatronic. Demonstrated with short video clip of a head built with gyroscopic technology. Trick to it being convincing is that it blinks before looking in a new direction.

G Lucas visited one day when they had decided to do CGI via motion capture for K-2SO. “Ah, like Jar-Jar,” he said. They were amused to discover that he wasn’t being ironic.. he genuinely loves Jar Jar!

Alan Tudyk was ‘super cool’ to work with.

They did a demo of the famous K-2SO stilts - it was their first time out of Pinewood since the film wrapped! They still have Tudyk’s “Con Man” stickers on them. He could stay in them for up to an hour - very comfortable. Adapted to the actor’s height and weight.

They showed the animatronic designs for characters like Pao. With Bistan (space monkey in the U-Wing) - that’s the actor’s own eyes. Matt did the animatronics of the rest of it.

B2EMO was known on the production as “Buzz”. The Andor script was VERY specific about the requirements (squat and tough salvage droid with dog vibes) (this was very helpful) It was the nicest droid to drive. But day 1 of filming the scene where he meets Cassian in the crashed ship and it wouldn’t go straight: director (Toby Haynes) wasn’t happy. But the animatronics team didn’t know the ship ramp was going to be a compound angle! And a grated floor!!

The ‘Feel’ of Rogue One - Lee Sandales (set decorator) and Rut Villamagna (hand props and weapons painter`)

When Lee was first hired he was expecting to be given specifics but instead Gareth started talking about childhood memories of SW. The idea was to “build on the memory and make it better” in terms of the production design aesthetic.

Rut had worked on TFA and she was used to moving quickly from project to project. Jamie Wilkinson brought her in to R1. Many of the weapons had OT feel so lots of greys and blacks.

Lee LOVES the Lah’mu homestead. and loves Easter eggs! Eg: Jyn’s toys on her bed - they are Star Wars versions of the Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.

Got a lot of great things on the set in homage to the OT: blue milk, 70s crockery…

There are pipes on Cloud City in ESB that were reused in Rogue One - it was a lucky chance find.

The structure at the top of the Data tower was actually missing large parts - but ended up looking better for it.

Just read on the book The Art of Andor, the hammers the time grappler uses and the anvil he bangs them onto are made of beskar. Holy crap that is one expensive anvil. I mean its big and solid. If the Mandalorians ever found out....

Thank the Maker notes part 4. (Clip shows the “escape from Jedha” sequence combining Rogue One concept art with an existing film. Yes, Cassian’s name was Willix here.)

Editing Rogue One - Col Goudie

(Note: at the time the film was made Col was known as Colin Goudie but is now non-binary and uses they/them pronouns)

Gareth used to work for Col! Both are total SW geeks and such close friends that they were notorious for finishing each other’s sentences. They first met on Space Race. Their most famous collaboration before Rogue One was on Monsters (my personal favourite Edwards film) - and Gareth was in fact hired for “Monsters, not Godzilla” because of its similar use of documentary style film making.

Previous films were cheaply made and on Rogue One Gareth really wanted to use 35 mm. No money for that on his previous films. But the new digital cameras were considered much better, as far as Gareth was concerned and for one simple reason … Col: “He films everything!”

So Gareth shot “TONS of footage”, multiple takes with different angles. Very unusually, there were no clapper boards on R1 !

Col did a total of 789 days on the film and the whole first year of that was coming up with shots.

Col joked re “Jurassic 7” that Gareth was restricted by using 35mm - by having to stop filming to reload a magazine! So the crew weren’t as frustrated with him :)

So the trick for Goudie as editor with a director who films so much (quite literally – Gareth was camera operator for a lot of key scenes) is to treat all the footage as a documentary rather than a drama.

Goudie was asked to do a two hour edit of the early ‘story treatment’ using the concept artwork and existing films/media - see clip. Including eg. The Lego Movie(!) and Lawrence of Arabia. Described as “Like a moving moodboard”. This was just for Gareth at first. It was a whole year of the two of them collaborating and coming up with shots.

Col worked a lot with the concept artists: mentioned Matt Allsopp, who has a lot of work online and in the Art of Rogue One book.

Goudie also did some writing, as in inserting lines of dialogue to connect ideas within and between existing footage. Eg, the original cut of the scene where Cassian comes to get Jyn from Saw and she tries to get Saw to go with them raised the question - why doesn’t he? Goudie wrote the line “I will run no longer” and Forest Whitaker added it as ADR, but you don’t see his face as the line plays. Pretty much every time this happens in the film there have been tweaks in the editing and new lines added via ADR. Everyone got involved with writing for the final cut as the deadline approached. John Swartz (producer) : also did lots of writing. eg the rebels planting the mines. 2nd unit director Simon Crane “did the Tower scenes” … and Tony Gilroy did “the dialogue scenes”.

I’d been wondering if the Gilroys would be mentioned much at all considering the secrecy surrounding the film’s difficult production but Col was very open and positive about it all and would have talked more about the later stages of working with Tony and John Gilroy but ran out of time. Tony was called in and the idea was to get the film finished with all the story stitched together cohesively - a massive undertaking for the only editor. Goudie recalled saying - “Look, Tony, I’m gonna need some help, mate” and it just so happened that his editor brother John had just become available from Suicide Squad.

When he joined the project, John Gilroy took over cutting and Col moved over to grading.

Tony G apparently had to ‘pitch’ the final 1/3 of the film to Lucasfilm when he joined and was desperate to get a mock up. Asked for it to be done pretty much immediately and Col worked through the night to get the mock up on it so it was done in time.

I had a quick one-to-one chat with Col after their panel at a signing session and thought I would ask a bit more about the ending of the film and one specific rumour from my friends in the ‘shipping’ community about exactly what might have happened in that Scarif elevator beween Cassian and Jyn, where some editing has clearly been done - “did they film a kiss?”

No - there never was a kiss in the elevator.

But - and this was hugely surprising to me - Col wanted them both to live and pushed for a happy ending (“I’m a romantic!”) And it was a pretty well-developed concept. Jyn had a brother in that version… (which was still in play before the ADR was done to the Saw “I will run no longer” scene). The film would have ended with the brother flying in to Lah’mu in a replay of the opening to reveal that Jyn (last seen very seriously wounded) survived and returned to the homestead, where she is living (“after all the films” - I assume Col meant the OT ) with Cassian and their child!

Gareth Edwards however “was all “Nah, kill them!”” But that alternative ending was actually in play far later that you might expect, presumably developed enough for them to prepare if necessary (if Lucasfilm decided it didn’t like the ‘kill them all’ ending).

So it wasn’t a case of Tony Gilroy disagreeing about the ‘kill them all’ ending - both he and Gareth Edwards were in support of that. But the scrapped romance plot was linked to the happy ending version of the story.

All in all, fascinating stuff and I could happily have listened to another hour of Col Goudie.

Final part coming tomorrow – and it’s all Andor

anyone think something went wrong when she offed Tay

Just had to share this beautiful digital painting gifted to me by the enormously talented @yavinbarber on tumblr. I love the lighting and intimate mood of our tragic couple enjoying a little bit of happiness together.

I feel so dumb and wanted to share.

I'm watching Andor for the first time on my Plex collection where I have both seasons. If you're unfamiliar with plex, you have to sort your files into seasons, and then name them s01e01, s01e02, etc.

I start watching episode 1 of season 1. It's very confusing. I'm not a huge star wars fan and haven't seen all of the movies, but I knew that this show was related to Rogue 1 which I had seen in theatres but don't remember all that well. The episode opened with "one year later", alright, odd way to start a show but I guess it's 1 year after rogue 1? But I thought this was a prequel? Ehh I'll figure it out. Got half way through episode 2.

I keep losing track of the characters. Who is this fancy woman? Who's wedding is it and how is that relevant? Ok they all know Andor? Who are these people shipwrecked on this planet that Andor knew of? Which planet is which... I find an episode by episode character tracker and it has only 5 of the like 15 characters I'm trying to keep track of their names. Useless

I search this subreddit just to find a character portrait guide with names as I cannot follow who is who. Someone says Wikipedia has good episode summaries so I go there. Reading s01e01 doesn't sound at all like what I just watched. But you know what does? S02e01...

Apparently when I named all the files I had given both seasons' files "s01" in the file names. Even though the folder structure for the seasons was correct plex was seeing two files both named s01e01, documenting that there were two files in the episode properties, and instead of telling me there was a problem it just decides to show the one in the season 2 folder

For what I could understand, it was a good episode! But now to start the show for real.

Gnarly violent and colonial open pit mine, the native people murdered and tortured while their resistance continues. Spread awareness of this!

Everyone else seems to. Also what other factions are missing a logo?