By TREVOR HOGG
By TREVOR HOGG
Images courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd.
Breaking away from the Skywalker family saga, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was inspired by John Knoll’s (Executive Creative Director and Senior VFX Supervisor, ILM) desire to tell the story of how the original Death Star plans were obtained by the Rebel Alliance. Directed by Gareth Edwards, the feature introduced the leader of the dangerous covert mission, Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna. The character has subsequently become the subject of the Lucasfilm and Disney+ prequel series Andor, created by Tony Gilroy, who was heavily involved in reshaping Rogue One. The first season chronicles what led Andor to revolt against the Galactic Empire, while Season 2 covers him in full revolutionary mode with three episodes devoted to each of the four years that preceded his fateful decision to lead the mission that paves the way for Luke Skywalker to destroy the weapon of mass destruction in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.
Aesthetically, Rogue One is not the same as Andor. “Certain looks, such as the Ring of Kafrene, would have stood out in our show,” observes Luke Hull, Production Designer for Andor. “However, we were keen to get a Yavin 4 Rebel Base that felt like the one you experience in Rogue One. Then, build off from that to get more of a sense of how exiled civilians took refuge on Yavin, and take a look at what the living situation could be like there. I was keen to connect the elements of it as much as possible even if we did not do a full journey through it in one take. I wanted to be able to walk from and see beyond the depths of the temple hangar, out past the parked X-wings, out of the temple mouth, across the airfield. Then up into the jungle perimeter with various base camps, pilot bars, ration tents, and through the jungle to Cassian’s and Bix Caleen’s [Adria Arjona] dwelling. That way, we start to add into our Yavin something that we have tried to keep throughout Season 1 and 2 – scope and a clear sense of geography.”
“We have been doing Star Wars projects in the U.K. [for a long time], so fortunately we have quite a big depository of things that we can go and get, tweak and change. For instance, there are a number of V8 vehicles that we often pull out and put our speeders on those and gimbals. We try to be clever and want to be sustainable. Movies are expensive, and sometimes movies can be classified as being quite wasteful. We try to repurpose and reuse whatever we can. It was nice to blow the cobwebs off some old speeders and repurpose them for the show.”
—Luke Murphy, SFX Supervisor
Former members of the Rogue One team were brought on board for Andor. “The fact that we had worked on Rogue One meant there was already an understandable language and an indication of Tony Gilroy’s style and the way that he likes to portray things,” explains Neal Scanlan, Creature & Droid Effects Supervisor for Andor. “You get a sense of how much time and attention Tony will be paying to certain aspects. When we looked specifically at the creatures and droids, it’s helpful to know that, because we’re building for an almost unknown amount of use. If you have some idea, then you can start to tailor what you’re building and performing and make sure it’s in the right tone, feel and look. But it also means we can refer to a timeline that is quite definitive.”
Not much could be leveraged from Season 1. “It’s almost all new ships and planets,” observes Mohen Leo, VFX Supervisor for Andor, who is also a Rogue One alumnus. “We were lucky that almost all the people from Season 1 continued straight on to Season 2. On Season 1, everyone still had to find out, ‘Where do I step on someone else’s toes? How far should I go in making suggestions?’ On Season 2, everyone trusted each other blindly.”
A major change for Season 2 was having to deal with time jumps between each set of three episodes. “Creatively, it was great because that allowed us to look at blocks of three episodes as units in terms of the way we approached the droids and the environments,” Leo remarks. “There are a couple of locations and environments that we see over multiple blocks. One of the jobs of visual effects was to help understand the passing of time by seeing how a place looks different a year later and different another year later.”
Principal photography took place at Pinewood Studios and Longcross Studios in the U.K. and Spain. “Pinewood was the creative hub. We had a lot of stages there, and we had the backlot,” notes Luke Murphy, SFX Supervisor for Andor. “Longcross provided more big stages, and it’s a great playground. Some of the big pyrotechnics we did for the show were at Longcross.” Props had to be moved between the studios. “Luke Hull came up with this design for the prototype TIE fighter,” Murphy explains. “It was going to be a tricky build. We sat down and said, ‘Look, we can make this full-size and fly it with a crane.’ We had to move it between Pinewood Studios, Longcross Studios and location, so this thing had to be modular and go together quickly. It had carbon fiber and lots of aluminum. We had to put the TIE fighter on a gimbal, fly it around in an aggressive way and give energy to our pilot.”
Visual effects is closely tied to the art department. “Like every project, I start working with visual effects from day one and try to stay in the fold until the end of post,” Hull remarks. “I like to build physical sets. It works well for the scope that a TV series requires, but when we design, we try to design the built set in context to how it sits in the wider world.” Special effects made a contribution to the virtual production shoot by adding practical rain to the Coruscant window shots. “You don’t want those LED screens replaced!” Murphy laughs. “You have to be careful. Ariel Kleiman [director] and Christophe Nuyens [Cinematographer] wanted the rain to be on the windows for that sequence. We scaled down a bit. We were clear about how we rigged. We sat down and talked about where the LED wall was going to be and where the set wall was going to be and made sure that we had enough space for both visual effects and special effects. It worked perfectly.”
World-building requires being distinct and universal at the same time. “I feel the bigger creative challenges came with finding contrast between multiple worlds while still feeling coherent as a look across the whole show,” Hull believes. “Ghorman presented a particular challenge as we embarked on a classical European [French/Italian] feel, which was felt in our Stars Wars world, but also felt credible and looked like it had existed for years. Like Ferrix needed in Season 1, Ghorman needed to feel lived in, with a sense of community and a proud culture. But, unlike Ferrix, we needed to approach the design as larger set pieces that sat spread apart within a bigger city.” Along with 80 studio sets being constructed, shooting took place in approximately 60 locations. “The locations that drew us out of the studio and into London were primarily to help give us scale and complexity for Andor’s version of Coruscant,” Hull explains. “The Barbican and locations like Lloyds in the city gave us great looks for mid-level Coruscant away from the gleaming spires of the top level. Using locations to shoot Star Wars help bring credibility to the look.”
The opening scene of Episode 201 revolves around Cassian Andor attempting to steal the prototype TIE fighter. “Because it’s a prototype, Cassian isn’t familiar with the controls, so there is this chaotic sequence of him trying to fly it out of the hanger but at the same time trying to figure out how it actually works and smashing into things and shooting things,” Leo remarks. “We had a partial set that looked like giant hangar. On the opposite side are the hangar doors that lead out onto an Arctic landscape, so we had bluescreen there. We were able to shoot all of that practically, having special effects in that as well. Once the ship takes off, it’s a mix in the wider shots of still shooting in the hanger but with a CG ship flying around and shooting. All of the exteriors ended up being full CG with the interiors of Diego in the cockpit shot on the gimbal.”
Making a cinematic debut is the grain planet of Mina-Rau. “For Mina-Rau, our biggest challenge was the crop,” Hull remarks. “We had to find a good field near the studio first, one that gave us multiple horizon lines so we didn’t need to remove sets that we shouldn’t see in the background all the time. We also had to plant a crop a year before to grow it for the shoot as we were shooting out of season. We wanted to use an ancient rye grain because we looked at a lot of types and felt it had an interesting look and height that felt not too alien but also not as common as wheat and other more recognizable crops. We then had to plan our builds into the field and create a digital Mina-Rau layout with visual effects that placed everything in the correct relationship to each other so they could plan the sequences. The biggest challenge was unforeseen, though. The actors’ strike hit us just at the point of the end of our shoot, which was all in the crop field. We had to pack the sets, harvest the crop, and then painstakingly the greens department had to thread each crop strand into polystyrene boards which we stored in the James Bond stage at Pinewood Studios. When we finally got back up and running, we had to recreate the sets and fields of Mina-Rau across three stages in Pinewood Studios.”
Over 4,000 visual effects shots were produced for the 12 episodes by ILM, Scanline VFX, Hybride, Soho VFX, Midas VFX and Blind, made all the better because of the in-camera component. “We have a practical department doing practical effects working alongside brilliant CG artists and techniques,” Scanlan remarks. “We can literally sit around the table and say, ‘Can you help me here? I hear that this puppet has a rod attached to it because that’s the most efficient and best way of doing it. Are you able to remove the rod for us?’ Of course they can. Maybe we’re adding some extra limbs here. We don’t need to build all of this character because it can be CG enhanced. It’s fruitful and always fresh because each character suggests a different avenue. There is an almost endless number of tools that allows us to do so much – and so much more in the future. That works so well because we are one family and next door to each other. Communication is easy.”
Groundmech salvage assist unit B2EMO returns from Season 1 and was achieved without any digital assistance. “Inherently, part of what we do is try to put personality in inanimate objects,” Scanlan explains. “The Pixar angle pose is a wonderful example. There are things like body movement that allows for excitement or emotion to come from raising or lowering your body. Then, there is the general motion. We are able as human beings to move in any direction we want to go. One of the things we look at there is what kind of motivation? For instance, BB-8 is a ball and could roll 360 degrees. B2EMO has a similar yet different mechanical solution to the same problem. The most baseline elements we relate to as humans are the things that we try to put into the droids. I’m sure Mohen Leo would feel the same and the animators, too. When they animate them, there’s a certain range in which one wants to keep that almost childlike quality to it.”
Imperial security droid K-2SO, which becomes Andor’s trusted co-pilot in Rogue One, is part of the cast. “The approach was the same as Rogue One,” Leo notes. “We basically had Alan Tudyk on set for all of the scenes, wearing the stilts where appropriate. He wore a mocap suit so we could capture his performance as well. In post, our first step would always be to faithfully match exactly what Alan did in each plate. It was great having that experience of Rogue One because there are occasionally things that Alan might do with his face that you can’t then do with K-2SO because he can’t raise an eyebrow or smirk. You have to then cleverly find little ways like a tilt of the head or a glance of the eye that convey the same idea of what Alan did.”
Speeders were dusted off for Andor. “We have been doing Star Wars projects in the U.K. [for a long time], so fortunately we have quite a big depository of things that we can go and get, tweak and change,” Murphy remarks. “For instance, there are a number of V8 vehicles that we often pull out and put our speeders on those and gimbals. We try to be clever and want to be sustainable. Movies are expensive, and sometimes movies can be classified as being quite wasteful. We try to repurpose and reuse whatever we can. It was nice to blow the cobwebs off some old speeders and repurpose them for the show.”
“Audience members can expect to see some great new designs for droids. “There are some real surprises to come,” Scanlan states. “I won’t spoil that for you. Tony doesn’t write something if it doesn’t have a reason to be there. Nearly all of the things that we’ve made, you’ll see has a purpose, and some of them have strong emotional connection to other characters in a surprising way. When we’re in Coruscant and places where all of the species are coming together, we see our aliens having speaking parts and having their moments. Of course, there are all of the lovely little moments in the background that are all part of the storytelling. Compared to Season 1, Season 2 is a smorgasbord of aliens, droids and characters that I know the fans will enjoy.”
