“Deep dive“Is an in-depth podcast and video bet series with interviews with the stars and the creative team behind an exceptional movie piece. For this edition, IndieWire Crafts and Special Projects collaborate with Disney+ to take a closer look at ”Andor“With creator Tony Gilroy, Managing Producer Sanne WholenbergThe Actors Alïas Lawson, Diego Luna, and Genevieve O’Reilly, Production Designer Luke Hull, Costume Designer Michael Wilkinson, Composer Brandon Roberts, Cinematographer Mark Patton, Director Janus and Jows Metz, as Well as Editors yan mile. Cultures Grounded The Most Explosive Moments of the Show’s Second Season.
There is a whole galaxy full of TV Critics, including our own here at IndieWire, who have found “Andor” season 2 Being the very best of “Star Wars” – Safe entry into the franchise as the most compelling struggles with romance and sacrifice as a revolutionary revolutions. The Disney+ series does not do this by leaning into the extensive annals from existing “Star Wars” -Lore.
Tony Gilroy And his creative team figured out to show the viewers the repressive transmission of imperialist brackets, to make us feel humanity in the places the empire wants to crush, make Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) And his rebel friends are fighting the Empire so much more meaningful.
Perhaps the most important place in Season 2 is the planet Ghorman, a rich, first world world that only happens to have some rare minerals that the empire may want to extract. Each decision on Ghorman, from his fabric export economy to its French and Algerian resistance roots to its spider masks, was taken and worked back from the fact that the empire would make a massacre there. “Ghorman was built to be destroyed,” Gilroy told IndieWire.
“The social climate in Ghorman is crucial for this season, so all this investment is made in terms of stories, spent time at this location and when it comes to design and building,” Luna said on a section of IndieWire’s filmmaker Tolkit Podcast. “In our story it is important to go deeper and understand society.”
At “Andor”, the Empire crushes communities everywhere, even those where everything seems beautiful and nice. Season 2 spends much of the first three episodes on Chandrila, the home world of rebel leader Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’reilly), not in any small part to show the personal costs of choosing rebellion over family, friends and her own moral compass. Mons silent consent to the murder of childhood friend/shaky banker Tay Kolma (Ben Miles) culminates in a Disappling dance numbersBut everything we learn about Chandrila’s traditions before it gives the audience a lively sense of why Mon makes that choice.
In the films below, look at how the “Andor” creative team constructed cultures in Chandrila and Ghorman to build some of the most visually detailed, emotionally heartwarming and thematically meaningful sequences in “Star Wars” history.
Chandrila: Wedding rituals and character deworps
Genevieve O’reilly has played the nature of Mon Mothma over several “Star Wars” movies and comics now and goes back to a deleted scene -kom in “Revenge of the Sith.” But “Andor” was the first time she got a real context for where the character came from, or why she had made the choices that would lead to her becoming a rebel leader. Going to Chandrila, getting to experience his old world and stiff, ancient wedding traditions, was deeply revealing.
“It was so much meaningful. The complexity of the tradition within itself partly defines who we are, whether we accept it or reject it. And in fact it gave me a window in what (Mon) first rebellion really was, which would find her out of that culture,” O’reilly told IndieWire.
The work of creating these traditions was spread over the “Andor” creative team – including composer Brandon Robert’s mix of classic polishing, stem rhythms and EDM remix on the score, Luke HullMelts of “Star Wars” forms and expensive structures in the Mothma family’s home, and Michael Wilkinson’s richly layered costumes that evoke a sense of nobility while drawing on a multiple set of cultural styles.
Each aesthetic choice for chandrila is part of an installation for the end of section 3, “harvest”, where Mon dances the pain in all lives she has to destroy, not least her own, in service to fight against the Empire. For a moment, she drowns in the concentric circles of, as Gilroy puts it, Chandrila’s “wealth Utopia”, just to prevent herself from screaming.
“We talked a lot about kind of circular movements, swirling and raising arms and used the fabrics for the camera to find her when everything goes down in chaos,” Wilkinson said. The costume designer worked with fabrics that were specifically chosen to accentuate movement during the dance sequence, so that every twist and turn of the dance would look as dramatic as Mon’s emotional anxiety.
In the video above, see how Wilkinson, Hull, Roberts and the whole “Andor” creative team created a gilded cage to catch Mon Mothma, even when she tries to dance free.
Ghorman Massacre: A culture built to be destroyed
The Ghorman massacre is part of “Star Wars” -Lore. It is the urgent incident that causes Mon Mothma to leave the Senate, and thus a turning point for the uprising Gilroy knew would be a tent bar moment that enters Season 2 writer’s room. But a little had been established about the planet itself.
“(Ghorman) was an empty book, it was a complete void,” said producer Sanne Wohlenberg. “You knew about the Ghorman massacre, you knew all that story through Canon, but really no one had been in Ghorman, and so” who are these people and what is the culture? “
As Gilroy and team details in the video above, this meant that they would build society and its history from the ground up, even invent their economy (fabrics), the native spiders whose courses were used to produce the famous twin fabrics and a sophisticated culture that is proud of its history.
“We always knew it was a new culture and we wanted to create a new language for it,” Wohlenberg said. “Tony had this amazing idea, so why don’t we throw French people whose natural ways of speaking French are suitable for the new language. He began to create alphabets and literally they built a language. Our actors could actually speak Ghor to each other and eventually became fluid.”
For the Ghorman massacre in section 8, Gilroy and Season 1 composer Nicholas Britell even had written a national anthem for the proud Ghor to sing in protest when Empire’s trap starts to tighten.
“Just being in a crowd and us sing together and sing together, it just felt very real,” said Alaïs Lawson, the French -speaking actress who played to play Ghorman Front fighter Enza Rylanz. “I actually have kind of chills that think about it.”
As with Ferrix during season 1, these building blocks were created in the Ghor Society with the season’s bow. While it The Ferrix story would culminate With the anger of the working class inhabitants, which cooked over in rebellion, Ghor’s peaceful protests would end in a predetermined slaughter. As Gilroy says in the video, “Ghorman was built to be destroyed.” Added serial production designs and producer Luke Hull, “We really worked back this view that this will be a killing field.”
In the video above, Hull and Team break one of the largest buildings in television history: Circular Ghorman Town Center Backlot Set. “You work within a set that is the size of two football pitches, and it is a real square. It has a fountain, it has a hotel, it has a cafe,” said section 7-9 director Janus Metz. “At some point, you forget that the sets are sets, you only live within reality (location).”
The Ghorman Backlot set is not only the banking heart in his culture and history, it is the desire that Empire places around their neck in section 8, when the stories about Cassian, Dedra (Denise Gough), Syril (Kyle Soller), Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) converges in the desert between Ghorm.
“I’m a freak for geography and measures that you always have to know where you always are,” Gilroy said. “But Luka’s set lets you know where everyone is all the time if you participate. And it drives the directors to always be real about it.”
In the video above, Metz, section 8, editor Yan Miles and Kinematographer Mark Patten breaks how they kept the action clear and the masterful section’s drama mounted against their terrible conclusion.
View all depths cover
The creative team behind “Barbie” breaks down how they built the film’s box with more than just toys.
