ANDOR: The Rogue One Arc (Rogue One Rescore) [AVAILABLE]

TLDR: Rogue One (2016) cut into and rescored in the style of an Andor (2022) arc.

What it says on the tin, pretty much. Andor brainrot has had me this past year, it’s genuinely become one of my favorite shows of all time - to the point I am probably an Andor fan more than I am a fan of Star Wars itself. This edit is kind of an expression of that with a movie I generally really liked - moving its energy from emulating the jaunty, swashbuckling OT, to more in line with its prequel show’s feel.

Up front, I don’t actually think this elevates or changes Rogue One in any meaningful way. The movie is still the movie, still fast paced and action oriented, particularly compared to Andor’s fiercer, slower, and paranoid ethos. But I do think the elements Andor is rooted in become far more apparent foregrounded to this soundtrack. Where the movie somewhat failed to recapture the energy and excitement of traditional Star Wars (and not for lack of Giacchino effort), the places where it takes itself seriously should now feel less dissonant in a [tonal] context that seriously considers them.

If nothing else, it’s just fun to have the show and movie connected via the same musical motifs and format!

Episode 1: “Jedha”

Starts from the Lah’mu sequence, up to Cassian, Jyn, and co. flying out from the destruction of Jedha City.

• Some of the long opening shots of Krennic flying through space down to the planet are cut. The Andor opening titles are already pretty lengthy and serving the kind of build up those were originally intended for.
• I cut off Jyn’s childhood sequence before Saw comes to find her in the hatch, to facilitate a hard cut time skip transition (similar to the Kenari ones we had of Cassian). Who Saw is to Jyn is elaborated on some scenes later anyway, and the same imagery pops up in a flashback further on too.
• A couple reaction shots of Jyn at the Yavin holotable have been removed/replaced with unused shots from the trailers to facilitate how the scoring is different.
• For similar reasons to the above, removed the pregnant pause in Tarkin’s introduction, trimming some of the more redundant dialogue in the process.
• No Bor Gullet scene.
• Some egregious easter eggs on Jedha removed.

Definitely want to work on this one more, it doesn’t quite work for me but that could just be the movie itself.

Episode 2: “Stardust”

Starts from Tarkin taking the Death Star project from Krennic, up to Jyn and Cassian walking onboard the stolen shuttle to go to Scarif.

• Includes Previously On recap of “Jedha”
• Completely cut the Darth Vader scene on Mustafar, moving in its place a later scene where Krennic starts to look over Galen’s communications on Scarif. It was a functionally redundant scene anyway, but it also just doesn’t feel like Andor.

Episode 3: “Rogue One”

Starts from Rogue One pulling away from Yavin, up to Jyn and Cassian embracing as they are engulfed in the death cloud.

• Includes Previously On recap of “Stardust”
• Again, the Vader and Leia scene immediately pull us away from the perspective Andor usually takes, and are mostly redundant, so it just felt right to leave them out. Post-credits though…

Clips

Cassian’s Intro
Cassian Speech
Recap of Ep 1 (In Ep 2)
Recap of Ep 2 (In Ep 3)

So generally - these are [kind of] done, but with the nature of the work to do an edit like this, I actually haven’t spent too much time reviewing and just pushed through to complete its concept. I truly do not know how any of this all plays together. So feedback would still be greatly appreciated - any technical things I missed, ideas you might have, or critiques of the music choices. It isn’t all just Britell’s Andor soundtrack here, there is some stuff from adjacent [hopefully obscure enough to not be recognized] sci-fi / historical / thriller shows and movies. I won’t rule out that there are better choices than the ones I landed on, super zoomed into an NLE timeline, taking it one scene at a time. Thanks for checking out if you do!

TRAILER

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SPECIAL THANKS
snooker
Chase Adams
Hal 9000
RogueLeader
futon88 (FE)

The first episode is actually the one I want to mess with more, I realize I’m not really happy with it now that the dust has settled on just getting through the foleying and re-scoring of the whole 2 hrs+. I worked chronologically so a lot of it was early in the process and I wasn’t taking it seriously yet.

I think I should have the space now to polish it up, but the problems with that first act are honestly still the problems, unfortunately. I’d love to make some bigger changes for the next revision if you had ideas.

Oh, it was a lot. I rebuilt like 90% of the film’s sound. Episode 1 in particular needs to be tightened on that front a lot more though, early on I was just going for “good enough” to make progress.

New version of episode 1 later today, if anyone cares to hold off on watching the current version

EDIT: ok, exporting new ep 1

Okay, I re-up’d a new episode 1 for anyone with access to the folder

EDIT: ok sorry, another one, v3.5 uploading right now. That should be it, but its pretty significantly different from v1

Always rules to hear from you snooker, thank you so much for checking it out! I’m glad to hear it all works out that way, it’s what I’d hoped when I first started this

This fucking rules.

Andor is the best televised Star Wars show to date and I adore what you’ve done to fold Rogue One into the show as a mindblowing series finale arc. It fits right in. The replaced musical score gives it the same feel as the show and helps it feel appropriately distinct from the main saga.

These three episodes work wonderfully not only as an arc but each on their own. The endpoints of all three nail that slow burn we all love about Andor.

I can’t imagine the work that you must have put into the soundtrack for these. But it works. It’s only my prior familiarity with the film that tipped me off to some alternate sound effects here and there but this felt 100% seamless to my ears, at least while watching on built-in TV speakers from across the room.

I love these, and very much look forward to including them next year in a full watch-through of Andor. Exceptional job.

NFB, any chance of a full movie version with your new audio, for those coming at this from the opposite direction? 😉

I was thinking about it, yeah. I’d still have to crack the episode bridges though, since the scoring is very intentional to the format atm, and it was a lot of testing to even get to where it is. For now, I’m going to polish up the current soundtracks before I start on that.

I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t attached now to the start / end of the second episode moments in particular. The breaks alleviate some of the extended dryness I feel this could easily fall into.

Hal 9000 said:

This fucking rules.

Thanks for checking it out!

I’ll be curious to see if there’s a v2 after Andor Season 2

snooker said:

I’m working on my own subtitles for these and I’d be glad to share them when I finish!

Glad you posted this before I started to make some myself!

snooker said:

I’m working on my own subtitles for these and I’d be glad to share them when I finish!

Thank you, that’d be great, I’ll fold them into the final versions when they’re ready. The timings at this point aren’t changing.

Thank you so much for these! I was holding off on “finalizing” until I had at least heard from you, you always have really thorough feedback. A lot of this is already helping tie up those technical odds and ends; I don’t think I have it in me to keep rewatching these for that small stuff (hell, that was the whole process already) so the extra eyes really helps. Relieving that they seemed fine for the most part to everyone already.

I do agree about waiting until season 2 to finalize, but for now “final” to me is about not having to think about this for a while. I didn’t exactly have the healthiest relationship to my previous ongoing edits tbh. For that, I think I’m just going to let go of some of the more radical / alternate stuff I might have been interested in, at least for now. A lot of what you pitched does sound enticing though! Esp. your second ending pitch. When I have the space in my head and life for it, I’d love to help realize some of these somewhere.

I’ll respond to some of the more specific points below:

RogueLeader said:

When I rewatched episode 1 on my phone at max volume, I noticed the sound of bats chirping a lot during in the scenes at Saw’s base. Sort of noticeable/distracting but not terrible.

I was actually wondering if “bats” to denote “cave” was a little too much lol. Can definitely reduce them.

I feel like the added shots during the rebel briefing do stick out a little.

I can live with that, that one shot I replaced of Jyn with a smile[?] on her face never worked for me, especially as the lingering closer to the exchange. Just never tracked to the prior conversation’s tone.

I am overall impressed by your music choices. I thought the music choice when Jyn and Cassian arrived to Jedha was pretty inspired, since the music has a slight “Arabia” vibe, which is appropriate considered Jedha was filmed in Wadi Rum. I also really loved the music choices for Galen’s death, and Cassian’s speech till the end of that episode. Really great.

This reminds me I should release a tracklist.

The Jedha arrival in particular is actually “Lebanon” by Cho Young-wuk from Park Chan-wook’s The Little Drummer Girl (2018) miniseries, which I highly recommend. I actually got on keyboard to play some notes from it as synth, just to better blend it to the the rest of the Andor OST lol

I think you’ve done an impressive job emulating the original score with Brittell’s work at times, and overall giving it the Andor vibe. I will say that I initially felt some of the music choices didn’t have the same “emotional weight” as the original tracks, like Your Father Would be Proud. I have rewatched bits and pieces of the episodes on my phone during and those moments that initially had less impact than the theatrical have grown on me more.

I was feeling similarly, but I figured, eh, it’s a novelty edit at the end of the day, the point isn’t to outdo the original, and ultimately Andor’s vibe is just less theatrical anyway. I actually insulated myself from the original score entirely by episode 2 so as to stop comparing the two. Glad to hear it’s grown on you.

I may be wrong but I think I noticed you re-inserted Chirrut’s line, “Is your foot alright?” between V1 and V2. I don’t have strong feelings either way about it but I’m curious why you decided to add it back in.

Also, I wonder if Chirrut’s staff hitting the troopers could be given a little more umph here and there. Sometimes it sounds like he is tapping them pretty lightly instead of hitting them so hard he is knocking them out.

I had to redo all the foley for that scene between the two versions because I felt V1’s sound work was really sloppy all around. I too didn’t really have strong feelings either way about it, which is why I didn’t bother cutting it the second time around. Good call on the staff hits.

You may interested, but I know there is an unused shot of the little girl Jyn saved looking up in the sky when the Star Destroyer is leaving that you could re-add to this version of the film if you wanted. There are a few other unused shots that could be useful here and there as well.

I would be interested in just seeing what you have at all, even if I don’t end up using them.

An opportunity for this edit: In the Partisan prison cell, Cassian says, “This is the first for me” in regards to being “worst cages than this”. This feels a little contradictory knowing that he has been in some pretty bad cages. You could argue he is being deceptive about his past, or being sarcastic, but I feel like with the added context of Andor, it would be better to alter this line to, “This isn’t the first for me” if possible.

Honestly, this never bothered me and I think Andor actually makes the scene work better for me personally. I like that it’s overtly not the truth now, particularly for the moment when Chirrut calls out that he is carrying a prison with him. It plays more like Cassian taken aback by some mysticism (he is probably carrying Narkina with him), as opposed to him being surprised Chrirrut said something poignant. Just feels a bit more in character.

I always felt like it was less about having been in cages before anyway, and more about Chirrut’s premise to relax. From Cass’ perspective, is he supposed to say “You’re right, I have been in worse cages too, I shouldn’t care about being held against my will”? It feels fitting for him to say something wry that minimizes the conversation through Chirrut’s own terms.

I think if this was a movie edit, I would suggest removing all Bodhi scenes before Cassian finds him (and you removed all but one already), but with this episode format I wonder how it would feel if the following Bodhi scene when he meets Saw was back-to-back with his first scene. You could still cut the Bor Gullet scene, but maybe you could subtitle Saw when he says Bor Gullet, and it could mean, “Torture him.” Or something like that, to explain why Bodhi is in a daze when Cassian finds him.

I was wondering if maybe the Saw scenes would actually play better in Andor’s new context. This is mostly for the potential / inevitable post-season 2 revisit, but season 1 already lays groundwork for Saw’s further descent into madness and paranoia. Maybe season 2 could make the Rogue One scenes land better as the final beats of a fleshed out arc.

As it is though, I still don’t see too much value in including all of them. Bodhi being in a daze contrasted to his first lucid scene tells enough of the story IMO, as does Saw’s brief distrust of Jyn’s reappearance.

I can totally understand if you want keep this edit pretty similar to the original film beyond a few trims, but I’d love get a version of this with the music separate if you wouldn’t mind sharing.

I’ll get around to this eventually, I don’t mind. I imagine it’ll be like when they released that Tom Cruise Mummy trailer without music haha.

Though if I end up too busy, I think some of it should be easily replicated by using something like Spleeter or UVR to isolate vocals on the center channel. Only percussion and vocals can make a clean center channel, given the targeted scene’s OST doesn’t have any drums (which luckily RO doesn’t use all the time). Percussion track in particular can preserve a good bit of things like clicks, taps, impacts, explosions, and footsteps for the foley.

Alright, just uploaded versions I’m happy to sit with and send out until Andor season 2, a few minor tweaks from the previous to address some of RL’s points above (bats, OG score bleed, staff hits, foley volume).

“Jedha”: v3.8 v4
“Stardust”: v3.2 v4
“Rogue One”: v3.1 v4

And now we have subtitles, thanks to the amazing snooker! I’ve added those .srt files to the Google Drive folder for anyone that wants them too.

NFBisms said:

And now we have subtitles, thanks to the amazing snooker! I’ve added those .srt files to the Google Drive folder for anyone that wants them too.

Alright, a few relatively minor updates to the version 4.0s:

• Audio is now decompressed, higher bitrate. Still stereo, but not as loud and crushed.
• A few tiny sound effects here and there that I missed foleying the first time around, have been filled in.
• Final end credits switched from Maarva’s funeral dirge to “Your Mother Is Dead” from the third volume of Andor’s OST. Some users on FE figured it was better to keep the Ferrix marching band singular to its original moment, and ultimately the replacement track flows much nicer from the end of the episode anyway.

The durations should be unchanged, so if you still have the old subs, just rename them to the correct version.

For the most part, I shouldn’t revisit until season 2.

FE wants me to make a 5.1 mix, but that’s going to take a while given pretty much all of this was rebuilt from the ground up in stereo - so in the meantime, I can toy with a full movie version (though I still rec these!), and then export out a file without any score for anyone who wants it.