Andor: The 7 Episode Cut (Released)

Hi ya’ll!

My goal is not to drastically cut this show, but to try and trim and rearrange things to help the rather slow pacing of the show. Originally I wanted to do movie cuts, but I feel like it just doesn’t fit for this show. Also since others are tackling movie cuts, I figured I would try to keep it as a show instead (trying to do something different lol).

Episode 1: Kassa
Duration: 1 hour and 2 minutes

Episode 2: Reckoning
Duration: 48 minutes

Episode 3: Aldhani
Duration: 1 hour and 3 minutes

Episode 4: The Eye
Duration: 1 hour

Episode 5: Narkina 5
Duration: 55 minutes

Episode 6: One Way Out
Duration: 1 hour and 18 minutes

Episode 7: Rix Road
Duration: 1 hour and 21 minutes

Wouldn’t you want to wait for the season to finish first?

Vladius said:

Wouldn’t you want to wait for the season to finish first?

I honestly don’t think anything I’ve cut here will be an issue later on. But I’m not too worried if I have to add a scene or two back. Most of the changes here are moving the flashbacks to the front and restructuring. Most of the scenes that got removed involve Timm’s who won’t be in later episodes lol. If the old guy that talks to Luthen on the transport or the two guys that confront Andor for money play a big role later on, I can tackle that when it comes.

Vladius said:

Wouldn’t you want to wait for the season to finish first?

Editors here did the same thing with Obi-Wan. I will never understand editing a project before it’s even done. You simply don’t know what is going to happen with a show until the season is over and “fixing” something before it’s even done? It just personally saddens me that people are so quick to correct the hard work that people have put into these shows, assume this or that doesn’t matter that they can’t even wait until the show is over. But that’s just me, I suppose.

arabian said:

Vladius said:

Wouldn’t you want to wait for the season to finish first?

Editors here did the same thing with Obi-Wan. I will never understand editing a project before it’s even done. You simply don’t know what is going to happen with a show until the season is over and “fixing” something before it’s even done? It just personally saddens me that people are so quick to correct the hard work that people have put into these shows, assume this or that doesn’t matter that they can’t even wait until the show is over. But that’s just me, I suppose.

I don’t really see any problem getting a head start or discussing with other people edit ideas for an ongoing show. If it saddens you to see people edit away peoples hard work on shows, maybe the fan editing section of the forums isn’t something for you?

Even though I hated the Kenobi show, I still enjoyed seeing peoples attempts to edit things even while it was ongoing.

If Bix and Timms date night ends up being an important part of the story, I’ll just reimplement it? It’s really no big deal to me.

I enjoy this show, but still wanted to try out edits on it. I’d be happy to see you return and see what you think of the edits when the shows over.

WitchDR said:

arabian said:

Vladius said:

Wouldn’t you want to wait for the season to finish first?

Editors here did the same thing with Obi-Wan. I will never understand editing a project before it’s even done. You simply don’t know what is going to happen with a show until the season is over and “fixing” something before it’s even done? It just personally saddens me that people are so quick to correct the hard work that people have put into these shows, assume this or that doesn’t matter that they can’t even wait until the show is over. But that’s just me, I suppose.

I don’t really see any problem getting a head start or discussing with other people edit ideas for an ongoing show. If it saddens you to see people edit away peoples hard work on shows, maybe the fan editing section of the forums isn’t something for you?

The fan editing forum isn’t for me because I said that editing ONGOING series saddens me? The vast majority of fan-edits in this forum is for finished projects. My comment was based on the fact that editing while a show is in progress discounts the hard work that the showrunners have done because (I personally feel–this is just my opinion) there are elements that could come into play that won’t be revealed until the project is finished. By editing before the project is finished and editing out this or that, there is an assumption that this or that isn’t important. But they could be important, but the fan-editor doesn’t know that because the project is not finished. And that I feel is a disservice to the hard work put in by the showrunners and all involved because the finished product hasn’t been seen. But that’s just my personal opinion on the matter.

As I said, to each their own. (And I would have left it at my first comment had you not made yours.) Still, as Eddie Dean said: You do you.

EddieDean said:

arabian said:

Vladius said:

Wouldn’t you want to wait for the season to finish first?

Editors here did the same thing with Obi-Wan. I will never understand editing a project before it’s even done.

I’m totally with you on this, buddy. What some people think of as padding, I just think of as fabric and texture. I’ve never had a problem with downtime spent in the Star Wars universe without necessarily pushing the plot forward. And I do wish we’d see more ideas/collaborative threads producing a small number of community edits rather than a lot of individual edits (as we saw with Kenobi).

I so agree with you. I ADORE the community threads for the PT that (I believe) you started. I have just had an absolute blast reading those. One day – probably when I’m retired, LOL – I plan on going through those threads and cherry-pick my favorite ideas.

smudger9 said:

My main questions at the moment are:
1 edit or 2?
Are the flashbacks needed or not?
How will the 4 arcs connect?

This is what I’m curious about as well. Considering we are getting 12 episode seasons, I’m thinking 2 movies will end up being the sweet spot. Episode 4 will hopefully give us an idea of how the arc structure might work.

I’ve been floating ideas around and the main one I’m playing with at the moment is to set up the scene with the opening crawl and jump straight to the Security Force arriving at Ferrix. Episode 3 can then largely play out as the opening act.

If we end up being able to trim to that extent, it may be even possible to get it down to 1 movie. Which would be crazy. But I’m excited to see how you go about attempting that when all is said and done!

smudger9 said:

Are the flashbacks needed or not?

If you wanna get chronologically OCD about it we could talk about moving:

Din flashbacks
Andor flashbacks
Anakin/OB1 flashbacks

into chronological order with episodes 2&3

I am making my way slowly through this series (planning to watch the third episode tonight). So far, I’m enjoying the world (live the good morning hammer guy) and characters, and the time goes fast while watching, but if I didn’t know that I liked Star Wars, Im not sure that I’d prioritize watching more of this. Nothing concrete really happens in each episode.

In episodic TV, every installment should have a beginning, middle, and end, as well as often some type of theme. In serialized TV, those are often stretched over a much longer group of episodes. I understand that Andor is serialized and it’s still just laying groundwork. But even in serialized storytelling, each episode needs to do two things 1) add an important new piece to the big story and 2) provide enough of a hook to get people to tune in next time. So far, I’ve seen very little of either from Andor.

It’s good, and I trust that it’s going somewhere, but it’s not compelling. Even assuming that episode 3 picks up a lot, Im guessing that there will be other parts of the story that slow down like the first two episodes. I don’t love tons of non-stop action, but I am concerned about the ability of individual episodes to be compelling and generate/feed interest.

Im encouraged by the knowledge that these are exactly the type of issue that can be addressed in hindsight by fan editing.

StarkillerAG said:

Honestly, the easiest editing concept that could potentially fix that is just combining the 3-episode stories into actual movies, with 4 movies total for the first season.

Depending on how episode 4 plays out, I’m going to shoot for a 4-part mini series format. But I am still going to trim some things.

After watching episode 4, I’ve got a couple ideas for a few cuts and I’m going to have to rearrange some the beginning scenes. But other than that, this episode was great! Really doesn’t need much work done on it.

I thought I read on some news outlet that the show was going to be told in sections every 3 episodes. Since that’s not the case, I’m going to just attach it to the current edit.

Those sound like sensible cuts. There was a lot to like in Andor epsidoes 1-3 but the pacing did feel a bit off to me. It sounds like your thoughts have tallied with my own in terms of what could be edited to improve it. The Timm scenes and the chap who talks to Stellan Skarsgard on the shuttle were both unStar Warsy and uninteresting, I also suspect the childhood tribal flashbacks will work better in abridged form (or perhaps even removed entirely, although I did enjoy that shot of the damaged vessel streaking across the sky).

I’ll look forward to seeing this progress.

WitchDR said:

I thought I read on some news outlet that the show was going to be told in sections every 3 episodes. Since that’s not the case, I’m going to just attach it to the current edit.

Personally, I think the latest episode feels like the beginning of another storyline with the Heist story. The opening edit may get overlong unless it is concluded in the next episode.

That being said, I wonder if the political background stuff will play into the heist or is a setup for a later storyline. You might be able to cut that out and move it to a later film version.

Solemn.Philosopher said:

WitchDR said:

I thought I read on some news outlet that the show was going to be told in sections every 3 episodes. Since that’s not the case, I’m going to just attach it to the current edit.

Personally, I think the latest episode feels like the beginning of another storyline with the Heist story. The opening edit my get overlong unless it is concluded in the next episode.

That being said, I wonder if the political background stuff will play into the heist or is a setup for a later storyline. You might be able to cut that out and move it to a later film version.

I agree. For now I’m gonna upload the 1-4 edit. It’s clocking in at slightly over 2 hours. I did very little editing to this actual episode, other than making it flow out of the previous episode.

I’m gonna bank on 2 or 3 2h30min “movie” edits in total for this season. Unlike how we got 3 episodes off the bat that kind of told it’s own small story, only having this one episode is gonna make me have to wait to do anything too radical. If I can move the political stuff to the beginning of the 2nd movie, and leave this first movie as mostly just Cassian’s story. Ending the first movie off with the heist will be what I’m shooting for. For now I’m gonna just keep attaching all the episodes together mostly in tact the way they are.

“I did very little editing to this actual episode, other than making it flow out of the previous episode.”

Personally I thought Ep 4 could do with some trimming and tightening too.

Cassian meets a heist gang member who doesn’t want him there.
Cassian meets a heist gang member who doesn’t want him there.
Cassian meets a heist gang member who doesn’t want him there.

The same scene is repeated three times in short succession, and the point is belaboured. Also the campsite setting isnt very visually interesting, so I’d really look at moving things forward a bit faster.

Matt.F said:

“I did very little editing to this actual episode, other than making it flow out of the previous episode.”

Personally I thought Ep 4 could do with some trimming and tightening too.

Cassian meets a heist gang member who doesn’t want him there.
Cassian meets a heist gang member who doesn’t want him there.
Cassian meets a heist gang member who doesn’t want him there.

The same scene is repeated three times in short succession, and the point is belaboured. Also the campsite setting isnt very visually interesting, so I’d really look at moving things forward a bit faster.

That’s funny you mention that, because those are the exact things I was going to cut out. I was gonna cut the second one when Cassian arrives at the camp and the group is against him than have the meeting about it. But leave the first and third.

I haven’t finished editing and rendering anything out yet, so after a few more views I may just trim those very things.

As of right now, I have two separate edits ongoing. I have a regular edit, that just combines episodes 1-4 with some trimming and restructuring, and a “No Mon Mothma” version that has the same cuts as the regular edit but just focus’ the story on Cassian, Syril, and Dedra.

As recommended by Solemn.Philosopher, if the Mon Mothma’s plot doesn’t tie into the heist at all, I will introduce her plot in the 2nd movie post heist. If it does tie in, I will drop the “No Mon Mothma” edit, and continue with the regular one.

Once episode 5 is out, I should be able to decide which one to go forward with.

Episode 5 felt the most bloated to me of the episodes so far. Feels like a lot could be removed and trimmed down. I still want to see how the heist plays out before I move forward on both edits. As of now the “No Mon Mothma” edit is still viable, and will be the one I go with if it continues to be the case.

I liked some of the character moments from the Heist team, but it was somewhat of a repeat of the previous episode: getting ready for the heist, Mon Mothma home life, and the Imperial lady looking into things.

Yes I’m enjoying each episode, but for a ‘turn a tv series into a movie’ fanedit there’s probably only 10 mins tops in Episode 5 that feels important and visually impressive enough to be worth keeping.

Matt.F said:

Yes I’m enjoying each episode, but for a ‘turn a tv series into a movie’ fanedit there’s probably only 10 mins tops in Episode 5 that feels important and visually impressive enough to be worth keeping.

Depending on how important the Mon Mothma stuff ends up being, I’ve actually cut episode 5 down a considerable amount. As of right now the edit is about 2h15m overall.

It looks like the show might be four story arcs that are three episodes each:

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-wars-andor-release-schedule-mistake/