NFBisms

RE: V2, I am sorting through every idea I’ve been pitched, and working through how I want to tackle it all at the moment. Getting a feel for the S2 soundtrack, etc. To be honest, I have a lot going on IRL right now and haven’t had a day off since last Friday - but I have some time this weekend into Monday to get really down to it.

I think where I’m at right now, as I’ve ever been, is to stay mostly conservative about the film. The novelty of the Andor score on it is the extent of my ambition here - I’m not entirely trying to “fix” it outside that concept - with the few exceptions (Vader/Krennic scene, Ponda Baba, etc) being trivial enough to remove and non-transformative to the narrative/structure. We’ll see what else as I get through it. I will address some more specific suggestions in later posts when I have the time.

But yeah, on top of some new season 2 music, there will be some presentation changes. I am planning on including the Ferrix anvil/BBY title cards. I will be editing a new recap at the top of “Jedha”.

I think eventually I’m going to just export the movie without any of the music, so that people can do the more radical work they’re looking for themselves though!

You could probably DM me on Fanedit.org? I’ve been getting a lot of requests on there from new accounts.

But also, I don’t how true that rule is for here? I’ve been getting a lot of requests from new accounts on here too lol

Literally what Nemik’s manifesto is about is contextualizing it all as The Fight

I hate the Disney intro with such passion, but I think consistent to that, I also don’t think presentation uniformity across all of these is necessary. For a show like Andor especially - it deserves to be presented as its own work with its own identity. I think a lot of these could stand to separate itself from the saga and “branding” more, if anything.

For anyone curious, of the work we’ve done so far, cutting Movie 5 wasn’t just a matter of melding the episode tops and bottoms. That would have made pretty inelegant time jumps in Cassian’s subplot, so I needed to split up the progression, shuffling the first few scenes of episodes 2 / 3 to accommodate the flow.

Some more ideas for Movie 5, attempting to be consistent to the one word titling structure.
Maybe still not super punchy, though. And maybe real stretches lol.

‘Home’

• “You’re coming home to yourself.”
• Chandrila - Mon Mothma’s home planet
• Cass refers to Bix, Brasso, and Wilmon as “home”
• Eedy visits Syril and Dedra’s home
• Yavin eventually becomes rebel home base

‘Compromise[s]’

• The planned drop to Porko has been “compromised”, as has the Ferrix crew’s status on Mina-Rau
• Thematic to Mon’s plotline; the wedding itself is already a deal with the devil, but now she must also compromise her ideals and allow Tay to be killed.
• Thematic and somewhat ironic to the Maya Pei brigade plotline
• Dedra proposes a compromise to Eedy
• Could be with/without the plural form

‘Conference’

• The imperial conference on what to do about Ghorman
• A wedding is a conference, kinda
• The Maya Pei brigade are having a conference, kinda
• Dedra meeting Eedy, kinda

‘Divergence’

• Parallels movie 1’s title (Convergence)
• Describes how things are coming apart: Tay, rebel infighting, Ferrix crew’s cover on Mina-Rau, etc.
• idk

Haven’t come up with any for the second arc / Movie 6 just yet

I feel like partisan politics should be where the line is drawn, sure, but regardless of conservative, liberal, leftist, anarchist, etc. we are an imperial core as The West (if that’s where you are), comfortably watching a Disney+ show and having time to bullshit on the internet about Star Wars. It’s not like the previous administration in America isn’t just as complicit in war crimes and more. Andor is political, but not as a pseudo-campaign piece for a specific political party. What’s left of Maya Pei’s group are depicted as idiots, and they’re basically infighting radicals. No one but the structure of “Empire” is being singled out here as the galaxy’s evil. And no one is a clean-handed paragon of virtue.

To equate the stuff in Andor to one president or to “belief systems” or specific modern analogy is missing the point. It’s like Gilroy says, he’s writing from history, but we don’t learn history as trivia. There are mechanics, theory, cyclical patterns that we’re supposed to be able to recognize - and as a society, ideally work to avoid happening again. Recognizing fascism means recognizing all of its forms, and pretending that doesn’t exist intentionally inside of a work would be to miss out on half of what makes the show so good.

To an earlier point and hopefully this brings us back on track, is The Empire supposed to be one nation/country? @Vladius

In Andor alone, there’s Corporate Zones (PreMor) and Ghorman having their own autonomy, but we also know there are places like Hutt Space, like Bespin before ESB. It feels like the set up here is something sort of like the European Union. It’s not a perfect analogy because again, that’s not the point, but it does have valences in how cultural hegemony can often be understood as an iteration on imperialism. It’s how you can have all the ways the Empire is the Nazis - but also tackle the nuanced ways a modern western power slips into fascism all the same. The Empire is parabolic composite of all empire

You’re not being apolitical, is all I want you to realize. To bring it back to the show, does Perrin’s pursuit of joy and complacency with all that is “tedious”, “boring and sad” in the galaxy not still enable the Empire? This is one of the ways I am talking about Andor as still contemporaneously resonant. He is doing your whole bit, but even less malciously. At least he doesn’t believe in anything.

You are spouting an agenda by pushing the idea that others have an agenda, that Disney has some kind of earnest (and not profit driven) political interest in “changing the world”. They make ads for toys and merchandise. You haven’t triggered me or challenged any belief system I have because it’s just not that deep for me.

If you want to talk about the show, this show, I’d just prefer we all engage with it and what it’s doing fully, instead of silo-ing off topics of conversation and ideas just because of whatever you want to believe about other showrunners or Kathleen Kennedy. You literally have demonstrated time and again ignorance to how any of this works or has worked, clung to very specific, disproven narratives - and then hide behind it being an opinion with everyone else just out to get you because of politics. I just want us to be able to talk about Gilroy’s influences openly.

Genuine question, but is it literally just gender stuff where that line is drawn for you? Like if it’s rhetoric about “women empowerment” or whatever, that’s too political? But any other political themes are fair game? Even as just a send-up to history, you have to realize Gilroy is working on this stuff as cyclical and resonant to contemporary context.

That’s how any of this works as well as it does, it’s rooted in real and relevant things we can feel, even if you don’t have the tools to articulate it, or just choose not to. Fascism and authoritarianism describe phenomena, and function through theory that has been worked out academically for decades. They aren’t just something that popped out in WWII Nazi Germany once in history and never happened again.

you know the last star wars show was just star wars twilight right

Meanwhile Tony Gilroy is out here saying Andor is the “most important work he’s ever done”. dude made Michael Clayton

Vladius said:
NFB I don’t know what you mean by “Star Wars’ history with SA”.

just all the sex slavery. I think the biggest offenders are the cartoons playing it coy about that being what’s going on when women are bought and sold at auctions. It’s treated very callously, like a fact of the universe - but doesn’t even center on the ugly traumatic experience of the victims like it is here. It’s just always been there because it was there at Jabba’s Palace so it’s “Star Wars”-y enough to be included. Twilek women portrayal in general was in an odd, skeevy place pop culturally until the late 2010s, and it seeps into how they were portrayed throughout Star Wars media up to that point. But even Rebels falls into making comedic light of Hera being bought and sold for ~reasons~.

At least Jabba is only shown forcibly licking and killing a Twilek slave so that he can get comeuppance later (like the Imperial in Andor). Filoni still wants you to think Death Watch is an honorable and cool warrior culture after showing them take concubines post-village sacking.

I do appreciate what Gilroy has to say about it:

Ultimately, the only reason it would ever feel “edgy” is because it’s Star Wars, but being blunt about it is more tasteful, mature, and sensitizing than acting like you snuck in something ~naughty~ into a typically kids-friendly property. I respect it. Star Wars’ history with SA in that regard is far grosser than how it’s used here as a terrifying truth about Empire and what it can empower.

Something that stood out to me as pretty cool was the kind of lounge-jazz music that played while Syril and Dedra were getting ready for the dinner with Eedy.

I’d become fascinated with the 70s/80s sci-fi cartoon/anime aesthetic in the past few years, and particularly how much its music could often be a mix of synths and at the time a contemporaneous disco/jazz trend. Droids certainly fell into this, despite having John Williams and Star Wars as source.

SO. Andor is taking the 70s retrofuturism pretty seriously, and that Syril/Dedra sequence helped me realize that I would actually love a more jazz-y OST.

Similar to that auralnauts video but leaning further into Jun Fukamachi, Shigeo Sekito, Jeff Tyzik, or even a Haircuts For Men vibe - rather than just Blade Runner or Blake’s Seven. Like, that could genuinely work for this show IMO

I’d been collecting tracks like that for this other animated WIP Star Wars project I’ve been whittling away at, but I would love to try it for Andor too. Evoking this more could go hard, and fit right in with the ways in which the show is already a radical but retro take on Star Wars.

Could even throwback to the style of titlecards in Droids and Ewoks

and of course

Brandon Roberts’ score (the parts of it that are his and not just re-used Britell) is broadly leaning more into classic Star Wars more, but that one musical moment was bold enough to get me thinking. We already talk a lot about the ways Andor feels like pre-Disney Legends, but it also feels pre-Legends, pre-Zahn. I would love to put it more in that space.

sparky has the only good post in this already bad thread

yoshif8tures said:

timdiggerm said:

yoshif8tures said:

oojason said:

 

The same critics also said TLJ was the best Star Wars movie ever too…

I can not find a review online of The Last Jedi by Nicholas Quah. Do you have a source you can cite?

Let me clarify. Movie critics in general said TLJ was the best Star Wars movie ever, which it was not.
Now the same people say andor is the best.
My point being that their word has absolutely no weight at all.

well mine does, & they’re right this time

I actually already used the deepfaked versions! I forgot to mention it in this thread, but it should be in the IFDB listing

Hey now, you more than anyone know I can engage in a good faith discussion, we’ve had like 5000! My relationship with Vladius is just different.

Contrary to the two acceptable [apparently] camps of thought to have on The Last Jedi, probably.

So, turns out Nicholas Britell isn’t returning for season 2 (mentioned here) outside of a few tracks; Brandon Roberts is picking up composing duties.

I’m sure the general sound will stay audially & thematically consistent to what Britell established, but it has inspired me to re-open the project files and mess around using some of Roberts’ previous work. Obviously his actual score for Andor season 2 will take precedence for use in the final project, but I am already inspired to use some of his other stuff. The places he is different from Britell open up what exactly “Andor sounds like” and that has exciting possibilities for this.

Great notes! I’ve definitely been thinking similar things - if not more - about the foley work. I tried to get away with less back then and could only do spot-checks throughout the entire two hours for so long before I burned out.

But with this as a solid base that I’ve now spent more than enough time away from, I am excited to polish that aspect off. Especially as the season 2 score comes out and we’ll have all the thematic pieces / motifs to chew on. Should make the work a bit more creative and cohesive, rather than just technical and speculative. I’m excited!

yeah

“basic storytelling logic” he “should” be the wise mentor figure here who has something to teach the next generation

i don’t believe in this

Channel72 said:

WitchDR said:

rocknroll41 said:

So having all the main characters be men instead of women is “stepping out of gender politics”?

To be fair, Disney can’t write a single good female character to save their life. The only characters that have had any staying power are all male characters: Cassian, Din, and Grogu.

Mon Mothma and Dedra Meero are both incredibly written female characters. They’re more interesting than any of the male characters in Andor, except probably for Luthen. But I agree these are exceptions or outliers among mostly crappy Disney Star Wars productions.

tony gilroy rey movie when

PM sent to anyone who’s asked btw

Also just FYI for everyone, I’m renaming all the currently available files to “V1” ahead of season 2 just to delineate the difference between them and the eventual post-season 2 versions. I’d like to keep them available for archival purposes and I figured this would be less confusing. The old “V1” thru “V5” were just early drafts anyway, consisting of very minor tweaks and technical fixes between them; ultimately the same creative choices refined towards what’s stood for the past year.

Another way of looking at it is that, if I knew I would be making so many ‘versions’ then, I probably would have started with the naming conventions “v0.1” to “v0.5” leading into what is now V1.

I’m anticipating with the soundtrack pool expanding upon season 2’s release (as well as whatever new contexts might arise) I’ll be approaching the whole thing a little differently, with entire song / tone choices being different enough to warrant being called a new “version” and not just an iteration on the previous.

I don’t know if this makes sense or will ultimately be necessary, but yeah.

Things I’m looking out for in season 2 regarding this edit:

• A theme or motif for K2
• A theme or motif for Yavin 4
• A theme or motif for Krennic
• Possible Rogue One OST synthesis. Reversion to some of the original score might be in the cards here, Britell and Gilroy know they are producing a lead-in to an already made movie and might make the connection to it themselves. I do miss the real Stardust reprise and would reinstate it anywhere if needed.

I feel like we already knew this. Just season 2 matching season 1’s budget was always going to go this way, and it’s not like we don’t see it on-screen + the fact that the seasons are twice as long as almost all the other shows, if not only in episode count but runtime as well.