One of the most pleasing – of many – aspects of Star Wars: Andor is the design work, hurling us into the streets and concrete jungles of the Star Wars galaxy, while delivering on the promise of something tangible and tactile being around ever corner, in every drawer. Speaking with a number of the team behind the show, including Tony and Dan Gilroy, and production designer Luke Hull, IBC365 look at this decidedly gritty and ‘real world’ Star Wars production.
The show’s production values were on par with the work that goes into a Star Wars feature. Cassian’s home planet of Ferrix, a salvage and repair hub where the first three episodes take place, resulted in an extraordinary build in the grounds of a former quarry at Little Marlow, close to Pinewood.
“We’re still delivering space fantasy but every step of the way, we ask ourselves how we would do this if this was a movie set in an everyday town,” relates production designer Luke Hull, who won an Emmy for his production design on Chernobyl.
“We tried with all the sets to be quite earthy and raw and not get too cartoony. We wanted to be able to follow a character and not feel inhibited by the set to do that, giving more 360 environments and more detail, so it feels alive.”
The production travelled to the Cruachan Dam in the Scottish Highlands to capture for environments for the planet of Al-Dhani. Hull notes, “So many of the Star Wars planets are desert or ice, so it was interesting to find a tangible landscape that could form a different version of a planet.”
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