Editor Yan Miles talks to GoldDerby.com about bringing the Rebellion-galvanizing Ghorman Massacre to screen for the second season of Andor, explaining the mantra was “the messier, the better.”
As roughly 350 extras fight for their freedom and lives, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) attempts to assassinate Imperial officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough). “The whole thing unravels in front of him,” Miles tells Gold Derby. “He’s not there to protest. He knows these people, he knows what happened before — but now he becomes the witness. He becomes us. The plaza is a circle. You could call it a clock face. People go around, people go in and out of buildings. Cadets come out. People sing. It was always moving, but Cassian stayed centered.”
In the chaos, Miles creates both emotional and visual clarity — often in a matter of seconds. “There’s a nice example of it where it’s less messy,” the editor said. “There’s a [shot of a] group of Ghormans coming through with the flares, going underneath the colony now; we’re sort of with them. And then we cut to the guy in the café, the waiter, seeing people walking past behind the glass, all moving in the same direction. Then a profile shot of an oblivious stormtrooper, turning his head and watching the Ghormans go by. It’s three shots.”
Another impactful sequence concludes Imperial lackey Syril Karn’s (Kyle Soller) arc — all without any lines of dialogue. Amid the mayhem, Miles shifts to slow-motion, an out-of-the-ordinary but fitting stylistic flourish in the otherwise grounded Tony Gilroy-created series. “He’s witnessing it — it’s gone beyond the beyond,” Miles said. “Lasers going past, people being shot, but he’s just standing there like he’s bulletproof. He’s lost in it all. He doesn’t care anymore. Everything’s just gone.”
Then the question becomes for Syril: “Who are you?” It’s posed during his hand-to-hand brawl with Cassian, the man he’s spent years chasing. “In the scene with ‘who are you?,’ there was a lot of debate on set,” Miles shared. “Tony wrote it, ‘Who are you?’ Tony, [director] Janus Metz, Diego, and the people around asked, ‘Are there any other versions where Cassian does remember Syril?’ We did a cut where he does remember and says, ‘It’s you,’ and then Syril lowers the gun.”
That debate was quickly resolved in post-production. “I told Tony I have the other version,” Miles said. “He went, ‘No, no, no, no, it is, ‘Who are you?’ Andor doesn’t know this guy. This guy’s a nobody. It’s the worst thing that could happen to any of us, isn’t it? You could be doing something for years and years and one day you wake up and you’re like, ‘Who the hell am I? What am I doing?’ That’s life itself. Tony’s words were, ‘Who are you?’”
Read the interview in full here, and stream Andor on Disney+ now.
The post How the Epic Ghorman Massacre was Brought to Screen for Andor appeared first on Jedi News.
