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Cinematography of “Andor”

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Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#401

Post by majkinetor »

wizardforhire wrote: post #384
majkinetor wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entertainment is not critical.

I think in the interest of hn pedantry we need some pushback on what our threshold is for what is critical or not? Lives on the line? Cleary critical! Anything after this is up for debate. Lots of money at risk? Maybe. Lots of people being affected? Maybe Lots of people losing their jobs? Maybe A company going out of business? Maybe While most things in entertainment do not pass the first test. There are plenty of ex…

Critical are things that make your daily life seriously disturbed if there are issues beyond your control. Things like:

1. Life 1. House 2. Salary 3. Reputation 4. Physical or mental health 5. Time

> definitely during production where lives are on the line

You can say that for any company - if they wired electricity in a bad way on my job, lives can be lost.

> because you have no idea what your products or solutions may end up being used for

Many products are used exactly for 1 thing. For example, online banking. You don't use it to for dating, although you theoretically can if you really want to

> But to whom?

Only end users.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#402

Post by jefurii »

fettel wrote: post #93
apples_oranges wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are excluding the George Lucas movies from discussion right? In my opinion nothing ever came even close and I gave up on SW after the second Kylo Ren movie. Rouge one was cool though, also first episodes of Mandalorian.. Should I really try Andor after all the bad stuff Disney made? A few days ago I watched the new LILO and Stitch and that was great, so maybe good people still work at Disney …

I'm a lifelong Star Wars fan, fell in love as a young kid. I remember being in 8th grade and being so excited for the prequels, and then walking out of the theater after Ep. 1 and feeling like something was just... wrong. I knew that it was junk, and not the Star Wars I fell in love with. And from there it was pretty much further and further downhill, with occasional glimpses of hope that were quickly dashed. I tried…

I had the same reaction to you seeing Ep. 1 for the first time, but I've come to respect the prequels. Not for their acting certainly, but for the way Lucas' scifi retelling of Roman history is so relevant to our current moment. Clone Wars and Rebels both start out pretty childish I think by the end they're nearly as gritty and serious as Andor.

Update: Clone Wars especially benefits from finding a good best-of episode guide to help move the story along.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#403

Post by ghaff »

dragonwriter wrote: post #392
alextingle wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Navy has aircraft carriers, which are every bit as ridiculous as a Death Star. They are utterly useless against well armed opponents. But they still got built, for good political, and psychological reasons that have nothing to do with cost effectiveness.

> The US Navy has aircraft carriers, which are every bit as ridiculous as a Death Star. They aren't ridiculous in the real world. They are in some theoretical worlds with alternate assumptions about what wars actually happen, but... > They are utterly useless against well armed opponents. They are quite useful, though, against the opponents that the US has actually fought against since WWII, though, which are mostly…

Yeah. They project force in a way that battleships no longer can. And whether or not they're really used, the fact is that they can be used. And very few counties want to mess with a US aircraft carrier and its escort surface fleet.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#404

Post by JohnBooty »

alextingle wrote: post #390
JohnBooty wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. For that level of resources they probably could have just had ten Star Destroyers orbiting every known inhabited planet. But real-world warfare history is full of these expensive disasters that, in hindsight, were spectacularly dumb ideas. I don't think the Death Star was meant to be practical. More of a terror weapon or trump card, akin in some ways to nuclear weapons whose true value transcends their practica…

The US Navy has aircraft carriers, which are every bit as ridiculous as a Death Star. They are utterly useless against well armed opponents. But they still got built, for good political, and psychological reasons that have nothing to do with cost effectiveness.

Not a good analogy.

In WWII they were absolutely invaluable against a peer enemy in the Pacific theater. They were the single most important bits of military hardware in that war.

They grew more vulnerable over time, first to peer enemies and eventually to rebels funded by sorta-peer enemies like Iran. In 2025, I don't think anybody doubts that a sustained saturation attack would fail to sink or at least prevent a carrier from functioning.

(Though it's also worth noting that the Houthis haven't been able to hit one yet, even with Iranian backing)

Still, a carrier group allows the US to project a tremendous amount of force anywhere in the world, and if a nation state hits one they're going to face an absolutely tremendous amount of military wrath from the US, which kind of gives them a strength beyond their literal combat capability.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#405

Post by peeters »

fsloth wrote: post #345
peeters wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess like with all categorization, genres are reductive generalizations. And I'm saying the sci-fi generalization is much less descriptive of Andor than the political thriller generalization is. You could transplant Andor to WWII historical fiction and it would be less of a change than changing the mood and story to fit what most people's preconceived notions of sci-fi is. I guess in short, I'm saying that you rea…

Interesting, I would not consider mood and story descriptive of sci-fi at all. Rather sci-fi adds speculative and fantastic elements to a world still populated by humans / beings of relatable psychology. And once you have relatable psychology you also get politics and weaponization of information (what the show was mostly about) - political thriller. Agree, those elements were damn good ones. And I loved the utilizat…

> If I’m reading between the lines what you are saying is that ”Andor is actually intelligent and high quality art … sci-fi can’t be high quality art”? I’m exaggerating to make a point.

Nope not at all, for example I personally would put the Expanse firmly in the genre of sci-fi. The major themes it explores centre around its setting; it doesn't happen to exist in a futuristic space setting; the entire show would cease to function as a concept without it. Major plot lines exist specifically to explore the "what-ifs" of that fictional future. And honestly, while I acknowledge it's intelligent and extremely well loved by its fans, it's one that I'd have trouble recommending to people that aren't big into sci fi, for that reason.

But compare that to something like Firefly, where's it's basically a heist/western that happens to be set in outer space.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#406

Post by [deleted] »

sbarre wrote: post #254
manmal wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prison episode is a masterpiece and would have been an amazing movie on its own. It‘s weird how zany the other SW shows and even movies look now in comparison. I‘m really sad there can’t be another season.

I am hoping that they follow this up with stories set between the original trilogy movies, with some of the characters that were expanded on in the Andor show (and new ones too). It feels like there's plenty of room in the timeline between those movies to keep telling stories about the rebellion against the Empire, in the same tone as Andor.

[deleted]

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#407

Post by xnx »

JohnBooty wrote: post #373
crazygringo wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're confusing planning with execution. All the things you're describing -- in the spirit of tickets, sprints, etc. -- do happen. They're called pre-production. It takes years (months if you're lucky) to set up how everything will run on set. Producers have a huge list of actionables (tickets), and there is constant iteration (sprints) of parts of the script, of what the film's visual look will be, the tone…

Great post. Also, unlike software engineering, the film industry has been around for 100+ years. They've figured stuff out. (We could say software engineering has been around for 50+ years, but I think that in its modern form it's probably more like 20 years. Highly subjective statement, I know.)

> in its modern form it's probably more like 20 years.

The fad also seems to be to aggressively forget learned lessons and abandoned proven techniques, so 20 years is probably generous.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#408

Post by fsloth »

peeters wrote: post #405
fsloth wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I would not consider mood and story descriptive of sci-fi at all. Rather sci-fi adds speculative and fantastic elements to a world still populated by humans / beings of relatable psychology. And once you have relatable psychology you also get politics and weaponization of information (what the show was mostly about) - political thriller. Agree, those elements were damn good ones. And I loved the utilizat…

> If I’m reading between the lines what you are saying is that ”Andor is actually intelligent and high quality art … sci-fi can’t be high quality art”? I’m exaggerating to make a point. Nope not at all, for example I personally would put the Expanse firmly in the genre of sci-fi. The major themes it explores centre around its setting; it doesn't happen to exist in a futuristic space setting; the entire show would cea…

Fair point, viewership segmentation!

Personally I have very hard time predicting why someone would enjoy _some_ fictional elements but not others. If someone does not like ”made-up” fiction then Andor still has many ”fantasy” elements to potentially put them off.

IMHO the idea that humans will colonize the solar system one dat is much more mainstream nowadays - so the setting in Expanse is in many ways much more grounded than in Star Wars where the latter is pure cinematic fantasy.

But maybe viewers don’t care about the milieu and just want relatable plot lines? There Andor is more familiar for sure.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#409

Post by dzonga »

iainmerrick wrote: post #65

To address this interview specifically, rather than just gushing about how great Andor is-- One point Nuyens makes in a few different ways is that they used a variety of tools and techniques at every stage. People often have simplistic, extreme viewpoints like "modern CGI can do anything" or "CGI looks fake and weightless, practical effects are better". But here's somebody with a big part in making a fantastic-lookin…

people don't talk about set designers, but they bring a film to live.

whether real sets like on andor on fake ones like the man in the high castle.

Re: Cinematography of “Andor”

#410

Post by cpburns2009 »

alextingle wrote: post #388
sho_hn wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the execution was crappy - but he chose to make one of his new main characters a Senator, had the Senate as a set piece, etc.

One of the original movie's main characters was a senator. It's hardly original.

Leia's role as a member of the senate was in one scene in the original movie, and it was not clear if she was a senator or working on behalf of a senator. The senate being dissolved in another scene had just as little impact as her affiliation with the senate as far the movie itself goes.
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