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The surprising scene that the ‘Andor' cinematographer loved the most
Andor Season 2 switched directors every three episodes, but the same wasn't true of its cinematographers. Christophe Nuyens photographed the first six episodes of the 12-part season, including both the action-packed opening arc and the subsequent introduction of the planet Ghorman.
On Andor, director of photography is not a simple job. Nuyens had to do a lot over the course of his six episodes, from filming action scenes (like Diego Luna's titular protagonist saving his friends from stormtroopers in a stolen TIE fighter) to figuring out the visual aesthetics for new planets like Ghorman.
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'The nice thing is that Episodes 1, 2, and 3 were more like a classic Star Wars arc,' Nuyens tells Gold Derby, 'while Episodes 4, 5, and 6 show the more human side of the story. On Ghorman, it feels more like a spy movie. It was really nice to work on both of those. We really tried to give each arc of three episodes a different feel. That was really important for us.'
The first three episodes of Season 2 were written by Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy, who is an experienced director in his own right. That means his scripts are loaded with visual details, according to Nuyens, but Gilroy also allows his collaborators room to come up with their own ideas, too.
'Tony's pitch for Ghorman was that it should feel somewhere between Italy and France,' Nuyens says. 'So we looked for references, one of which was the Italian film The Great Beauty, just looks-wise. We thought of Ghorman like Turin, in the Italian mountains. The story had to take place in winter, so always low sun, but with all the sun behind the mountains, so there's this blue gloom that we could mix with the warm practical lights. For us, it was important that this planet feel totally different and inspired by France and Italy as much as possible.'
Not all of the action on Andor is violent, and not all of the violence is visible. The emotional climax of the first three episodes, after all, is a dance scene. At her daughter's wedding, Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) channels all of her conflicting emotions about family and politics onto the dancefloor. O'Reilly previously told Gold Derby that 'the chaos that is within her emerges through this big dance number … at different times in our lives, we've all done that dance for many different reasons.' Nuyens' job was to complement that aspect of her performance with the camerawork.
'It's a really chic wedding, but it was important for Tony that the dance sequence at the end feel like a rave,' Nuyens says. 'From the moment that she starts losing herself, we decided to use the camera that turns around her. We start with a fix on her, just fixed shots. But then she decides, 'OK, I'm going to go dance.' She takes one shot and goes on the dance floor, and from that moment the camera starts turning around her and stays with her, just zooming in on her. So we have the feeling that, together with her, we start to lose control of everything that's happening.'
Part of Mon Mothma's emotional vortex in that moment is that she realizes her comrade Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) is going to kill her old friend Tay Kolma (Ben Miles) for threatening to expose him. Tay's murder is not shown on screen, but it doesn't have to be. The audience sees him get into a lift driven by diehard revolutionary Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu) and we know he's toast. Most shows don't demonstrate that kind of restraint, but that's exactly what Nuyens loves about Andor.
'It's incredible because normally in a TV show, those things are all written and we see everything,' Nuyens says. 'On some shoots, I'm trying to convince the director, 'but we don't have to see this. We need to let the viewer use a little bit of imagination, like they're reading a book.' That's something that Tony does really well in his writing. All the beats that we have to see are written, the ones we don't have to see are not written. So we can really play with keeping a little bit of mystery for the viewer, so they can fill it in with their imagination. I think it's really important for a television show to leave a little room for the viewer.'
Perhaps surprisingly, Nuyens' favorite scene to shoot in Season 2 of Andor didn't involve murder or stormtroopers at all.
Lucasfilm/Disney
'There are a lot of setpieces I liked filming, but actually the scene I most liked filming is a simple scene. It's the scene between Syril (Kyle Soller) and Dedra (Denise Gough), When Syril's mom (Kathryn Hunter) comes to dinner,' Nuyens says. 'It's so well-written and also so well-played. The three of them are so talented. It was so fun to film, even though visually it's quite a simple scene. We tried to accentuate the awkwardness with central shots slightly too wide, which worked quite well. Kyle and Denise added those little extra bits to their performances, which worked really well on camera. That scene remains in my head one of the nicest to film, and I think if you ask the crew, they would say the same. I remember the crew was having fun filming that scene because it was so good. We were feeling the energy.'
Nuyens continues, 'I'm always 10 times happier when I go home and a scene is really well-played. It's so much more important than beautiful lights and beautiful shots. I think it's just everything coming together, which is really nice.'
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