#andor film location

[robthepensioner]

Part of the mural in Cleveleys Bus Station. The "galaxy" reference is to the fact that the cafe and prom appeared in the Star Wars tv series, "Andor". The big wave appears to be coming across the prom from Jubilee Gardens.

[hegodamask]

“Ah isn’t this nice, Dedra? Just you and me and….Cassian Andor?!”

(thank you @supervisormeero for my new awkward roommates 🫶)

[colleybri]

Niamos on a quiet summer evening.

Vandals must have taken the pay phones. Hope the Shoretroopers are aware.

Arkie’s is under new management. No greeny-green revnog though. Only slightly green food was pistachio ice cream.

Some ne’er-do-well ignoring the No Running sign…

… scene of his subsequent arrest

Empire-approved public art on the beach

Official seating area (no running obviously)

Arkie’s interior. Oh look, there’s that ne’er-do-well.

[filmap]

Andor Tony Gilroy. 2022

Seaside North Promenade, Cleveleys, Thornton-Cleveleys FY5 1LW, UK See in map

See in imdb

[dougielombax]

Oh look. Rocks!

Winspit Quarry in Dorset.

Used as a filming location for Blake’s 7, Doctor Who (for both The Underwater Menace (couldn’t get any pics), and Destiny of the Daleks) and more recently for Star Wars: Andor.

I love seeing all these different filming locations popping up in different series and media.

[jadelotusflower]

Ah, we’ve made it the space!Scotland I see.

[tonyebikemejr]

The New Elizabeth Line stations interiors are like something out of star wars. I can definitely see them using one of the new stations for a sci-fi movie

[kanansdume]

I've recently been watching these very interesting Star Wars video essays on YouTube (yeah I know, a rare breed) and it brings up these comments Lucas has made about how he views Star Wars as almost like a silent film in terms of how important the visuals are to him in comparison to the dialogue. But this essay also points out how important Lucas finds all of the "rhyming" moments in his trilogies and the way he utilizes them to remind you of something else for emotional or thematic reasons. And there's so many of them, both in visuals and in dialogue, and it's interesting to consider how important this is to him, the repetition for a purpose as well as the storytelling through visuals above everything else and then to look at Star Wars since the Prequels came out and realize how little has really been able to match up to those ideals since then.

The ONLY thing that's come out since the Prequels that I think really hits these two things the same way is, in fact, Andor. One of the things I noticed about the way people discussed Andor as it was airing in a way I haven't really seen for any of the other shows or films was the visual SYMBOLOGY. So many times I saw people noticing the Imperial cog everywhere, from the aerial shot of Narkina 5 as the prisoners escape to the architecture of Mon Mothma's house. There were people picking up on the use of items in Luthen's shop that are familiar from other things to give this idea that Luthen is from another time, he's attempting to preserve this world he lost, that if you're not looking closely enough you won't notice what he's really saying or doing with this shop. The color choices for the different locations and people got analyzed because the people involved spoke about how they intentionally utilized color to SEND A MESSAGE about the characters and the world. We know that the people who made the costumes and sets really worked hard to treat Star Wars almost like a period drama and study the history of the franchise as if it were a real place so that the things they came up with felt like they belonged in this world everyone knows so well even if it's completely new. And of course there were all of the myriad references to things from Rogue One, the constant repetition of "climb", the sunset on the beach, etc.

Nearly EVERY SHOT in this show was created with so much intention behind it in order to say something meaningful about the characters, the world, this specific story they're in, and the overall saga of Star Wars itself. It's insane how much greater impact this show was able to achieve through the incredibly careful usage of visual symbols and thematic repetitions, much like Lucas did before them. It feels like they didn't just study the history of the galaxy far far away, but they studied the history of STAR WARS and what Lucas was trying to do and say with this story. They peeled back his onion a bit more and were able to create something that really has that same visual feel even when it's not created for a child audience. It also is experimenting with its narrative style through its structure and through Cassian's character being allowed to be somewhat more reactive than proactive, and while that didn't work for everyone, it does feel like it's following in Lucas's footsteps of experimentation through Star Wars. Push the boundaries of what Star Wars is and can be and what you can say with it.

But this only works because they peeled the onion back enough to TRULY understand all of the messages Lucas was sending with it. They got the heart of Star Wars and despite its lack of space wizards, despite the lack of most major characters in the Saga, this was a show that honestly got the message more than just about anything else Star Wars has put out since the Prequels. The choices between selflessness and selfishness, the themes about how you always HAVE to make a choice even when it feels like you don't have any (sometimes ESPECIALLY when it feels like you don't have any), and how important it is to make sure to choose the path of compassion above everything else. The themes of connection to others, the symbiotic circle and the impact even the smallest person can have on world around them, it's RIGHT THERE and it's CENTRAL to Andor's storyline.

So yes, it experiments a little with narrative structure, but it's possibly the most Star Wars thing to exist Revenge of the Sith because it honestly truly GETS what Star Wars was about, both in its themes and in its filmmaking. A lot of people said that Andor didn't feel like Star Wars to them, usually because of the lack of space wizards and the fact that it's not a story aimed at children. But to me, Andor is EXACTLY what Star Wars is and has always been. They're stretching the boundaries of what Star Wars can be, but it's saying the exact same things Star Wars has always said, it's just saying it slightly differently. This doesn't feel like fanfiction to me, not really. Unlike things like the Mandoverse or the books, Andor isn't just taking some of the toys out of the sandbox and going to play with them somewhere else. Andor is IN that sandbox. It's building a slightly different sandcastle, but it's still within the sandbox, using the same sand that Lucas did.

[bluntblade]

Realised that this never posted, but I stand by it:

It's really weird that Rogue One's aesthetic, which was specifically developed for a Star Wars film which had minimal space wizards and was instead about much more subdued characters and murkier moral themes, has now become the aesthetic which gets slathered over all new live-action Star Wars whether it fits or not.

If you step back, Rogue One isn't just very different to the Saga movies either side of it, it's pretty damn different to what came back, what with the modern war movie influences. It's working to portray how the Galaxy often feels outside the saga, and the visuals are part of that.

Mando mostly works with the same look because while there are some big personalities, they're almost all side characters, while the mains are stoic and reserved except for Grogu (who's the only wizard regular). Andor looks downright great, not least as much of it is shot on actual locations and on full sets.

But apply this to Ahsoka and Kenobi, and it rather cuts against the vibe they're going for. Space wizards, with their operatic cosmic conflicts and connection to a mystic energy, tend to want something a bit more heightened (which I think is an under-discussed problem in the PT which is very muted much of the time, and a major strength in the more stylised Empire and TLJ). The colours are muted, the angles mostly flat, and it ends up being at odds with the story being told.

To extend Kenobi some goodwill, lots of the latter seems to have come from the Volume. You keep seeing where the cinematographer wanted to crank a shot of Vader to be sharper and more impactful, but couldn't because the Volume doesn't permit that. Although I do think there are some baffling bits of blocking like in the chase and the first duel, the floaty shaky-cam is a generally poor look and really, Lucasfilm shouldn't lean so hard on the Volume (I mean, seriously guys, look at Monarch. That looks miles better than anything you've done on TV except for Andor.) But point is, they tried and ran into constraints.

Meanwhile Ahsoka seems exceedingly comfortable with both feet in Gordon Willis' metaphorical bucket of cement. The characters' energy levels are tamped way down from Rebels to match the muted presentation, and things often feel low-energy even just within the context of these shows. Even when the show steps into the World Between Worlds, an explicitly supernatural plane (or goes into Ahsoka's coma dream) there's no real change in look. Contrast the way that Empire employs that low shutter speed in the dark cave, while TLJ steps into something surreal complete with voiceover and an impossible CG camera move. In Ahsoka, though, there's little attempt to make the place feel otherworldly beyond how the scenery looks.

And these are largely missing a vital part of Rogue One's look, which is scale. Both Gareth Edwards and cinematographer Greig Fraser are great at portraying large-scale things in interesting ways, and that's something which will tend to get lost with a move to the small screen and the massive use of the Volume, without shots from locations or physical sets to balance it out and make spaces feel more real. Without that, the Mandoverse keeps feeling... rather pokey.

[markantonys]

thinking more about the garden scene, rereading it has just made me want even more for the show to do a "rand and egwene trespassing in the caemlyn palace and meeting gawyn, galad, morgase, and elaida" version of it in early s3! because gawyn is adorable in the book version, but mostly exists as an extension of elayne and a helpful infodumper to explain to rand and the reader what's going on while the other 4 caemlyn characters are carrying the scene.

so in a version of the scene where elayne is not there (as i'd imagine she'd go straight from falme to tanchico, which is pretty nearby, while the rest of the gang could pass through caemlyn in their longer travels), that automatically brings gawyn more into the spotlight and makes him an independent and more noticeable character during that whole sequence. now gawyn alone is defending rand (and egwene) from galad, morgase, and elaida, which would be a strong and memorable first introduction to him as a character. (it would also be a great meetcute for gawene <3 and i'd love to keep the book vibe of gawyn being so kind and friendly to rand and having a huge crush on him when they first meet bc it makes the forthcoming events all the more angsty.)

and in general, the book version of course has elayne as the focal point of the caemlyn sequence, so in the show where the audience already knows and loves elayne from other scenes, an elayne-less caemlyn sequence would be a great opportunity to let the other 4 caemlyn characters shine more. seeing gawyn, galad, morgase, and elaida argue over what to do with these trespassers, without elayne present, would do a lot to shed light on all 4 of them as characters and on the various relationship dynamics between them, which would be really good because the gawyn-elaida dynamic will be key to understanding his role in the coup later in the season (maybe we see him being willing to stand up to galad for the trespassers, but then being kinda cowed and backing down once elaida gets involved), and both gawyn's and galad's relationships with morgase are very central to their individual storylines and motivate a lot of their behavior down the road (more so than elayne, who ofc loves morgase and mourns her death, but doesn't really have those feelings as a main motivator for her behavior).

also, i've gone back to reread the wotseries articles about the shohreh aghdashloo (elaida) and olivia williams (morgase) casting leaks, and uncovered a couple interesting tidbits about the caemlyn filming!

both actresses were spotted on a set that is almost certainly the caemlyn palace (filmed inside a real-life castle with andor's banner hanging up)

wotseries believes that since this set is a location shoot 200 km away from jordan studios, not too much time will be spent there in s3 as frequent shoots there would be inconvenient

this filming occurred in late may 2023 and was for sometime in the first 2 episodes of the season

this all supports my theory of a one-time caemlyn trespassing sequence in approx 3x02! however, wotseries didn't report anything about josha or madeleine being spotted on this set, or about galad's actor or any potential gawyn actors being spotted. but that definitely doesn't mean none of them were there, maybe some or all were but just weren't leaked. on the other hand, i could also imagine maybe there's just one brief caemlyn-set scene of morgase telling elaida to go to the white tower and ask about elayne, and then G&G are introduced later when tagging along on elaida's trip and none of them meet our main characters during this season (or even just gawyn tags along with elaida while galad is instead introduced as a whitecloak in perrin's storyline, though personally i think it's important to galad's story for him to NOT be a whitecloak at first and then become radicalized out of worry for elayne). or it could be that there are multiple scenes in the caemlyn palace but some were filmed on a studio set and this location shoot was only used for a particularly grand room like the throne room or something. many possibilities and such little concrete info to go off of yet!

anyway, overall, i think that first introducing the rest of the caemlyn crew to the audience via their interactions with main characters we already know could potentially be more interesting than introducing them in a vacuum as a totally separate storyline (and indeed, most of the new characters in s2 were introduced via preexisting characters meeting them, iirc). and i think that it would be really great for rand and egwene to get a chance to meet the caemlyn crew before they get tied up in other storylines for the foreseeable future, since elaida and gawyn, in particular, are quite important to both rand and egwene later on (or rather, rand is important to gawyn but not vice versa djkfjg poor gawyn). but only time will tell if i'm onto something here or if i'm way off base!

[hegodamask]

My pictures from last weekend in London seeing People, Places & Things one last time and visiting some Andor* filming locations.

I had the best time with @supervisormeero, @lighttailoring (and a surprise @karnpuffs!). I think getting to hang out with you all at the ISB boardwalk and freak out about the D23 trailer together has rewired my brain 🥴 You are all super super super super cool irl and I hope we get to do it again someday 🫶

*Pictures 4, 5 and 6 were used for Season 2 when they filmed at the Barbican in February 2023. The last picture is Canary Wharf station which was used in Rogue One!

[colleybri]

Spotted a few complaints now about the lighting in the Andor micro-trailer making the scenes not look as “lived in” as in season 1. My guess is that they are still doing the final touches to the colour-grading - the final stage of post-production.

They might “cool down” the ‘farm planet’ shot here, but more significantly, they might “warm up” this Yavin 4 one, which at the moment is very obviously England on a chilly October day and not (checks notes) … Guatemala.

They might also put a few leaves back on the trees and make them look less obviously like typically British species. Never mind the AK-47s controversy– nature nerds like me look straight at the vegetation. (Does it bother me though? Of course not. For various reasons we have to film on Earth.)

[filmap]

Andor Tony Gilroy. 2022

Apartment Brunswick Centre, Unit 57, Bernard St, London WC1N 1BS, UK See in map

See in imdb

Bonus: also in this location

[e-the-village-cryptid]

Hey, I was curious if you knew anything about the Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars legends? I'm currently writing a fanfic that includes them, but the wiki was slightly confusing about their descriptions. Also anything you know about Mgnaa-Mgnaa or whatever its name is. If you want to answer, of course.

Also, just to have something that includes the interest from your description, what about Andor sets it apart from other Star Wars properties? I've heard it being talked about as one of the best currently out, but don't quite understand the hype (I haven't watched it yet).

sorry anon I don't really know star wars besides andor lol. I watched andor having only seen the original trilogy once when I was very young, and having read a detailed (spoilery) synopsis of rogue one for context. I don't know how you found this blog in a non-andor star wars context haha because I really don't know anything more than I've absorbed by having andor friends who also know other star wars (pssst @chipthekeeper mayhaps you know the answer to anon's question here?)

as for why I love andor. well. I can and will talk about this for hours so I will hold myself to just three bullet points:

the writing has such a depth to it. sci-fi can sometimes struggle to get through exposition in an engaging way, but andor ensures that every single conversation forwarding the plot/worldbuilding also carries a lot of weight as far as characterization and implied history of the characters and their relationships to each other goes, too. a lot is left unsaid but very much present in the implications of the way characters speak to each other. I notice something new every rewatch and it's delicious. in relation to this, the acting is also brilliant for just. every. single. character

visually it's STUNNING. most of the sets and effects were practical and it SHOWS. the droid is an elaborate puppet and so his body language and everything just feels so full of life. they built 8 full city blocks of ferrix, including many detailed interiors as well as exteriors. it's just GORGEOUS it feels SO REAL. they're attentive to what the extras are doing and actually making them part of the city, not just people wandering around. you could just reach out and touch it. they filmed on location in the scottish highlands they jumped off an actual dam they just. it's beautiful.

the MUSIC. it's brilliant. again, there was a vision and there was a heart to it and it SHOWS. the composer was on board from the very very beginning and so the music is beautifully woven into the diagetic soundscape of the show (klaxon alarms, clanging of metal, actual diagetic music, and more) in a way that is just so emotionally impactful and makes my little band kid heart dance around in glee. I won't spoil the show for you but there is a moment towards the end of the season that made every single former band kid jump out of their chairs losing their entire goddamn minds

*shuts mouth with visible effort* like i said i could talk forever but. i love it. i love the characters i love the story i love the visuals i love the music i love the way it makes you think and the questions it poses and the way it rewards digging deeper into motivations and implications i love the endless things there are to discover. i hope you decide to watch it :)

[lulamadison]

Went to visit an Andor filming location today in Thornton Cleveleys. Stunning place (Forgive the Mando minifigure. He's the only Star Wars figure I had with me 🤣)

[cantsayidont]

April 1979, October 1979, and August 1980. These novels by Brian Daley were not the first STAR WARS tie-ins, but they were the best of the early phase, and a strong influence on later SW media. The creative success of these exciting, frequently very funny books, which chronicle three adventures of Han Solo and Chewbacca prior to the first movie, had a lot to do with Daley himself. According to Daley's friends and his partner, novelist Lucia St. Clair Robson, Daley was Han Solo, or close to it: a brash military veteran with no love of authority, a fondness for sports cars and motorcycles, and a notoriously sarcastic sense of humor that concealed a heart of gold. Ironically, Daley, who genuinely loved STAR WARS, would have preferred to explore the history of the Jedi, but Lucas declared that off-limits, and imposed many restrictions on what Daley could and couldn't use from the films. For that reason, the novels take place on the fringes of the Empire: The first two books are set in the Corporate Sector, a region administered semi-autonomously by corporate interests with their own ruthless Security Police (an idea that clearly inspired some of the plot of ANDOR), while the third is set in the Tion Hegemony, a remote principality.

HAN SOLO AT STARS' END has Han and Chewie roped into aiding a group of people whose relatives have been "disappeared" by the Corporate Sector Authority, which is quietly rounding up dissidents and sending them to a secret facility called Stars' End. After Chewbacca is captured by the Security Police, Han concocts an elaborate, harebrained scheme to rescue his friend and the other "lost ones" from the galaxy's most closely guarded high-tech prison. Naturally, things don't go quite as planned, leading to a spectacularly ludicrous finale. (Spoiler: Han accidentally launches the prison complex into space.) This novel was subsequent adapted for the STAR WARS newspaper strip by Archie Goodwin and Alfredo Alcala, although the adaptation unfortunately isn't a patch on the original.

HAN SOLO'S REVENGE finds Han and Chewbacca, desperate for cash, taking a job that turns out to involve transporting slaves. This is a line our heroes will not cross, so after dealing harshly with the slavers, Han agrees to help a Corporate Sector Authority auditor named Fiolla of Lorrd track down the ringleaders of the operation, one of whom is her once-trusted assistant, Magg. Meanwhile, Chewbacca is forced to contend with a stubborn skip-tracer called Spray, who is determined to repossess the Millennium Falcon over Han and Chewie's unpaid bills!

HAN SOLO AND THE LOST LEGACY has Han and Chewbacca agreeing to help Han's old buddy Badure, Badure's friend Hasti, and an academic named Skynx locate a legendary lost starship, the Queen of Ranroon, the fabled treasure ship of an ancient tyrant called Xim the Despot. (The skull on the cover is Xim's emblem.) Although this sounds like it was influenced by RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the book was actually published almost a year before the premiere of RAIDERS.

Although the novels make clear that Han is not overly fond of droids, the books give Han and Chewbacca a pair of droid companions: a laconic old labor droid called Bollux, and a small, extremely sophisticated, disconcertingly enthusiastic computer probe called Blue Max, who "lives" within a compartment in Bollux's chest. Here's how Alfredo Alcala depicted them in the comic strip:

Daley also includes some delightful aliens, including the skip-tracer Spray, who's a Tynnan — basically a sentient beaver with the dexterity of a raccoon — and the Ruurian academic Skynx, a sentient caterpillar who's determined to complete as much of his research as he can before entering the next phase of his life cycle and becoming a chroma-wing who'll have little memory of his former identity.

A useful companion for the first two books is Michael Allen Horne's HAN SOLO AND THE CORPORATE SECTOR SOURCEBOOK for the West End STAR WARS RPG, published in 1993:

Aside from the inevitable game statistics and some quite decent illustrations of the novels' characters, the sourcebook fleshes out Daley's conception of the Corporate Sector Authority, explaining how the Corporate Sector functions and its relationship to the Empire. This is narrated in part by Han Solo himself, which is presented as excerpts of later interviews with an Alliance historian named Voren Na'al (a common conceit in the WEG game books that works especially well here). The sourcebook is best read after the novels, since it explains their plots in detail, but it's a worthwhile supplement. Unfortunately, a planned followup describing the Tion Hegemony was never published before West End Games lost the SW license.

Brian Daley's other major contribution to STAR WARS lore was scripting the NPR radio adaptations of the first three movies. STAR WARS originally aired in the spring of 1981, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK two years later. Daley also wrote the later adaptation of RETURN OF THE JEDI, but he died of cancer in early 1996, at the age of 49, so the final drafts were completed by John Whitman.