#yuki watches andor

[chloelefay]

Movies & Shows we've seen

Our Letterboxd:

Our MAL:

Every TV Show we've seen at least 8 consecutive episodes of ranked:

★★★★★ / 10/10 / S 1. Neon Genesis Evangelion 2. LEGION 3. Cowboy Bebop 4. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya 5. Andor 6. Revolutionary Girl Utena 7. Spectacular Spider-Man 8. Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water 9. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur 10. Hazbin Hotel 11. SSSS.Dynazenon 12. Puella Magi Madoka Magica 13. Ninjago: Dragons Rising

★★★★½ / 9/10 / A 14. RWBY 15. Loki 16. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 17. Kamen Rider Ryuki 18. Doom Patrol (Seasons 1 & 2) 19. Serial Experiments Lain 20. Magia Record Season 1 21. Godzilla Singular Point 22. Mekakucity Actors 23. The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan 24. SSSS.GRIDMAN 25. Arcane 26. DEVS 27. Kid vs Kat 28. Helluva Boss 29. Hit-Monkey 30. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law 31. Good Omens 32. The Acolyte

★★★★ / 8/10 / B 33. Warehouse 13 34. Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu 35. M.O.D.O.K. 36. WandaVision 37. Marvel Rising 38. Legends of Chima

★★★½ / 7/10 / C 39. Ninjago (2019-2022) 40. Marvel's What If...? 41. Hero Factory

★★ / 4/10 / F (42. Doom Patrol Season 3)

we post livetweet threads for most things we watch on our twitter. you can find them by looking through our media tab, we almost always post a photo of the title card:

[meandmyechoes]

one other thing i find different in Andor’s finale, is that the titular character is not the star of the final showdown. All episode he was hiding, among the people of Ferrix. The Ferrix bricks who were and the community today, is protecting him. Cassian is a spy, he belongs to the shadows, he gets the job done. Cassian is Fulcrum, he recruits, he tips the balance over.

[redlightrockremix]

Rules: Tag 20 amazing followers you want to get to know better

Tagged by: @c-andor. hashtag caterpillars. 

Name: jannah. this may or may not be due to the fact that the alternative is a whole thing.

Nicknames: the closest thing that i have to a nickname is the way that people mispronounce my legal name. 

Gender: it’s a bit of a tricky grey area atm.

Star Sign: gemini.

Height: i am... not tall.

Sexual Orientation: sleep.

Hogwarts House: slytherin. i think? or maybe ravenclaw? idk. what is a hogwarts?

Favourite color: blue.

Favourite Animal: penguins.

Average hours of sleep: lately it’s been 4 to 6 hours.

Cat or Dog person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccgkxP-4tVE

Favourite fictional characters: shosanna dreyfus, tim gutterson, sam tyler, wednesday addams, daria morgendorffer, mitsuko souma, kisa, adam parrish, dana scully, yuki kashima, john (the fades), alice morgan, sweet dee reynolds, death (discworld), mako mori, milner (utopia), philip marlowe, and i know that there are more, but i’m drawing a complete blank.

Number of blankets i sleep with: one. ish.

Favourite singer/band: at the moment it’s b.a.p, but in general... no. there are too many to choose from.

Dream Trip: anywhere but here. however, if you would like specificity: vietnam, peru, mexico, italy (again), and egypt.

Dream Job: sleep.

when was this blog created: ... when was inglourious basterds released? 

current number of followers: i have no idea.

when did your blog reach its peak?: about five or so seconds before i started it.

what made you decide to make a Tumblr?: god. it was probably shosanna/hellstrom, wasn’t it? 

and i’m tagging anyone who hasn’t done this yet, because rules are dull. :)

[meandmyechoes]

It's been awhile since I've seen the costumes in Star Wars designed by Asian culture since the prequels. As an Asian, I'm glad that they've brought the designs back, even if the arranged marriage scene was supposed to be depicted as uncomfortable.

yeah it's been a while! Andor did a wonderful job with it.

The arranged marriage scene speaks so much through the costumes. I love the layers that wrap around each other and eat them up with how restrictive the belts and the emphasis of formality with an obijime, like the grip "tradition" has on the charaters, and the secrets and ulterior motives they conceal.

The boy's mother probably dressed him but likely Leida dressed herself. She's the only one off-shade and has a clear bisection of the colours. It looks as if she's the only one who's actually sincere in the meeting, the one who's less 'wordly' with ulterior motives and thus less 'tainted'. Again, her belt is a free-tying one as opposed to the formal ones on the mothers.

I think it's the first time we see Mon wears a cross-collar top that's more traditional and similar to Perrin's? Both mothers share a similar style but in reverse palettes. Only Mon has Gold wrapping Blue instead of the other way round instead of the other way round. The collar-crossing is a mess but what if it signals how out of touch Mon and Leida are with 'tradition' they got even that wrong?

[meandmyechoes]

Hakama in live-action star wars?!??!!!!! 😭😭😍😍

[meandmyechoes]

thinking about how Andor “feels likes Star Wars”. At times I feel like it’s just a well-structured, character-rich story under a Star Wars wrap, but more often, and more so with each episode, I love the themes they explored that were always just out of frame in past entries. The average people, just feel so real.

I’m thinking about Andor feels “fanfic-y” in the sense it treats Star Wars as a universe. It asks and answers questions about how it works and who lives in it.

[meandmyechoes]

In Andor, the Mothmas/Chandrilan costumes is clearly has an oriental vibe, leaning closer to Japanese, most evident on Leida (her wardrobe leans closer to the tradtional form than Mon or Perrin’s).

The Japanese elements are more apparent than Chinese ones, but there are some. Otherwise it feels more ancient-ancient China or inherent Japan-inherited Chinese vibes that seeped through instead of actual Chinese historical fashion inspiration.

Blue and gold is also a curious combination because while both are associated with wealth around the world due to their mineral origns, blue is not a frequent colour in Asian cultures, definitely not as prominent as red as a festive colour. (Indigo dyeing is more common in Japan but it dates rather recent from the Edo period and anyway it’s not the same shade of blue as here)

My point is, I think Gold represent Old/Chandrila and Blue represent New/Outside here. Just off the top of my head, I’m thinking about how Mon more often wears gold or beige while Perrin debuted in blue, and in Mon’s final scene where she gives in, there’s blue on her. Leida's most iconic costume is an all-blue hakama-ish uniform, during the scene we learn of her devotion to “tradition”. I see the Mothmas as an interesting commentry to diaspora and geocultrual/national identity. There’s something about conditioning history and traditions into nationalism and a tool for authoritarianism.

[meandmyechoes]

A reason Andor felt refreshing was I was no longer obsessed with spotting inconsistencies or easter eggs. The world just feel, believable. It’s a new planet I had no reference of, save for it being a retrofuturistic town under a dictatorship government. The script quickly identifies the district as “corporate“ or “shipyard“, and let us observe the environment - architecture, lighting, palette, clothing, decorations... and ask us to piece it together ourselves.

There are several things unmistakeably “Earth-ly“ on set, like the Chinese takeaway box, the notebook water bottle, and that newish hoodie. Yet rather than taking me out of immersion, they felt endearingly familar, like a nod that yes, this is a make-believe world. It is a galaxy far, far away but very much a story we put ourselves in. Ordinary people in Star Wars is just like us. These earth props don’t feel out of place because the inform the character’s background.

A security officer stealing a bite during a long shift? Teenage boys and their cosy hoodies? Yeah I’ve seen that. And they are just like us!

[meandmyechoes]

andor providing the authentic star wars experience of making you love a side character with two minutes of screentime, and proceed to kill them

[meandmyechoes]

anyway shoutout to the blue chao mein guy

[meandmyechoes]

There's more on production design than costumes but all in all a very enlightening and informative talk on inspirations and the design process!

timestamps below

00:22 How do you work with the story group to make sure fans of the lore are served without excluding the newer fans?

LH: we don't start from the basis of it being fanservice

crew includes a mix of passionate fans and people with no context. we are all filmmakers and focus on character work first, then look at what from sw can be put in there.

Luthen's collection works together to tell the story of lost culture

Never are we led by [that = fanservice], but things that enrich the environment should be there

02:03 Coruscant

Q: three main settings:

Syril's home, ISB, Mon Mothma

aotc: bright, saturated neon colours - a welcoming environment

andor: brutalist, minimal modernism, some art deco in MM -

an "anti-coruscant"

LH: the hardest to do

avoid CGI because we want a place that exist.

the core principle of Coruscant is height (upper, middle, lower) then it become character led

ref vertical cities like Tokyo and NY, what is their language, what makes them interesting?

the goal is not to make (RM's) it should smell like that, have that nostalgia and fit in SW, but shouldn't feel futuristic or scifi.

I want to understand it as a place that can really exists, not always leading away from it but a place we can inhabit.

first decide on the materials: hard, monochromatic, concrete, steel, glass -> inhumane, total lack of organic materials, and you build it up to realize what works or not

Eddy's: i reckon she bought that apartment 20 years ago, she had a view of Coruscant and then the whole city grew up around her and it got lost like she did.

Baker-like cream vs. clinical sterility of the ISB vs. Mon's… values of her Chandrilan culture but also lack of comfort (the embassy is given to her)

MW: want to build real societies. thought about the texture, culture, materials, technology of each planet -> stratified? diverse? levels of society?

every background player has a story and a reason to be on screen

06:57 Happy accidents on costuming?

less of accidents and more endless discussion and thinking about things

everything needs to have a logic and reason to be onscreen because they are under so much scrutiny

08:14 How did you design Narkina 5? What does the design of oppression look like to you?

LH: prison to a me like a cross between an abattoir and a laboratory, like a labour camp, you can't escape from it, like Alcatraz if it was a lab.

the Panopticon logic of turning the organic people be the fuel of the machine, the disposable element

makies it more interesting, more THX1138 than the obvious grungy prison

love making white sets: photograph beautifully, things pop more, have a sinister nature.

earthiness of Ferrix vs. organics of highlands vs. trapped sterility of prison

MW: Luke and I talked about How do those wielding the power use the environment to oppress, intimidate and disorientate?

The part of white on white: there's nowhere to hide, it's horrific, you lose your sense of depth -> disempowered by this soul-destroying environment.

we also spend lots of time on developing this fabric that's utilitarian, disposable, feels like they just peel them off at the end of the day. they are treated like cattle, "host down", sterilized and they are given a fresh one for the next day.

all of these details eat away at you psychologically.

11:38 Visual style of Andor

How close did you want to get to what we've already seen?

What motifs do you know you want to work in when creating the world of Andor?

LH: we don't start that way around. when i met tony it was like, 'we're gonna make a star wars show but it's not gonna be like any star wars show you've watched.'

it was challenging when you figure out it means going into people's apartment and bathrooms to work with them.

keep the tangibility of the OT, then looking at R1's grittiness, and a sense of modernity that could compete with other shows, and make work the drama/chc but maintaining the nostalgia of SW without having it becoming as if 'selecting things from a catalogue just for it to feel SW'

It was about enhancing what was there and fleshing it out to feel like you could walk and live with these people, and hopefully forget about it at times, forget that you're watching SW, and be reminded of it.

13:35 Costuming

MW: knew as soon as we had the script we knew we had to create a new look to go with the layers and complexity of the characters.

the established costume language of SW was there.

Use the established uniform to ground us firmly into the SW world.

15:06 There is an abundance of personal rooms/belongings, how do you approach setting those space versus a public one? What were you trying to communicate about their lives?

LH:

Maarva: the home used to be function when Cassian was younger, but with him drifting and her husband's death, and the shop closing, her world gets smaller till it centralized around her chair

Eedy: she bought it box-fresh, you can get upgrades and plug-ins to the apartment and over time, it aged and (BAY-ta-lye)

a home salon you never see in S1, things that you feel relatable but in the SW language. It always start with the chc.

MW: Luke design spaces like the character designed them. He thinks about who they are and what they want to project in their interior. I try to do the same with the costumes.

It's the difference b/w wearing something in terms of structure and how it makes you feel compared to something like layers that you can disappear in.

e.g. Cass was hiding, disappearing in his clothes, then his arc is to become closer to the hero we know from R1, little bit he reveals himself more, the coat becomes more tailored, longer lines, shoulders are squared out, a very subtle, subliminal transformation he goes through.

18:45 Syril's costuming and his own customization

within the constricts (blurring of individual) of the uniform, people can still find ways to express themselves.

on one end, guys working in the ball pen and jaded office workers, not at all engaged, their costumes are enzyme-wash to fade out, unironed, no pride in their appearance. On the other end of the spectrum is Syril who tailors and tweaks and personalize it to express who he wants to project and who he wants to be. We made his costume subtly more rigid, more sculpted, freshly pressed, slightly brighter colour.

21:00 how do you go from Chernobyl (a raw story) to the SW show (pre-established lore)?

LH: the process is the same for whatever project it is. the similarity between the two projects is there are a lot of research. with Cbyl you don't want to lost and become a documentarian. Cbyl had finished scripts but on Tony was taking on it when I started, so we were building it the same time he was writing.

It's about character, and environment and storytelling, and it was mood and tone.

we wanted this to have sort of a journalistic logic. you approach it like you're dealing with building up every character's reality and atst we're making fiction/drama. The material is a bit lighter on Star Wars and the world is much greater varied. From a design pov, they are both rabbit holes. the only similarity is you run out of time, I'd love to create bigger set but at some point you'd have to shoot it.

24:11 filming real-world location/what's the consideration for location scouting?

LH: I'd love to do more on location. But it was hard to have a large crew on site and in a pandemic, so we ended up building a lot more [sets] than we initially intended.

I don't want to do a desert, but I want somewhere where the landscape spoke for itself. What if we have a planet that looks like the Scottish highlands? Then we were looking at dams and there's this one that always feels like a blight on the landscape. It just felt very imperal. The whole Aldahni sequence was then based around that idea. It was an imperial stronghold there and so on.

Barbican has both the weight and texture that felt right for a megacity like Coruscant but also felt right for a certain level - the middle.

We don't approach a location on the basis of pure concpet, it was always about enhancing the real place and how we can put it in the wider world of Coruscant, how we can do shots that you'd do in a real city and not in a CGI environment.

I always said the best place to do Coruscant would be Paris becaus you got the scale and style of certain aspects of Corsucant. (it's [slimpickins] in London ???? can't understand this part)

[audience talks about how turning a corner you see a structure featured in the show] yeah with Barbican you are a little more limitied, a little more, targeted, i suppose. What I'm always looking for when piecing together Coruscant was Journeys. So again it wasn't like 'Oh, let's stand here and have a conversation with the city in the background' or sth like that. Barbican actually gives you a lot in terms of Joruenys: Syril going home is one of my favourite. This place in London I don't remeber the name of, it's like a bridgeless estate, we made it go much further down and give it that elevation and that sense of depression.

It's really hard, I want to shoot more on location but more often we pull back and use the real world location as an inspiration.

28:45 What are some under-discussed innovation in the your fields that help you create Andor?

MW: leaning heavily into the DNA of established SW costume language. It was quite an analog costume approach. A mixture, in fact. There are things that would've been groundbreaking 1977, that seem not so much now. But we would like to have that as a starting point, we had a similar approach with this one. There was a lot of handmade, old-school analog creative costumes, but we also have a fantastic costume props dept that use new tech and material to create mostly armour elements and small sculpted elements on costuming. Lots of 3D Printing happening, scanning, adapting, trying urethanes and other materials that can make more comfortable armour. A problem of the original stormtrooper armour is discolouration/yellowing. It was also quite rigid and difficult for stunts. We import new materials for the armour to stay white forever and allow room for the stunt people.

LH: It was an active choice NOT to use the Volume. It doesn't suit our goal, what Tony is writing. The idea is to be on the ground and moving around with the characters as much as possible, and not creating spaces for scenes to happen, if that makes sense.

It's something you can do with longer, multi-ep drama like this, is to build bigger sets and connect them up. Ferrix comprise of almost 30 sets. They are largest out on the back lot one large composite set so you can walk in around the streets and into the homes. All the complexes are enjoyable.

With any sets I'd start by designing the whole thing. Design the city, design the prison infold, then start to break it down and what we want to use and how, what, who we want to build lest we understand the full geography.

I think that filters through even if you don't see it all. You hopefully doesn't jar at any point. The technology part is we first build it in 3D and previs. We don't follow a pipeline like the Volume shows. The analog feeds into what we want to achieve, a bit more like the OT, more tangible.

It wasn't anything groundbreaking we do as much as trying to put more on screen but make it feels like it's less (intentional/artificial)

[meandmyechoes]

That final shot? Cassian holding his tears back when he doesn't know what to do? Who is it for? And crying is all he wanted to? When the sun is as merciless as hopeful?

[meandmyechoes]

andor episode 6 salvaged my entire heart for star wars from the bottom of ocean right there

[meandmyechoes]

the axis depends on the fulcrum

[meandmyechoes]

women in the andor series

[meandmyechoes]

they're just smuggling her out right? That can't be it!