Editor and Producer John Gilroy
on Post Workflow for Andor

By Iain Blair

Andor, the new live-action Disney+ Star Wars series, is a gritty thriller rife with political intrigue and high stakes — along with plenty of hoverbikes, laser guns and other impressive visual effects. Set five years before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the prequel explores a new perspective from the  Star Wars  galaxy and focuses on Cassian Andor's journey to become a rebel hero.

Editor John Gilroy, ACE, whose credits include Michael Clayton, Pacific Rim, The Bourne Legacy and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, edited four episodes and was a co-producer on the series.

I spoke with Gilroy about the editing challenges, the show's post workflow and collaborating again with his brothers — creator/showrunner Tony Gilroy and writer Dan Gilroy.

What were the main challenges of this show, especially in terms of post and visual effects?
Just like with a feature film, we began on post and all the VFX right at the start, and it was a very big challenge in terms of it being a much bigger canvas and arena. I've been on big movies editing for a year, but this was like doing four movies in two years. It was huge, with a lot more people on the post team and a lot more editors — seven in addition to me. You work the same way as a movie, but you delegate more, and there are a lot of moving parts.

You must have used a lot of temp VFX in the editing process?
Oh yeah — a ton. We had a great VFX editor, Liyana Mansor, who was with us from the very start. I don't know how to do that work myself, but I pull in experts like Liyana, and we used a lot of temp VFX to help us figure stuff out and sometimes to shape the mechanics of a scene. So it was a big part of the whole process.

Tell us more about the DI.
Our colorist was Jean-Clement Soret, and we conformed in FilmLight Baselight with UHD SDR and HDR timelines. Tony, who was in New York, would come over and was very heavily involved in the DI.

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