‘Andor’: How Ferrix was built on Backlot, not on the sound stage

Production designer Luke Hull has created a working city for the “Star Wars” series “Andor” that airs every Wednesday on Disney+.

The show, a prequel to the 2016 movie “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” follows the ultimate rebellious hero Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and introduces audiences to new locations and planets. The most ambitious of these is Virix, a rescue post on the edge of the galaxy that keeps itself out of the Empire’s interference.

The planet Cassian calls home is a barren one, which presented Hal and show maker Tony Gilroy with the challenge of designing an environment different from Tatooine or Jakku, places that Star Wars fans know all too well. “We didn’t want him to fall into the trap of being a town in the desert, or I was too eager for it not to be a frontier town,” says Hal, who won an Emmy for his work on the limited-edition ‘Chernobyl’ series. Tony was keen that it had a very strong cultural heart. .as I really understood that people came together, took care of each other there, they weren’t just part of the environment.”

In the end, they decided that Ferrix should be built as a backlot rather than a series of sound stages. “We knew we needed a big main street, and then it all grew out of it,” Hull says. It is estimated that 80–85% of scenes in Ferrix were filmed in the backlot, a functional space where doors and windows open onto usable buildings.

Once they had decided to build a city, the next step was to find an overall look that remained true to “Star Wars” without getting too upset. “The interesting thing about ‘Star Wars’ is that every planet has a cohesive aesthetic,” says Hull. “It’s not like Earth in the sense where you can go to a lot of different places, and they all have very different flavors.” Since Ferrix’s economy is based on salvaging ship parts and metal, Hull envisioned the sturdiness of the place. “They felt really stoic and powerful and reminded me of stevedoring workers in Belfast, building ships.” The team saw that the city started out as a small outpost and gradually grew and expanded out of the hills as the population grew.

For Hal, it all started to come together once they settled on the right materials. “I think the big turning point was when we went, ‘Let’s build a city out of bricks,'” he says. “It was an unconventional choice, one that hadn’t been done in the ‘Star Wars’ universe before, but it was a choice that created a layer of history for the place,” explains Hull. : “I didn’t want to change the color of the bricks because I thought the clay and dirt really played into the identity of the fricks.” “And then this idea we did was kind of a retrofit, when you die, your ashes are roasted in a brick and you’re put into town. She has this really beautiful poetic completion.”

Star Wars wouldn’t be the same without some computer graphics and visual effects, which Hal and his team took into account in their planning, though he’s proud to say to Andor, much of what you see is workable. “It’s a very real show, in that it’s a pretty heavy show, which I think is fun personally,” he says. “Or it depends on the location.” Several episodes and even parts of Ferrix were filmed in close locations. He continues, “I mean, there’s a huge amount of visual effects, don’t get me wrong about that. But luckily a lot of them are discussed up front and included in the design as well. You know what you’re working towards. We’ve understood the geography of the broader planet, and how our groups fit in.” built inside it.”

It wouldn’t be a Star Wars series without some Easter eggs, although Hal was determined to keep things hidden. Among some of the fun surprises you sneak into every now and then are a carbonated machine frozen in a corner or a beloved panta toy on the shelf. Hull notes, “It’s about finding a way to do that that fits with the show.”