‘Andor’: Nicholas Britell and Tony Gilroy on How They Collaborated To Create Seven Hours of Unique Music
Recently, Variety had the chance to sit down with Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy and composer Nicholas Britell to discuss the series’ score and how the music was created. From what they had to say, we can definitely conclude that there was a lot more work put into the score than the most die-hard fans will ever know — the music for the series was in the works even before filming began, and was taken even as seriously as any other major element from the series.
While Britell, who is a three-time Oscar- and Emmy-nominated and one-time Emmy-winning composer, is the one who actually arranged the score, Gilroy was deeply involved in the process. There was even a period of time in which the two would meet at Britell’s studio three or four times a week, sometimes for up to six hours, to work to excruciating detail the music for the series. Gilroy praised his composer’s work as follows:
“He has such an attention to detail, he cares so much, and we went so deep. When you work with someone who is so passionate, it can’t help but be inspiring.”
Britell began by explaining that the very first thing he designed was the music that was required for filming, the “on-camera music”:
“The first thing we started working on was the on-camera music. The Morlana club music you hear in the very beginning, that’s just me creating all that. We figured out the sound of the Beskar steel and the Time Grappler [who appears in episode 2], and then in episode 3, the alarm signaling is a whole percussion piece. We had to figure out how it would sound, how it would feel on set.”
The main theme that plays over the Andor title card at the beginning of each episode is unique to each of the twelve entries in the first season (it’s still unknown how they will approach this for the second season). The first three are already available to listen to. Britell justified his choice with the following reasoning:
“It’s really about a sense of discovery for Cassian. He is learning about his life and his family, his place in the universe. To some extent that was how I thought about the main Andor theme, which isn’t just about Cassian; it’s about the whole series. I wanted the theme to start uncovering itself, start emerging, in a way.”
In addition to this, every planet has a whole different sound, as Britell explained:
“On Morlana, there was this dark, gritty, urban landscape [that demanded] something edgy, textural, a rumbling that wasn’t pretty. [On Ferrix,] there’s a lot of masonry and metallurgy in their culture, so you hear a lot of metal sounds throughout. Tony and I created some of those sounds together. [Kenari] is the sound of his childhood. I actually put rustling leaves inside the recording, so you hear the forest in the music. But there’s also a kind of wistfulness, a sense of loss, a sense of memory.”
Every character in the series also has their own signature sound. Britell and Gilroy spent around 10 months just brainstorming ideas for the music that would be heard on set, and it wasn’t until May 2021 (six months after filming had started) that Britell began working on scene-specific themes, and until fall 2021 that recording would begin. It would last until July 2022, and it was conducted by veteran orchestrator Matt Dunkley in London’s AIR studios, with additional percussion recordings taking place at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove studio. The entire score lasts more than seven hours, and it is, according to Britell, “more work than I’ve ever done in my life.” However, he is thrilled to be joining the ranks of Star Wars composers:
“It’s the most profound honor, and very emotional. I think back on growing up and watching the movies with my little brother in our den. I was a fan from the very beginning. John Williams’ work is so legendary, not just musically, but culturally, for all of us.”
The Award-winning composer has already started work on the second season, which is due to begin shooting this November in the U.K. Filming will take place through August 2023, aiming for a 2024 release, probably sometime during late summer or early fall. New episodes of Andor are coming out every Wednesday, so stay tuned for more from the new Star Wars series coming soon!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
