Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Stars Praise Director Gareth Edwards' Hands-On Approach

While it's often said of directors that they're the 'person behind the camera,' that's not usually [...]

By ComicBook.com Staff

While it's often said of directors that they're the "person behind the camera," that's not usually a literal description. Usually, there are at least camera operators, if not also cinematographers between the person at the helm and the actors portraying the roles. That was often not the case for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, where director Gareth Edwards liked to make sure he got the shot he wanted - sometimes by actually holding the camera himself.

"The whole methodology with Rogue One was to keep it very naturalistic," star Felicity Jones, who plays the leader of the band of Rebels Jyn Erso in the film, said of the director to Empire magazine. "Gareth often holds the camera himself because he wants to be there with you. With Gareth, we felt like we were all in it together."

That echoes what Edwards himself told Comicbook.com during a conversation at Star Wars Celebration Europe in July. There, he revealed that he would often build full 360-degree sets, and put crewmembers in costume just in case they were caught by a certain angle when getting the right shot.

"You don't go, 'I want this, this is the shot I want,'" the director said, preferring to experiment from every angle. "So as we're filming, we're like, go down, go down, and just playing around, and things happen that you wouldn't have asked for."

Jiang Wen, who plays Baze Malbus, the watchful best friend/bodyguard of Donnie Yen's Chirrut Îmwe, added to Empire that Edwards "shoots like he's a character among us. He held the camera all day, and that thing's heavy. And you realise he's tired. But I can tell he has a very big passion inside, because he still carried that thing the whole day, from beginning to end."

That should help with the very personal, World War II-movie style Edwards and the rest of the cast and crew have been touting for Rogue One. Where other Star Wars films have to serve the epic full scope of the galaxy and systems-spanning conflict, this one will be focused much more intensely on the personal journey of the members of the team on their lone mission.

Felicity-Jones-Gareth-Edwards-Rogue-One
(Photo: Lucasfilm via Empire Magazine)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits US theaters December 16, 2016. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it's the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core "Skywalker Saga" of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue One tells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: "Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet."

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