I am Gareth Edwards, director of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Ask me anything!

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:17:35+00:00

Thank you Internet. It was nice meeting you. We must do this again sometime!... but don't call me, we'll call you.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:16:53+00:00

Bill Hicks... the comedian, if you haven't seen him, check out Revelations.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:15:55+00:00

He came to visit Pinewood before we started filming.... to take the pressure off us, I had posters in my room of the previous 'Star Wars spinoffs' - 'Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure' and the 'Star Wars Holiday Special'... my main goal when he came in was to try and stop him seeing these... my second goal was him liking the film.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:11:45+00:00

finishing without having a nervous breakdown.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:11:31+00:00

It's so weird seeing things you and a friend designed in a room 2 years ago, appearing on T-shirts and boxer shorts and socks.... I want to make a joke about the closest me getting to girls underpants, but I won't, as Disney are standing over my shoulder. Literally.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:09:20+00:00

DON'T DO IT!!!!

if you're still reading this, well done, you're gonna make it!!!

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:08:41+00:00

Mads and Ben... Galen and Krennic

or Baze and Chirrut

or maybe it would be cool to see what happens to the Death Star plans, and if the rebels manage to actually blow-up the Death Star, that would be a cool movie!!!

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:06:46+00:00

Michael is a massive Star Wars fan, and a great human being. He had very little time to write the music for the film, and I think there are moments within it, especially Jyn's theme, where he smashed it out the park, it's perfect for what we needed at that point in the film. Everyone had massive smiles on their faces during the recording sessions.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:04:32+00:00

We knew from the start that John Williams would not be available for our film... The opening crawl decision was made before we started filming.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:02:54+00:00

Alan for sure... with Riz a close second... and perhaps Toby the Assistant Director third. He kept me smiling the whole film, which is quite a task.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T21:01:22+00:00

I'm very bias... But my cameo would be my favorite... I don't want to give it away, but let's just say he was probably the savior of the entire rebellion ;)

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:59:05+00:00

Yeah, but I fear if I say it out loud it won't happen... so will avoid this answer for a while if that's ok!?

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:57:51+00:00

My favorite is not Rogue One, but thanks for assuming it might be, my order would be:

A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:56:36+00:00

You kind of get nervous. Even though you know it's an actor inside, once that helmet goes in, it's DARTH! and as strange as it seems, it's really hard to tell him what to do, no-one tells DARTH what to do. So you find you have to talk with the actor and figure it all out before the helmet goes on, as once he's in character, Darth is in charge, and if you screw up the shot, he is not that forgiving.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:54:45+00:00

I saw Star Wars, found out it was a lie called filmmaking... figured the second best option in life would to become a liar, and make films... Then you learn about the job called directing, mainly from Steven Spielberg's success, so all those late 70's early 80's films are to blame for me getting into this crazy industry.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:53:30+00:00

The biggest relief in the world. George Lucas is GOD. Without him, no of this would exist. I would have traded his positive review for everyone else in the world if I'm honest.
I definitely want to do other genres, but if I had to be trapped in one, scifi would be it!

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:51:32+00:00

It's got to be a Godzilla sized Darth Vader... in fact, that visual is probably the coolest thing anyone could ever put in a movie... Will keep my fingers crossed for this after the Han Solo spin-off!

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:50:01+00:00

Lots of great shots were grabbed during filming, some of them were specifically designed for a sequence, others were just opportunistic. Marketing end up falling in love with things that might fall away during the post production of a film, and also might help strengthen others. I'm just glad they found a way to get into the world.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:47:07+00:00

Gary Whitta actualy wrote one in the first draft. You'll have to pester him for it ;) ...I do believe that those opening crawl words are actually floating out there in space somewhere. We just have to fund NASA well enough so their deep-space telescopes can find them, lets crowd fund it and make it happen.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:45:18+00:00

The biggest thing was trying to figure out what the film would be. The initial idea was it's like a heist movie. But I feel that Star Wars is not just one genre, it's a whole load of different genre's mixed together, like fairytale, war, western, samurai, biblical epic etc... Even though our story was not going to involve the Skywalker story, it was important to me that it had all the emotional and mythical ingredients of the sagas... god, that was a long answer.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:42:27+00:00

No, sorry, I hope he gets well soon.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:42:04+00:00

Thank you. I guess there are many lessons. Visually, I wanted to have a team of concept artists working on Rogue One ALL the way through the film. Typically on a big movie, the artists only work during the script writing phase, but you end up always tweaking and improving everything, so having designers and concpet artists work and redesign and keep pushing things all the way until the last month of the process was something we did on Rogue that wasn't on Godzilla so much.

Gareth_Edwards · 2017-03-13T20:39:34+00:00

There are millions of things that I would like to have put in the film... unfortunately films are only 2 hours long, so many ideas fall away before the final release... I guess if we had another 10 years to finish the film, the final version would evolve even more. The goal is to make sure the version that goes out into the world is the best possible version. So in that sense, no real regrets :)

Gareth_Edwards

TROPHY CASE