Andor Used StageCraft (The Volume) Technology in a Limited Capacity

Though previous comments by showrunner Tony Gilroy and the main cast pointed to the contrary, ILM's StageCraft tech was used in Andor after all.



The find comes via Slash Film, who had the chance to speak with Andor's VFX producer TJ Falls, who expanded on how much the StageCraft was used to help craft the complex environments seen in the show. Gilroy and the actors weren't lying about StageCraft not taking over the production (unlike in previous live-action Star Wars series), but it was definitely present in a much more traditional capacity:

While Falls' words paint the exact picture of how most big-budget blockbusters are made, the thing with Disney Plus' Star Wars shows (so far) is that they've been built around the StageCraft tech, which can help produce alien worlds and impossible vistas that have an impressive degree of depth and are present during shooting -- actors can react accordingly to environments and action that traditionally 'weren't there' until post-production. But Andor dropped that approach to production in favor of the classic 'make as many things tangible as possible' method of filmmaking.



Falls also elaborated on a specific set that shows up several times throughout the series:

In the case of the Chandrilan Embassy, it simply made sense to use mid-sized StageCraft panels outside the windows to give actors something to work with rather than traditional blue/green screens. If you've got the perfect tech ready to use, why shouldn't it be used? When looking at the finished episodes, there's a depth to the Coruscanti background outside the embassy's windows that would've been harder to capture with traditional colored screens.



While there may be more instances of digital backgrounds that were actually done through StageCraft across Andor, it appears the core tenet for the production and post-production teams was not to build massive LED sets that engulfed the production and changed its palpable visual feel.



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