As well-received as Rogue One was, there was still quite a bit of grumbling over the trailer footage that was absent from the film. One of the most notable absences in the latest Star Wars installment, outside of heroine Jyn Erso’s statement of “I rebel,” was the shot of Felicity Jones defiantly facing down the camera in her Empire disguise. Well, director Gareth Edwards decided to clear that up for confused fans: it was never supposed to be in the final cut at all.
During an episode of the podcast The Director’s Cut, Edwards explained how the iconic shot came to be, despite never being intended for the film at all. Apparently, the team would do “Indie Hour” every day to blow off steam and shoot whatever they wanted.
“It was just a way for the crew of understanding, for now, we’re just going to do loads of random sh*t. Don’t try to ask, we can’t explain. It would just be things I thought were a beautiful moment or ‘This is a great idea’ and a lot of the stuff in the trailer ended up through that process… We finished a shot and [Felicity Jones] was just walking to the next shot, which was at the end of the tunnel. And as she walked, someone switched the lights on and the way they turned on they went *clickclickclick* like this. Someone called her, and she just turned around a little bit and I was like, ‘Oh my god that looked great.’ And I was like ‘Stop stop stop!’ and everyone stopped. ‘This will take 10 seconds, just roll camera’….Then obviously 10 seconds turned into a half hour, and we probably did 17 takes. So that ended and there’s that feeling of, ‘Well what was that for?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, that just felt good.'”
So, at least we were blessed with the perfect ending for the trailer. On top of that, we were given a little insight into the strain that comes from shooting a film like Rogue One. The pressure and rules that come with filming something in such a massive franchise can seem overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean that creativity should be stifled. Something beautiful could come from the most unexpected moments.
(H/T i09)
