Many actors feel jaded by the moviemaking process. And by the time they are put in front of cameras and journalists being asked the same question a million times over, the fun is sapped out of them. But not for Alan Tudyk and Riz Ahmed, two men still coming off a high of joining one of the biggest franchises in film history.
With the former playing android K-2SO and Ahmed taking on the part of Bodhi Rook, the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story pair sat down with Collider to chat production and open up on what the experience was like on set.
Duo Get Their Hands Dirty
Tudyk responded to a question about the flick looking like a modern war installment that meshed with a production that maintained a Star Wars feel about it.
"It was filmed that way (like a war movie), you couldn't miss it on set," said the actor. "The feel of the movie was there but the way it was shot in the trenches literally (with) hand-held cameras."
With Ahmed getting a major break as part of the ensemble off the back of his work in the HBO mini-series The Night Of, he talked about the intimacy and intensity brought about by bringing the film to life.
"Yeah Gareth (Edwards) the director would bring the camera in himself as well," recounted Ahmed. "A lot of the team had done big war movies like Zero Dark Thirty, Saving Private Ryan (or) Black Hawk Down, so it definitely has that kind of rawness, that boots on the ground feel. When we were shooting it, it was kind of rough and messy. We would do long takes without cutting, they would light it in such a way where Gareth would point the camera wherever he would want it to, you were always on. It was very immersive."
No Plastic Green Screens For The Big Show
Asked if there was one highlight they could single out, Tudyk pointed to one moment.
"Mine was in that spaceship," he says. "We were in the spaceship, his (Ahmed) first day, I remember going, 'Here's the new guy!' It was built out, it was like a box and there was a spaceship inside that was hooked up to a crane that was 2 or 3 stories in the air. When we landed in the base, we actually landed in this base. There were other ships that did that when we were in the trenches, they're flying over you when we were flying in."
For Ahmed, the sheer scale of the project was something that still blows his mind.
"They had giant LCD projector screens as well instead of just green screen (so) you could really tell what was going on," said Ahmed. "You could tell we had a lot of fun filming this, can't you?"
Source: Collider
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