‘Rogue One’: Why The Best Shot In The Trailer Didn’t Make The Film

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story had a lot of pretty great shots and sequences, good characters, great action. But whatever happened to that shot of Jyn Erso from the trailer? You know the one where she’s standing sideways, head turned away before she faces the camera and looks directly at the audience as the lights come on behind her dramatically.

Well, according to director Gareth Edwards, it was never supposed to be in the film to begin with.

It was just a way for the crew of understanding, for now, we’re just going to do loads of random shit. 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 know that directors always shoot extra scenes and that a lot can get cut during the editing process. Even though the shot mentioned above is amazing to look at visually and really works well dramatically, there just wasn’t a place for it in the final cut of the film.

And although Edwards says he shoots a lot of random stuff, shooting that particular shot of Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso “just felt good.”

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.”

Rogue One is now playing in theaters.

Source: i09 via The Director’s Cut