SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018) Production Notes Part 2

In creating the overall look for the film, the director of photography is hugely important. One of the criteria for the stand-alone films is that each one has its own character and its own distinct look.

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PRODUCTION NOTES (Part 2)

KESSEL

Already familiar to legions of Star Wars fans, the planet Kessel hosts spice mines, where humans, droids, Wookiees and other creatures are held in subjugation. The filmmakers imagined a series of triangular tunnels, built on interior and exterior sets. The creative teams brought the builds to life, with the rock textures and the vibrant yellow of the materials created by cement mixers churning up sawdust and yellow paint. Explains Bullock: "The idea is that the spice is everywhere. It's in the ducting. It's very corrosive, so this was a great set to do in terms of the crusty and rich finishes that we could play with. Goodness knows how many dustbins we filled with yellow sawdust, but it looked really good."

For the Interior Mines, one of the challenges was finding what the practical light source for the director of photography, Bradford Young, would be. But it was sparked by one small Ralph McQuarrie drawing the set decorator found. "I came across this early concept for Cloud City," recalls Sandales. "It had a tiny aerial at the top. I turned it upside down, and it looked like a mining lamp. It was just a tiny little sketch, but it prompted the design for all the lights in the Kessel Mines."

Interestingly, the filmmakers borrowed from another influence at Fawley for the Mine Operations Center. There is a control room in a circular tower there with wonderful rotunda windows in a beautiful 1960s design. Lamont liked it, and it sparked the design for the set.

SAVAREEN

Neil Lamont, together with the creative teams, imagined an ambitious industrial landscape for the Savareen refinery, a town swamped by the desert, reclaimed by the land, with only peaks of the degraded and crumbling structures revealed. Lamont acknowledges, "We knew we needed to go to an extraordinary environment to capture it. It's our 'High Noon.' It's the final confrontation."

They found the perfect location in Fuerteventura, the second largest of Spain's Canary Islands, which sits in the Atlantic Ocean, 62 miles off the north coast of Africa. The filmmakers had their pick from a multitude of beaches that wrap around the island, interrupted by volcanic cliffs and sheltered coves. On the west coast of the island, about 547 yards from the sea, they found the perfect location-an exposed hillside overlooking the sea, with a rugged, dusty and sandy terrain.

It was a 12-week build. Prefabricated pieces were made at Pinewood and shipped in containers to Fuerteventura, where the structures, with their walkways, girders and pipelines, were assembled, adapted and finished in the dunes. Alastair Bullock describes it: "It was stunning to see the set materialize out of this landscape. It's a beautiful landscape, with this dune running directly down on quite a slope to this dramatic and windswept rocky coastline. It's one of those sets that, when you're in the middle of it, it's a complete environment, a 360-degree set. You are really in that refinery."

Set decorator Lee Sandales expands: "The idea is that a small nomadic tribe have moved in, and are living among the ruins of this ghost town. We came up with themes of what they would do if they actually lived there, and expanded these themes into a culture."

The culture then informed the set decoration. "We imagined they were fishermen and that they lived on fish," continues Sandales. "The shells had given them the gift of forms of dye, which they combined with flax from a local farm to weave and make canopies, which we dotted round the set."

THE LOOK AND THE LIGHTING

In creating the overall look for the film, the director of photography is hugely important. One of the criteria for the stand-alone films is that each one has its own character and its own distinct look. Producer Simon Emanuel expands about cinematographer Bradford Young: "The director of photography can make the look of the film a real character in the story. Bradford's work is incredible. He truly is an artist, who lights by instinct, lights by how he feels looking at the particular scene or particular shot."

Bradford Young was excited to join the team and use his distinctive lighting skills in the Star Wars universe. "It is a script that plays off the classics and has all the beautiful tropes and clichés of the classics," Young says. "One of the things that struck me was that the film had to feel natural; it had to feel earthbound, about characters putting their feet on natural surfaces. Everything had to be coming from the right place, whether it be where the camera was placed or where the light was coming from. It all had to feel legitimate and real, a naturalistic realism within a fantasy environment. The next level for me was making sure that the film feel as dirty, as dusty, as the environments in which we were shooting."

Young chooses to use natural light sources whenever possible. He offers, "If you want to feel the snow, if you want to taste the snow, if want to smell the snow, or if you want to feel the sand and taste the sand, nothing is better than allowing that sand or that snow to be lit by the sun or be lit by the moon. I always feel like audiences are now really hyperaware when things don't feel real. And this film had to feel real. It's more difficult to work that way, but it's something that I feel like I've trained myself to do, which is to find the moment, find the source, and then construct the moment around that."

He elaborates on his process, "Neil Lamont designed sets that allowed us to light from the set, so every practical light that you see in this film is actually lighting the subject. When the character steps away from the lighting source, they'll walk into the shadow, and it might be a little intense for the audience for a moment, but the character will eventually step back into the light."

Offers Alden Ehrenreich, "I think Bradford's work is one of the key things that distinguishes this film from the other Star Wars films, and the look of the film is one of the things that I'm most excited about. It's this tougher, seedier world and story, and Bradford has lit it in a very organic and natural way, which gives the world an edge and a sense of danger. It doesn't feel glossy or removed."

Thandie Newton comments, "I was very excited that Bradford was lighting the film. I've been a huge fan for a long time of the atmosphere he creates with light. He has brought a very interesting feel to the film. He's very consistent with how he wants to make the film look, and he has a very clear and recognizable style while at the same time keeping it in the world of Star Wars that audiences have come to expect."

DRESSING THE CHARACTERS

The costume design team, headed by David Crossman and Glyn Dillon, made over 1,000 costumes for "Solo." The majority of the costumes were designed and produced in house, and the stand-out costumes for the crowd scenes ranged from wide-brimmed hats and fringed jackets, to colorful indigenous costumes of the nomadic tribes, and all the way to high-fashion looks.

For David Crossman, designing the costumes for "Solo" was a dream come true. "Han Solo is my favorite character from the original trilogy films," says Crossman. "He's just the epitome of cool, and it is such an iconic look to explore."

Glyn Dillon adds, "The characters that Han meets throughout his journey also are so layered, so rich, they presented fantastic opportunities for us as designers."

What makes a Star Wars costume? "It's something real, that audiences can relate to from their own life and from history, mixed with fantasy elements, that gives it the Star Wars feel," suggests Crossman.

Remaining faithful to the aesthetics of the original costume design, and taking inspiration from other 1970s references, often Western ones, including Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," the costume team created a wonderful wardrobe of clothes for principal cast, creatures and a huge number of crowd players.

"Han Solo's look is such a classic, iconic one, so we didn't want to veer too far away from the original costume," informs Crossman, "but we wanted to see how he got there. We liked the idea that the look becomes Han Solo during the course of the film as he acquires pieces from Beckett, and from other characters. The more people he meets, the more he gathers and establishes his own identity."

The designers had several looks to create for Han on his costume journey, which include Han's Corellian look. Says Glyn Dillon, "We were looking at bands like The Clash for inspiration, and we arrived at an '80s punk look mixed with a '50s element."

The costume consists of a leather waistcoat vest, painted in white house paint, a sign he "belongs" to the White Worms, customized with trinkets he's picked up along the way. Says Dillon, "It works as a negative of his classic costume. The vest is white, the shirt is dark and the Corellian trouser strip is faintly visible. He's identifiable as Han Solo, and this punkish, '50s-inspired version of the iconic costume suggests youth and rebellion."

"For Han's Mud Trooper uniform," says Crossman, "he wears the standard uniform, for which we've taken some elements from The Empire Strikes Back helmets and created a quasi-storm-trooper goggle and capes reminiscent of Russian ones from the World Wars, but the boots are Han's, which he carries on through his journey."

When Han gets to Vandor, he has shed much of his Mud Trooper uniform, and from Beckett he gets his gun belt and his jacket. Notes Crossman, "By the time he is reunited with Qi'ra on Dryden's Yacht, he is starting to look almost like the Han Solo everyone knows."

Han's Steve McQueen-styled suede jacket harks back to the beginning, as Crossman explains, "There was a lovely '60s jacket we saw somewhere in London, with black paneling, on which we based the suede jacket. In the original Han Solo look in A New Hope, everything is very cropped, so we aimed for that look, keeping the sleeves shorter, the jacket length cropped, so it's clear for the guns."

The costume designers turned to musical influences to design Lando's costumes: Jimi Hendrix, Prince and Marvin Gaye. Glyn Dillon comments, "He's such a colorful character. We wanted to have fun with his costumes and bring in very strong colors and some vibrancy."

The costume designers are used to rendering countless drawings before they are satisfied that they have nailed a look, but it was a much faster process with Lando's costume. Dillon tells, "In one of the first drawings of Lando, we drew him with a yellow shirt, and that was it. That was Lando."

Lando's extensive cape collection and the shirts and boots in his walk-in closet presented a great opportunity for the designers to expand his wardrobe far beyond anything Lando would wear on screen. "In the closet, we tried to incorporate every texture possible, mixings and patterns, velvets and leathers, just to get a great variety, as audiences won't see Lando in much else than his yellow shirt," comments Crossman.

The costume team made 30 capes in all for the closet, and for the final sequence, set in a tropical environment, the designers fashioned a Hawaiian-styled shirt for Lando. A Ralph McQuarrie drawing of a little spaceship, not featured in the Star Wars films, sparked the inspiration for the pattern on the shirt.

The designers used similar punkish '80s influences for Qi'ra's Corellian look: an oversized boyfriend jacket, leather skirt and pointy boots. They then adapted her look to a femme fatale when Han is reunited with her in Fort Yspo. "We wanted to create a look that would blow him away when he sees her," informs Dillon. "She has to be recognizable, but there has to be something in the way she dresses that gives her that ambiguous edge: is she dangerous, can he trust her?" Crossman adds, "She's second-in-command of this criminal gang. Her look needed to be sophisticated, so we went with a Lauren Bacall-inspired beautiful black silk dress. We gave it powerful shoulders, and shiny black jewelry, that incorporates the Crimson Dawn logo."

Qi'ra's other costumes become more practical as the narrative dictates but always retain a sophisticated edge. Influences from the Western genre, combined with the '40s femme fatale, are very clear in the leather skirt, wide-leg pants and high-heeled boots in the Fort Ypso Saloon and action sequences.

For Beckett, Dillon says, "We wanted to give Beckett that mentor feel for Han. He wears a pale, long duster coat over a dark flight suit." Adds Crossman, "Beckett wears the costume almost throughout. The script might dictate that, but sometimes it's helpful for certain characters too. People identify with them better."

The one costume change sees Beckett wearing Lando's armor from Return of the Jedi as a disguise in the Kessel action sequences. "It's the helmet that was based on a baseball glove, and it was great fun recreating that costume for Beckett," says Dillon. "Hopefully it will look to fans like Beckett left it on the Falcon, and years later when Lando comes back to the Falcon to rescue Han, he would have dug it out and remembered it was the one Beckett used years before. It's one of those things that Star Wars fans will love."

"Val was a fun one to do," says Dillon. "Val's strong and she's cool, so we went with leather and the backward apron skirt that is really Star Wars, and also quite punky." Climbing is Val's expert skill, so belts and harness ropes attach to the costume, and a gun hangs round her neck.

Thandie Newton collaborated closely with the designers on Val's costumes. She says: "Different actors have different ways into their characters. For me, costume and the whole look of the character is when I finally feel the person I'm playing, and Val's costume was such a fantastic evolution. I have two costumes, both very functional, but the second costume had so many gadgets over it, and every element had a function. It felt like I had a layer of robotic strength and prowess and the costume told a story."

"There has to be a connection between Dryden and Qi'ra that presents as a threat to Han, not just a physical threat but a romantic one also," says Dillon. "This was something we felt was important to express in Dryden's costume, that he look charming, suave, but dangerous too." Making the most of Paul Bettany's strong and imposing look, the designers dressed him in beautiful tailored fabrics, crafting a one-sided cape that appears to have grown onto the jacket, to be integral to the jacket, and gives him a formidable silhouette.

L3-37's design is another interdepartmental collaboration between costume and visual effects, and took a long time to develop. "L3 is a self-made woman," offers Dillon. "She's an astromech droid, who has built herself up from spare parts she has acquired. She's given herself a voice. She's a female droid who has empowered herself."

Once that was determined by the filmmakers, it helped the departments figure out the way she should look. Dillon explains: "The head is like the top of a dome of an astromech, but has been cut down. The shoulders are like the tops of the sides of the legs on an astromech droid, like an R2 unit. There are little vents and certain details that we're sure the fans will notice."

The designers built costume pieces to fit Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who plays L3-37. "Visual effects will only take out her face, belly and arms. So she'll be able to interact and it will look real. The end result will give you a different-looking, fully interactive character other than a pure CG one," says Dillon.

The team also adapted stormtroopers to become Mud Troopers by caking them in mud and adding capes and a brow plate to the helmet, and into the Frontier Troopers with giant sheepskin coats with huge fur collars and magnetic boots, made up of as many as 100 component pieces in each one.

THE CREATURES...AND CHEWBACCA

Neal Scanlan, who has been twice Academy Award nominated for his creature work on Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens, is once again responsible for populating the "Solo" environments with an extraordinary array of creatures. Scanlan and his talented team produced over 500 designs for the creatures during the design process.

For "Solo," Scanlan looked back to the creature designs of the original trilogy to inform his process in a very particular way, as George Lucas might have asked his designers to look forward at the time. He says, "I can imagine the conversations George would have had looking at the films of that time, films like 'Buck Rogers' and 'Flash Gordon,' and encouraging his crew to use those references as inspiration, and push forward in time to find a new and unique version of that world."

He continues, "For us I think it was looking at those worlds, the styles and approach used, which made them new and fresh for the audiences then, and try to bring some of that into this project to place the film in this time zone, in this era. We need to be observant of Star Wars, and there is a great deal of charm and innocence to those designs, and some of the simplest creations happen to also be the most unearthly, and where we have tried to base our designs for this film."

The design of the creatures in the various environments reflects the tone of the settings. "When one tries to set up a mood, everything needs to fit within that mood; otherwise, it's going to jar," explains Scanlan. "I think we start this film in a world that's quite dark, a repressed environment, and the creatures we have designed for these environments are not dissimilar. But the film brightens as it goes on, mostly because of the growing relationship between Han and Chewbacca, which is at the very core of what this film is about-ultimately finding the one being in the world Han can absolutely trust-and it happens to be this Wookiee."

The creature effects department had to produce eight Chewbacca suits and ten heads, all under the leadership of the amazing supervising animatronics designer, Maria Cork, who has worked with Chewbacca since The Force Awakens, for the different Chewbacca looks the narrative dictates, notably the "muddy look" for the first meeting between Han and Chewbacca.

Chewbacca's suit consists of a Lycra under-suit with a knitted cowl, which is a more modern material, as the original was completely knitted in wool by Stuart Freeborn's wife. (Freeborn was the original Star Wars makeup artist.) The hair is exactly the same as the original Chewie suit and is made of singular knotted hairs of yak and mohair.

Scanlan says, "We were so precious about being accurate and honoring the original Chewbacca suit, that the idea of throwing mud all over him and wetting him down seemed abusive." It was a daunting prospect too, given the immense time and energy that goes into creating a Wookiee suit.

But in the end, that's exactly what they did. Scanlan explains: "We got the hose out and literally doused Chewbacca down, and something magical happened. It made him immediately feral. He took on that sorrowful, bedraggled look, just like a domestic dog. It was interesting to see how quickly these animal qualities came out…and the whole premise is that he look really animalistic. He's been in prison for some time, he's covered in mud, and he appears first as a shape in the shadow. Terrifying for Han."

Cleaning the suit every day wasn't possible, and standard portable showers weren't big enough for Chewbacca, so, to the delight of the crew, the locations department made a wonderful contraption that became known as the "Wookiee Wash" on set-a big shower unit rigged above a paddling pool.

"Solo" introduces Rio Durant to the Star Wars universe. Rio, a CG character voiced by Jon Favreau, is one of Beckett's gang, a cocky and irreverent Ardenian. He is small in stature, blue and a new creature design for Neal Scanlan and the designers at Industrial Light & Magic. He's also the best pilot in the galaxy. No one can out-fly Rio. For one very good reason: he has four arms and two very useful legs. The team referenced Indian deities like Kali to inspire their Rio design. "We started to sketch ideas of what that might look like. To have arms that emanate from the shoulders, with the dexterity of a monkey, enabling him to swing and work as well upside down as he can the right way. And so he can use his feet as he can his hands," explains Neal Scanlan.

In spite of his confident attitude, Rio is an extremely cute-looking creature. Scanlan offers, "It's very important to retain the humanity of a character visually, and create a design that is endearing, not intimidating, to appeal to an entire age range."

Once the design was determined, the team began to work out the approach to realize the character, which required great collaboration between the on-set performer, Favreau's acting, and the artists at Industrial Light & Magic who brought Rio's face to life. Mother Proxima, one of the darker creatures in the film, was a new addition to the Star Wars universe. Leader of a vampirish clan and an underworld boss, she is a water-based alien, her lower half made up of a tangle of tentacles. "Mother Proxima and the White Worms can only survive in a dark, damp environment, almost like plants that might grow in sewer drains," comments Scanlan.

Moloch is Mother Proxima's right-hand man. "We tried a lot of designs for both Mother Proxima and Moloch," explains Scanlan. "We felt that Moloch and the White Worm aides all had to be derivative of Mother Proxima, so it was important to get that design locked first. The idea is that Mother Proxima is almost interconnected to her aides, around her, through her, similar to a tree's root system, by which she feeds not only nutrients but also information to them. At some point Moloch would have broken free, become an independent entity, but is telepathically and almost physically connected to her in many ways."

Once the filmmakers had approved the design of Mother Proxima, Scanlan and his team were able to sculpt the four characters in one go and, while Mother Proxima is very tall compared to Moloch, and shaped quite differently, it is very evident that they are of the same DNA. Mother Proxima had the most performers for one creature in the Star Wars series so far-30. Twenty of them were actually submerged in water in a performance that at times looked very much like a synchronized Busby Berkeley routine!

"Solo" also introduces Wookiee slaves in the Kessel sequences. Of the challenges presented in creating more Wookiees, Scanlan says, "Chewbacca is the stud Wookiee, and all things come from him." With that principle established, the team cast subsequent casts of Chewbacca's face and remodeled it in different ways but always building from the foundation of Chewbacca. "I think it's been very successful for that reason," says Scanlan. "You still see Chewbacca in there somewhere, and that gives all the Wookiees a soul and an acceptability that they are part of this race, and I think that is crucially important to making them work as men in suits."

The sabacc creatures were inspired by a Caravaggio painting. Scanlan says: "It's a beautiful painting, an incredible composition, and it has a great atmosphere to it. The characters sit round a table, many of them fall into the background, into the shadow, and we substituted the humans for aliens at the same proportions as in the painting. The filmmakers chose the creatures they liked from a catalog of creatures we were already drawing, and we pulled the ones that were most favorable, not only because of the way they looked, but all for their proportions."

Six Eyes, an alien player in the sabacc game, is the most sophisticated mechanical head ever produced. It has 50 servos inside the head, with on-board intelligence. Scanlan explains how Six Eyes works: "Once the puppeteer is inside, as he moves around, the eyes will automatically follow, they'll look up, look down, the head will bounce, and the eyes will bounce. All of that can be done before you even start to write a second layer of directed performance. The sabacc game, essentially a poker game, was a perfect place for a character like this. Six Eyes has the ability to look at anyone's cards at any one time, and the other players do not know which eye is looking at them."

FIGHTING "SOLO" STYLE

"Solo: A Star Wars Story" was a unique and challenging opportunity for action designer and 2nd unit director Brad Allen, stunt coordinator Mark Ginther and fight coordinator Guillermo Grispo. Aside from thrilling action sequences, some with huge crowds, creatures, and all with practical effects, the team was also tasked with developing different fight styles specific to each of the principal characters.

"Everything we do must serve the story; the action must be character-driven," says Guillermo Grispo. "Han Solo is a street fighter, with a mean swing. He is opportunistic in everything he does to counter and to get out of trouble. He improvises, makes or creates weapons from a handy object, and he's agile. We'll also see him pick up some tricks from Beckett."

The stunt team also wove some military training into Han's fighting style, given his brief stint with the Imperial Army, and the film also tells the story of how Han gets his DL-44 trademark weapon from Beckett when he pulls apart his rifle.

For Chewbacca's style, Grispo says, "Early on, we started to think about seeing a full-on display of Chewbacca's power. Is he as strong as an ox, strong as a bear? Once we had worked out those parameters, we could develop the cinematic action."

The stunt team took full advantage of Joonas Suotamo's athleticism to design the action involving Chewbacca. "He is very quick to pick up the moves and loves to do it. That was a tremendous benefit to the stunt team," notes Grispo.

The stunt team also watched Peter Mayhew's performances carefully, as ensuring the continuity of Chewbacca's body language was a big responsibility, but at the same time they worked to offer up something new and fresh for audiences.

Qi'ra has learned Teras Kasi from Vos Dryden, a practitioner of the extreme martial art, which had already been established in the Star Wars universe. But the "Solo" stunt team needed to research and create a style, moves and usable weapons before they could teach Emilia Clarke and Paul Bettany. Among other fighting skills, it enabled a user to develop extreme speed and an aptitude for anticipating strikes.

Dryden uses exotic double-bladed daggers, which the stunt team had not seen before, so they tagged them for a Teras Kasi trademark weapon, as well as Qi'ra's sword. Grispo says: "It has a pretty unique look. It almost looks like a fork combined with a sword in that it has a separation within the blade."

"We borrowed from the best Western films the fight mannerisms of cowboys for Beckett," says Grispo. "Woody was very excited about the gunplay for this film. He put in a lot of hours learning how to twirl the guns, which is not that easy to do. The two six-shooters are pretty unique, and Woody was able to learn how to twirl and manipulate the guns to maximum effect in a display of very expressive gunplay."

All stunt choreography has to be cinematically friendly, while adapting to the style, ability and strengths of the cast, and the team had their work cut out for them staging the Train Heist, a long and challenging sequence to shoot. The train build was nearly 40 feet long, 12 feet wide and 30 feet off the ground, and was moved from a zero position to minus and plus 15 degrees, then on a cue to 90 degrees, repeatedly-usually with the cast on board!

Says Dominic Tuohy: "Most gimbals give 20 degrees of movement out of most motion bases, so we had to build something bespoke, a rig that weighs four tons and could move in two seconds. That's a lot of inertia, a lot of mechanical advantage and disadvantage to be in control of, while keeping the artists safe. It was quite a challenge."

INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC: VISUAL EFFECTS MASTERY

Tying it all together was Industrial Light & Magic's Rob Bredow, visual effects supervisor/coproducer, who oversaw the 2,000 visual effects shots for the film. Bredow and his global team of 1,200+ artists and technicians created vehicles, character performances, otherworldly environments and spacecraft unique in the Star Wars universe. The film's gritty realism is infused with digital creations that set the bar for seamless integration and awe-inspiring visuals.

From the speeder chase and train heist to the infamous Kessel Run, the visual effects team had an immense challenge in creating the over 90 minutes of visual effects generated by the talented artists and technicians at Industrial Light & Magic.

The best old-school techniques combined with cutting-edge technology give "Solo: A Star Wars Story" its unique look and feel. Bredow and his team at Industrial Light & Magic worked in close collaboration with the special effects team led by supervisor Dominic Tuohy and veteran creature effects supervisor Neal Scanlan to bring Ron Howard's vision to the screen.

"I think we pulled out every trick in the book on this film, and developed a few new ones of our own," explains Bredow. "We took some of the oldest visual effects techniques, such as front- and rear-screen projection, and updated them with the latest technology. This allowed us to film 360-degree environments on the stunning Dryden's Yacht set. We also used the latest laser projection technology to surround the Falcon cockpit with screens. When we immersed the cast into hyperspace, they were actually experiencing it like you would on a simulator ride, only at feature-film quality that worked in-camera."

The team combined rod puppets and creature costumes with state-of-the-art digital effects to introduce new characters such as the droid L3-37 and Rio to the Star Wars universe. "We made every effort to capture as much in-camera as possible, not only for the creatures and environments but also the incredible vehicles in the film," says Bredow. "Those are real 550 horsepower speeders where VFX removed the wheels and enhanced the world around it. Even L3 was Phoebe in a practical costume on set for all the parts we didn't create digitally. We had it all there right in front of us when we shot, lit by Bradford's beautiful lighting and ready for Ron's direction. Our visual effects team could work from that base reality, always having the photography to ground the shots."

"It was such a privilege to take fans into the Star Wars universe and visit a point in time which, while familiar, will be wholly new to them. To do that we endeavored to utilize the best combination of modern technology and a 1970s filmmaking aesthetic," says Bredow. "It's one of the things that makes 'Solo' so unique."

MUSIC MIX

"Solo: A Star Wars Story" continues the tradition of inspiring, mood-setting music that has been the hallmark of Star Wars films from the opening of A New Hope in 1977. This time, composer John Powell (the "Bourne" trilogy) steps up to score the film and adapt John Williams' original Star Wars music, with the legendary Williams also contributing "Han's Theme."

Describing his approach to the score, Powell says, "There is a language that John Williams uses in the Star Wars films, and I've tried to live up to the quality of what he has done before by keeping form and structure within the score and following the storytelling as honestly and elegantly as possible."

He adds, "There is a lot of thematic material from the original movies that I used that are not specific to Han. They're specific to the Millennium Falcon, TIE fighters and the Empire. Those types of things are very useful, as they're all part of the language we know. There are lots of other characters and ideas within the film that I wrote tunes and melodies for, so it's a mixture of new tunes, a new piece by John Williams and some of the old material."

For Powell, there was also a mandate for scoring "Solo," as he explains: "My love for the scores that John had originally written meant that I was thoroughly familiar with them, and the filmmakers let me understand that I essentially needed to score a heist film. Yes, it was a Star Wars film, but it's really a heist film and character piece."

The film allowed Powell to paint a different picture of the Star Wars universe. "In this particular case we're dealing with sort of an underworld with pirates and gangsters," says Powell. "There's no quasi-religious nature to the film at all. It's kind of closer to 'The Italian Job' meets 'The Godfather.' I tried to take everything I loved about the series to help tell this story and explain everything we thought we knew about the characters."

In "Solo: A Star Wars Story," the Force is not present, so an overarching theme had to be created. Powell informs, "The hole that is left in a Star Wars movie by not having the Force must be filled with the idea of love being the Force. It's about the good and the bad side of love, and about friendship, family, hope and wanting to be part of something."

To score the film at the famous Abbey Road sound studio in London, Powell used the same size orchestra that Williams used. "I felt we needed to stay in that world to make sure that everything was kind of matching," comments Powell. "So it's a normal-size orchestra, about 98 players in total. The only unusual thing I added to the mix was a Bulgarian women's choir, which has a very unusual chorale sound, and I think it's very effective in the movie. It represents the exotic nature of the marauder gang. It's a beautiful sound that I used in a very aggressive way."

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

"Solo: A Star Wars Story" offers viewers a chance to ride along on Han Solo's roller-coaster journey of self-discovery, which director Ron Howard describes as "about a character defining himself and the relationships that will form him."

He adds, "It utilizes Star Wars and the galaxy in really cool ways, but you don't have to know anything about it. You don't have to have seen another movie, read a comic book, seen a cartoon or played a video game. This is about Han discovering himself and the universe."

And what can audiences expect from Han's journey? Producer Kathleen Kennedy is happy to answer: "They can expect to have fun, laugh a lot and fall in love with Han and Chewie all over again, or for the first time."

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