Award-winning cinematographer Bradford Young spoke about his experience on the set of Solo: A Star Wars Story. The unique thing is that young shot both Lord and Miller’s version and the theatrical cut from Ron Howard.
Young’s got one hell of a pedigree, with films like Arrival, Selma, A Most Violent Year, and When They See Us under his belt. The Lenser almost didn’t take the job.
Young sat down with the Team Deakins podcast to talk about how he initially turned the job down because the film wasn’t in his wheelhouse:
“Before I even spoke to the directors, I was like, ‘no way,’ and then I spoke to the directors [Lord & Miller] and they explained to me, ‘this is what we’re trying to do,’ and at the time they were really referencing [Robert Altman’s] ‘McCabe and Mrs. Miller.’
Then I was like, ‘Oh! Ok, that’s one of my favorites.’ I felt like that was in conversation with some of the stuff I’d been doing.”
Solo: A Star Wars Story‘s production saw a fair share of controversy. The biggest one being the firing of the directing duo of Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Director Ron Howard took the reins over:
“It was [hard], and that was playing up with my fears, ‘they just hatchet people, and the next person comes in!’ But I always understood that Kathleen Kennedy and [the late Lucasfilm producer Allison Shearmur], they don’t play around. They’re about the art.
It was great to understand there were folks in the process that were about the art [and] wanted to make sure this film has this feeling.
‘We don’t wanna lose this, because this is what people count on from these films.’ That was really refreshing for me.
When they changed directors, I thought for a second, ‘maybe I should go?. But then I was like, ‘Nah, I need to stay,’ because we had done so much work to develop this look, my team and I. The film needed it.”
Young went on to say that Ron Howard was easy to work with. Howard was aware of the fragility of the production in the wake of the change:
“When Ron [Howard] came in. The thing that is so lovely about Ron, is that, it wasn’t like he was, ‘I got it figured out!,’ he was very open too.
He was also like, ‘Man, I’m also like, what’s going on??’ [laughs] So we were both equally like [taken aback].
I remember once we had three cameras on a sequence, and it was great to look at Ron, and he looks at me, and be like, ‘Man, three cameras, this is crazy, what are we doing??’ I had a great time.”
Young went on to say that he didn’t get any pushback about staying on when Howard took over:
“I had full support, which made me want to stay even more.”
Solo: A Star Wars Story‘s visually darker and uses shadow differently than most other Star Wars films.
Unfortunately the film had the misfortune of hitting theaters just a few months after The Last Jedi, the most-controversal film of the lot.
