Using Sound to Link Scenes: ANDOR

this post contains spoilers for Andor Season 2 episode 11

and thus hints at what has come before

This beat in Andor 2.11 "Who Else Knows?" comes within a much longer sequence.

The last few scenes have traced Heert (Jacob James Beswick) doing rudimentary cop work including bullying a hospital employee trying to find who broke in. Meanwhile the ‘culprit’ Kleya (season-revelation Elizabeth Dulau) runs home.

As they each race against time, the scenes begin intercutting more and more rapidly between their actions. This clip is the culmination of the sequence where Kleya sets up communication equipment as Heert searches surveillance footage for her.

Let’s explore how the edit uses sound, and why it’s so effective.

Aesthetically Pleasing

Even though most of the buttons are made up and switches don’t matter, it’s fun to see Kleya and the hospital tech operating the broadcast equipment which calls to mind old-school film editing benches in a sequence which is so carefully edited.

Though the sound mix through the whole sequence is great, I specifically said “the edit’s use of sound” because the scene cuts to the rhythm of the distress call.

As Kleya broadcasts, first the edit of Andor itself, then the ‘loop reset’ of the surveillance footage Heert is watching, are cut in time to the the electronic transmission beeps:

Thematically Linking

Okay this is a fun bit of cleverness, but how does ‘cutting to the sound’ actually make the intercutting work better?

The edit directly ties Kleya’s distress signal to Heert’s search; her S.O.S. matches the footage which brings her pursuers closer. The audio and visuals working together like that emphasises how her urgency is justified, and though she doesn’t know what’s happening in that video bank across the city, she has a pretty good guess.

But no matter how much we want to scream hurry, hurry at the screen, she can only go so fast; she has to send out the signal in a specific measured time to convey its message. Using that rhythm to ‘lay the track’ for the edit is a wonderful bit of direction, editing, and mixing.

At the end of the scene, the closeup of the Kleya’s broadcast equipment’s blinking red light crossfades to a wide shot of the sky over Yavin IV, showing where she’s trying to be heard across the void of space.