Martyn Doust

Martyn Doust is the prop master for Andor, a live-action Disney+ original series.
==Biography==
Martyn Doust worked on every Star Wars film made by Disney, and he worked as the prop master for the Andor television series. From the beginning, Doust knew he would be busy working on the show. Under showrunner Tony Gilroy's guidance, the show was meant to be more grounded and real than other Star Wars projects and go to more locations. Doust and his team knew they were going to visit many new worlds, and they wanted each world to have its own distinct aesthetic, look, and feel. They wanted the props to look like they lived in each world.
From the beginning, Doust's team knew they needed a cool and iconic blaster for Cassian Andor. To make the blaster identifiable even as a silhouette, Doust was initially inspired by Han Solo's DL-44. The team looked at many different designs and the way the original blasters were built for Star Wars. They then looked into the Expanded Universe and computer games, leading to the K-16 Bryar Pistol from Star Wars Battlefront, which the team presented to Doust. He thought the blaster was very cool and small enough that Andor could hide it. Doust felt it was important to justify the blaster's big front end, so he had the idea that the blaster overheated from prolonged use, so users had to flip the center section, which installed a cold barrel into the front end. This functionality was built into the actual prop by the prop makers. The extra features and design elements added by the prop designers necessitated a new model number, which was the MW-20 Bryar pistol. 
An early draft of the script described the NS-9 Starpath Unit as "a piece of navigational tech," and it said the Starpath had an unbroken seal. The item needed to look valuable, fit in a small bag, and look "very Imperial." Doust viewed the Starpath as the MacGuffin and what brings Andor and Luthen Rael together. Doust's team knew that functionality was important in deciding what the Starpath would look like, so he had a theory that it was the part of the navigation computer that plots the path through the stars. Doust incorporated the Starpath's unbroken seal into its backstory, and he reasoned that a broken seal made hyperspace routes unreliable, which he thought adds to the value. To make the prop, Doust found what he called an "an old piece of military junk" from the Ministry of Defence with handles that he thought would be plugged into a larger machine. The device formed the basis for the Starpath, and it was then refined, which included the addition of platinum- and gold-looking elements and the Imperial cog.
Doust viewed the cereal called Crunchies as a very mundane, everyday piece of life. He added a bowl and spoon because he viewed these as basic parts of cereal. Doust knew that the shots of the Time Grappler striking an anvil with hammers had to be something really iconic for Ferrix due to being the village clock. Per Tony Gilroy's instructions, the prop had to actually work and make the right sound. The team looked at hammers from different cultures and disciplines before ultimately being inspired by front-heavy Japanese hammers. They gave the team the idea for the shape, and they then scaled the shape up. Doust wanted to stay away from traditional versions when he worked on the anvil. The final design was based on a musical anvil, which was scaled up and a few more layers were added. Doust viewed the noise made by the anvil as its purpose, and he believed the form should relate to the purpose. The team spent a long time working on the anvil and hammers because Doust knew they would be an important part of Ferrix. The props were given Star Wars design flourishes and had the looks finalized.
When the prop department was working on a metal detector used by a bouncer at a brothel, they initially had a modern scanner, but Doust disliked it because it felt too current. Doust instead wanted a prop that looked like it was from the 1970s and could be held in one hand. After looking at security devices, Doust was influenced by an electric carving knife, which had the right handle shape, was ergonomically designed, could be held in one hand, and had a big button on the top. Doust thought that the scanner prop spoke to the show's methodology in prop building and connects to how props were built for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. When the Andor trailer debuted on May 26, 2022, Doust was unsurprised to see the anvil and hammers featured very prominently. Doust liked seeing Diego Luna, Cassian Andor's actor, flick the wrist and subtly hit the button in the show.
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Category:Andor production staff