My favorite Star Wars characters are the droids, and the best of them all is cantankerous C1-10P, or Chopper from Star Wars Rebels. Seems someone agrees with me, as Chopper was the one Rebels character to make the jump to live-action in Rogue One.
MovieWeb shares more backstory:
StarWars.com caught up with Lucasfilm Story Group's Matt Martin to chat about the exciting Easter eggs scattered through the movie's two hour runtime. He actually had the prevlage of operating Chopper while the droid's scene was shot on Yavin 4. He says this about the experience.
"It was really surreal. I wasn't actually there for the purpose of operating a droid. The Rogue One production team asked to have Chop shipped over and we were more than happy to do so. An animated character in a live action movie…and it's OUR Chopper! Awesome! A few weeks later I was sent over to help produce some behind-the-scenes content for StarWars.com and it happened to be when they were shooting in the Yavin set. I saw my buddy Chopper sitting there with all the other droids, as well as some of my friends who were brought onto the production to build and operate the droids. When Chopper was called in for one of the scenes, Lee Towersey on the droid team just handed me Chop's control and said, "You know how to do this, right?" You can't really tell since it's so brief in the film, but the scene was actually really intense. It was the most challenging droid-driving I've ever done. There had to be at least 30 extras running around, as well as a little personnel transport thing, and I had to make sure Chop didn't crash into any of them or impede their motion. It was very nerve-wracking at first, especially because I was in a position where I couldn't see very well. Eventually I found my way up onto a gantry and things were a bit easier. I'm pretty sure I never ruined a take, but one time Genevieve O'Reilly [Mon Mothma] accidentally bumped into the droid, she looked around, spotted me holding the control on the gantry and mouthed, "I'm sorry!" I'd expect nothing less from a former senator. So thanks to Lee and the rest of the crew for allowing me to be a VERY small part of the production without any sort of qualifications. It'll be one of the highlights of my life, for sure."
