ILM VFX Supervisor Jeff White Returning for Transformers 4

While we have not heard much on the Transformers 4 front, it doesn't mean things are not in motion. In another interview with Collider, ILM Visual Effects Supervisor discussed his team's Oscar nomination for The Avengers and commented briefly on starting pre-production on Transformers 4. No details provided but still interesting to read his perspective on the franchise. His interested in his take on working on The Avengers, the entire interview is here.

Where do you go from here? What are you working on next?
WHITE: I’m starting pre-production on Transformers 4, which has some really exciting stuff in it. And then, we’ll see what the future holds. Certainly, if the opportunity came to work on the next Avengers, I’d definitely jump at it.

When you work on sequels, do you always get nervous about topping the last film?
WHITE: We worked so hard to get to where we were on The Avengers 1. Now, we’ve got this basis built for The Hulk and we learned a lot, along the way. We’re actually really excited about all the things that we could push forward on, in the future. It is always fun that, with the Marvel projects, everyone seems to want to one-up one another. With Iron Man, he already had two great ways of putting the suit on and taking it off, but for The Avengers, Joss came up with two entirely new ways that were even cooler. That’s certainly part of any sequel. It’s gotta be bigger and better. But, the great thing about Joss is that it won’t just be a bigger film to be bigger. He’ll really dive deeper into the characters. That’s what’s so fun about working with him.

Does it feel the same way with Transformers?
WHITE: Oh, yeah! We thought Transformers 1 was the hardest thing we’d ever done, and then we did Transformers 2. And then, Transformers 3 came and Michael [Bay] came up with this sequence where the building is falling over and they’re inside of it. He said he came up with it while he was doing stomach crunches. But, it’s great! We don’t want to do the work that we’ve done before. We love trying to figure out the problems and create imagery that people haven’t seen before.

You also did that with Transformers: The Ride.
WHITE: Yeah, it’s really fun! I just went on it about a month ago, now that it’s opened in Los Angeles, and it’s nice ‘cause I finally had had a little separation from it. It ended up being about a two-year process to create it. To then go on it with people who had never been involved, everybody screams at the same place. It was a lot of fun. Typically, you’ve got a movie theater screen and, even if it’s 3D, you’re bound by a frame. All of a sudden, we had no borders, so we could do a lot of fun things in 3D with that. The beauty of it is that you sit in a car with 11 other people and you get that immediate feedback. It’s funny, they took us up in the rafters and it’s literally like the car drives in, everybody screams, and then the car drives out, every time. It’s cool to see that it has the desired effect.