Monday, April 18, 2011

Michael Bay Press Preview Transcript

/Film has posted the entire 7200 word transcript form the interviews that Michael Bay participated in when he screened portions of the film for the entertainment press. He briefly spoke of Frank Welker so can call that official confirmation he returns as Soundwave and mentioned a new character called "Brains" that could be the Einstein character (with Mercedes-Benz E550 alt mode). Bay goes into a great level of detail about the complications of shooting in 3D, experience of filming in Chicago, working with actors, film editing, sound design and more. Below are segments from the transcript but if want to read the whole thing, click here. Thanks to Winston for the link.
Question: Does this have a feeling of closure, this chapter?
Michael: I think so. But it still can be rebooted. Not with Shia. He’s turning grumpy in his old age.

Question: Out of curiosity, shooting in 3D, what did it make you rethink about axis in motion and progression…
Michael: A lot. I mean you’ve got to watch the panning because it strobes too much. You’ve got a guy on the set who’s got a control where when the camera goes like this, he can turn the 3D almost off. He sits there and it’s like if the robot comes close, we tell him what’s going on in the shot and he can kinda try to do where you want the eye to kind of look. But I can’t always check over him because there’s a lot going on on the set. So anyway, that was my process for doing it. I was able to shot about 60% native 3D, and then you’ve got 15% of all digital shots that were 3D, and then the rest is converted close-up stuff.

Question: I was going to say it kind of reinvigorates the franchise, because you’re talking about that kind of loss of a spectacle. So what do you bring A-game wise in terms of what we’ve never seen before?
Michael: Well, I’ve got a lot of scenes you’ve never seen before. There’s a lot of action stuff that I’ve never done before that’s pretty cool. It’s like some agent said, “Bay’s a competitor.” And what he meant by that is a lot of people on the third one will just check out and just get a paycheck. It’s like I’ve been working every day for two years, every single day, because I want to make up for the second one and I want to leave this franchise as best I can. I’ve had a great run, fun time doing it. So really, it was a fun shoot. It really was.

Question: You spent eight months working on this script with Ehren. What do you feel you were able to do on this movie that you couldn’t do on the first one? You’ve said the robots have more character.
Michael: They do. And it’s much more of a back story. This is a very involved robot story.

Question: The twins were kind of divisive characters. Even if you liked the movie you maybe didn’t like them so much because they were goofy.
Michael: Yeah, we got rid of that. There’s two small characters in the entire movie. They start out a bit goofy but they have a huge comeback. And they’re fun.

Question: New characters?
Michael: One is new, named Brains.

Question: Do you kill the twins?
Michael: They’re not even in it. Not even in it.

Question: What about staging the city battle in this and how that’s your big third act. City mayhem seems to be something that filmmakers are typically afraid of. I have a friend who’s fond of pointing out that every Marvel movie ends in a Vancouver forest because they don’t want to…
Michael: It’s very expensive. It’s hard to navigate. Cities don’t want you there. The whole problem with the first movie is I wanted to shoot here in Los Angeles to work with my crew, because they were going to send me to Toronto. And you couldn’t get a long enough city block. We were able to get three blocks two weekends. I mean this city keeps kicking us out. It’s terrible. So I had to use Universal back lot. I had to use a little of downtown till we got kicked out. But Chicago, we worked the city…I don’t know what we did. We didn’t give bribes, nothing. But I met with the mayor and his general council and I became very friendly with them. And he gave us like anything we wanted. I mean we shut down…our first day there we had 12 blocks. 12 blocks! That’s crazy! And we did one of the craziest things I’ve ever filmed, which is these wing-suit guys. You know those guys on 60 Minutes? You see those guys on the cliffs? I’m like, “I’m writing a scene for those guys.” We have this great scene where they fly between the buildings. We had to block off a mile and a half, and they made turns around buildings, very close. But the city allowing us to do that. Jumping off the Sears Tower flying through the streets. I mean that stuff’s like unheard of.

Question: Just the general shape and tone. But in terms of like what people are doing, what they’re wearing, what happens…
Michael: There’s a scene where she’s kidnapped and they go to Chicago, which they find at morning it’s been obliterated and surrounded by alien ships, and they’re kind of…he’s taking a small little group in to try to get her back. Then there’s the group of guys trying to come in and join some of our heroes on the ground. They’re kind of doing a conversion…they’re trying to sneak in low. They try to put some air power over here to distract the ships. There’s a scene where they’ve got some new robot tech…there’s like a cute character in the movie, a transformer, an autobot, and he’s invented this device, alien in nature, he’s given it to Shia. He gives him two things, like a stick bomb and this kind of grapple glove thing. And then we go to…there’s a section in a building where they’ve gone in and broken… a lot of buildings have been broken and shot up. A tiny bit of that. Then we go to a 3D reel.

Question: You’ve said that the first movie was about a boy and his dog and a boy and his first car…
Michael: The heart of this one is it’s kids nowadays, they want to matter. It’s about getting a job—one of the most daunting things in all our lives. And I had to explain this to Shia because he had a job as a boy. I said, “Shia, this is one of the biggest seminal moments in life where you go to either college or high school, whatever, and you’re getting a job.” We all remember that. It’s about Shia wanting to matter. So it’s a small group of people. That’s the heart and soul.

Question: His parents are such a big audience pleaser. Even the audience I set in on with Transformers 2, they loved the parents. How much are they involved in this plot this time?
Michael: They’re not in the end at all. They’re just to set up a bit. And they kinda tail out right towards the middle.

Question: How much time do you spend with the FX team working on making the transformations look good and not just cheating them through speed? Is that something you ramp up through film?
Michael: We just had this conversation yesterday. “This is not good enough. This is not complex enough. It’s too simplistic.” So they had to go back to the drawing board and break it apart more. Because it’s very crazy math to do this. It’s really complicated. We’ve got someone there who just defies your eye of how you’re working…And a lot of it’s not cheating. Some of it is. It’s a whole math game. A whole fun part of working on this movie is working with the animation team. Really, it’s one of the joys of the movie.

41 comments:

  1. I CAN'T WAIT

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  2. So Carly gets kidnapped by Decepticons and a small group of soldiers with Autobots try to save her? And that's it the whole movie... geez...
    And Sam's parents are there just for a few small scenes and nothing more... it wasn't enough to get rid of Mikaela Banes character in a plain stupid way,yep. And Linkin Park is just doing a remix and no new songs for the movie.
    And then the whole useless 3D gimmick thing they are working way behind schedule and at ILM already hated Bay now they hate him more.
    All of this just looks awful.
    This movie is a big fail.

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  3. @Anonymous 4/18/2011 3:42 AM: this movie looks bad. It looks cheap.

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  4. Shia knew this movie had big fail written all over it but he still needed his check so despite not liking the mess production and Bay did on it he didn't quit. Actually if he quit he would have eased things plot and characters wise a lot.

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  5. ^The complaints were all written by the same person. Lol! Get a life

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  6. I bet if this film fail( I hope not) Shia Labeouf will say in the future how much this film sucks and he will start about Michael Bay and will finish about Rosie. I just think that. He did it with ROTF and with other of his movies like Indiana Jones.

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  7. let's not feed the troll. just ignore it

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  8. So many trolls, trollin'.


    Trollface.jpg

    Anyway, this movie looks to be great. I can't wait.

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  9. @Anonymous 4/18/2011 7:59 AM: you must be a frustrated gay guy. Go to a psychiatrist you need one.

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  10. I was actually kind of partially semi-onboard with this movie until I hear things like "cute character".... "fun character"..... "character named Brains?"

    thats my big wtf, if this was really trying to makeup for ROTF then leave out any chance of cornyness and stop wasting the audiences time >_>

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  11. Did he say Brains?????????????????????????????
    WTF????!!!!

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  12. Don't you remember Brains. He appears in Rising Storm comics.

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  13. I am getting really excited to see DOTM. I know the best way to be dissappointed is to get your hopes up I'm really expecting a lot from this movie. If it lets me down I'll be the first to admit it, you'll know its me by the fact that I don't hide behind anonymity when I post.

    Some people on this blog take every shred of news regarding DOTM and find something negative about it to the point of making grand assumptions about things they don't really know about.
    Do some people on here actually want DOTM to fail? Is that why they seem unwilling or unable to give the movie a chance. I can't imagine a transformer fan that doesn't want this movie to succeed. I don't like everything Bay does either but I'll be dammed if I'm going to root against the property. Give the movie a chance; don't hate it before you've seen 5 minutes of it.

    I can't imagine spending my time reading and posting about a movie that I am so sure wouldn't be any good; I would be miserable.

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  14. EAT MY SPERM ANONYMOUS!!! EAT IT NOW!

    Greetins from Mr Spankalot

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  15. Does anybody have Rising Storm 3? If someone has it could you tell if Silverbolt appears?


    Silverbolt.

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  16. Looking forward to seeing where Bay and the ILM people take TF3. The footage I have seen so far looks and sounds promising. I go by the footage and the feelings that footage elicits, and the feelings here for this film so far are good, so bring it on Bay.

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  17. According to past posts from Nelson, Brains is a little autobot that is friends with Q/the E550 Benz, not the Benz itself. Brains is probably a laptop or some sort of scientific component. The Benz is likely Wheeljack (introduced alongside Mirage in the comic) who has Brains as his helper. Brains and Wheelie are the 2 small characters that Bay is referring to, not the Blue Benz/Wheeljack.

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  18. Im wondering if the Anonymous who kept posting all the "fail" talk is Aredo from the IMDB board. I frequently visit there and he constantly said the movie would fail because Megan Fox wasn't in it. He'd also refer to 3D as a "cheap gimmic" and generally bad mouth the movie. Even if it's not him, this person is a sad individual and I pitty them. I wonder if he/she shall come on here and admit they were wrong if the movie doesn't fail.
    "ILM hate bay and hate him even more now." Hahaha! Please do share your source!
    Laughing at you, not with you ;)

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  19. While I am remotely optimistic, I have to brutally and honestly admit that I'm still skeptical, as the aforementioned interview did only a little to give me a reason not to be.
    Some of the points I agreed with: 1)Digital vs. Film - there's still a contrast ratio difference between the two; 2)showing more of what's going on in the shot and using a bigger shot size to show it; 3)working 6 months ahead - that's good; 4)showing Cybertron and working a little more on the robot characterization. At the same time, just because we are Transformers Fans doesn't mean that we should just PASSIVELY go along with everything that is being done/has been done/will be done with the franchise. We have a right to be critical.

    Yes, we know about the writer's strike, as Bay has hammered that point on ad infinitum. What is missing from that is an admission from him of the PART HE PLAYED (pun intended)in the failures and flaws of ROTF - basically, he is only blaming the writers and the situation, and refusing to acknowledge that he had anything to do with it. It was HIM that created the ROTF plot outline which Orci, Kurtzman, and Kreuger wrote the script from. It was Bay that created Skids and Mudflap (as pointed in an old interview with Orci & Kurtzman), and even said in an interview, that he wanted to, "create something funny for the kids". It was him that dictated that Devastator have testicles and some of the other trifling tired-ass stereotypes and failed attempts at humor. Now he's changing his tune about that. It's one thing to say something will be better, but when you refuse to acknowledge that you had a part in the previous thing not being the best it could be, that is a sign, to me, that there's still a problem.

    Also, how is it that Skids and Mudflap are not in the movie, when: A)Their alt-modes were on set; B)there were some ROTF toys that are coming out with the EXACT SAME HEAD AND FACE DESIGN, and then Bay himself says, (I'm paraphrasing but it's almost verbatim-->) C)"Well there are two goofy characters that start out goofy, but then they become more serious"????? Editing notwithstanding, I think he isn't giving us a straight answer on this.

    In closing, I'll say that Bay is a hell of an action sequence creator. However, the jury is still out deliberating on his ability to create the other aspects of a film . While things LOOK good, there is more to a good film than how it looks. If you buy a car that has a beautiful paint job, great detailing and shiny wheels, it doesn't mean that it will deliver when you put the key in the ignition. I'll continue checking things out and I may possibly wait until DOTM comes out on video to see it. If I end up not liking, I still have my own custom Transformers characters and stories to complete.

    AKA Sablebot@tfw2005.com

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  20. @Anonymous 4/18/2011 2:32 PM: dude, I know people working at ILM and they obviously wouldn't officially tell that Bay sucks but that is what they think..they hate him for real. They know his projects push the technical limits but they dislike Bay and they love Spielberg.
    They would get fired if they told anything about any producer/director officially, obviously. But that is what most of them would confirm you if you were friend with some of them.

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  21. Rosie > Megone

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  22. oh trolls ... you all make me Laugh ...

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  23. @Anonymous 4/18/2011 3:49 PM: only if you like trannies.

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  24. ^ You really have no life.

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  25. This movie have a lot of new robots, both, (decepticons and autobots) and a lot of new human characters too, Rosie, John Malcovich,Patrick Dempsey,Ken Jeong,Frances McDorman... In ROTF only Leo was new, how we're gonna know everyone??? how long is the movie, 4 hours????

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  26. @Anonymous 4/18/2011 5:08 PM: it's likely it might be shorter than the previous two to save on production costs and to meet release date, they are behind schedule and ILM is under pressure. I would say 130-135minutes.

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  27. @Anonymous 4/18/2011 4:59 PM: and you are here instead because you have no life too? Geez.. hypocrite people.

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  28. who wants rising storm 3?

    https://rapidshare.com/#!download|615tg|458013121|Transformers_-_Rising_Storm_03__of_04___2011___Both_Covers___GiantGreenGoat-DCP_.cbr|17454|R~EFDD6E884460DFCA989437FDF12268D6

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  29. hey anon guy so obsessed dat da film will fail without megan fox, tell me, who is your favorite transformer

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  30. @guy 4/18/2011 6:51 PM: maybe you and others here should realize that there a lot of disappointed fans of the first two movies that are going to dislike the mess on this third movie. Many blamed issues on the second movie that didn't exist at all, now that this third movie production clearly shows a lot of issues you are here defending it regardless and negating all its flaws. Why? Really why if you don't work for Paramount,uh?

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  31. i just asked who is your favorite transformer

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  32. @guy he said Duke Hazard is his favorite out of all three movies. Lol

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  33. that just proves hes not a real transfomers fan, bc he couldn't even tell me whos hes favorite

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  34. or maybe the anonymous that is posting the film was fail isn't looking at the boards right now.

    I however am looking forward to the movies. Having liked the previous two (despite the flaws in ROFL) am thinking this one will be good as well. I don't feel that Michael Bay has let us down yet on the Transformers series. I hope the twins are in there while they were stupid that was their part. These movies are going to have the goofy characters to kind of lighten the mood a little. I would like to have a "dark" Transformers movie but Michael Bay knows kids are going to see these as well so he has to be able to entertain them as well. He isn't just thinking "oh only Transformer fans are goign to see this" nope he knows there is going to be those of us that are fans from the 80's all the way up to younger generations.

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  35. Then there’s the group of guys trying to come in and join some of our heroes on the ground. They’re kind of doing a conversion…they’re trying to sneak in low. They try to put some air power over here to distract the ships. <--------------------- Aerialbots are here! Woohoo!

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  36. Brains is a small robot similar to a Robosapien if you've seen that toy, with dreadlock like components on his head. About 2 feet tall. I saw it on set, appears to be Wheeljack's assistant.

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  37. Are you sure Melissa? It could be the Air Force. I hope it's not the Air Force and what your saying is true. It would be cool with some Autobot jets.


    Silverbolt.

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  38. The giant worm is called "Dweller" He's Shockwave's minion. He is just as ruthless and evil as Shockwave. Shockwave travels in the tunnels dweller creates by boring into the earth. He sucks the life out of anything and everything he touches, he then uses that energy to destroy anything he wants. He's the perfect sidekick to the already menacing Shockwave

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  39. The worm thing is the thing that atach to shockwave..

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  40. brains is not the estien bot.he betraed the decepticons and bacame an autobot

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