Dark of the Moon VFX From Digital Domain

The Society of Digital Artists website has posted an interesting article with key members of the Digital Domain crew that helped created the visual effects used in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Digital Domain was bought by Michael Bay after the first movie but has a long history working in Hollywood. Much like with Revenge of the Fallen, the company focused on certain characters and scenes while ILM focused on the key Transformers and larger scale effects.

The crew help created Brains, Laserbeak and the cannon fodder Decepticon protoforms. Key scenes the crew worked on include "Bird Men" (the Chicago skydiving sequence) and the Space Bridge jump from the Moon to Washington, DC. Below are a few highlights but best to read the details in the full article here. Note that references to "stereo" is referring not to sound but creating everything in 3D.

Bird Men

Compositing Supervisor Lou Pecora's personal favorite sequence which stretched his team's skills was the Bird Men sequence where the swat team jumped out of the Osprey Choppers. "That was like a compositor's dream, [and nightmare]. This scene had all the old-school muscle in it," says Pecora. "There was so much rolling shutter footage on the helmet cams they wore when they actually jumped off Sears Towers in Chicago." The shots from those smaller cameras was so blurred, "it looked like it was shot through a bowl of Jello", he added.

Laserbeak

"Laserbeak was incredibly complex. He had to transform into several different objects, none of which he had the parts for," explains Dave Hodgins. "A lot of the transformers like Optimus Prime could morph into a truck cos he had truck parts on him, whereas Laserbeak would change with a quick motion blur."

Golden Rule

One of the golden rules during production of the two previous Transformers films, was that the Transformers were not allowed to spend much time standing in front of one another because they were such complex models, if that happened, it became hard to distinguish between the two.

Now that 3D stereo was a driving force on this third instalment, it was easier to read the motion and that rule didn't apply anymore. This was Hodgins' first 3D film and composing for stereo took a little while. The display of finished shots on a big cinema screen was different to the smaller studio screens. This took a little getting used to but the tools already in place at Digital Domain for stereo production made the transition a whole lot easier.