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Explaining the Special Effects Behind Transformers
ntmokey writes "Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the special effects behind the Transformers movie, including some exclusive shots from Paramount Pictures. Apparently, using real cars as models presented some interesting problems for the folks at Industrial Light and Magic, who had to figure out how a recognizable chunk of steel can fold into robot. In the end, the solution was the development team getting hands-on in the auto shop. And lots of grease."
Actually, I thought that this was the best Bay movie I've ever seen. He still hasn't learned from Pearl Harbor that not every movie needs a love story, but I think that it was still a very good movie.
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..simply hired the guys who did the Citroen adverts.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
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Sure, you can explain the special effects, but can you explain that anguished feeling of betrayal after discovering that Bumblebee is a Chevy Camaro? Can you!? Rest in peace, my childhood...
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
What did you expect, Michael Bay directed it? I won't even bother watching it, I typically don't pay any attention to mainstream films these days anyway. However, from the trailer it seemed that if nothing else the new Transformer designs were way too complicated looking and seriously lacking the practicality of before. I wonder what other piece of childhood nostalgia they'll ruin before the year's over? They already damned the Ninja Turtles and Transformers within the past several months; both of which already have far superior films from almost twenty years ago.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Et tu anonymous blogging internet marketoids?
I saw the movie on Monday with 16 other friends. Every single person (even the girls who didn't grow up with the cartoon) enjoyed the movie. The only major complaint was that a lot of the action scenes (especially in the beginning) were not comprehensible. The camera would focus too far in and move around a lot, and it was difficult to tell who was fighting and what was going on.
The movie was almost 2.5 hours long, and although some scenes were a bit too long, overall the movie was very enjoyable (I looked at my watch when the movie was over and was very surprised).
Apparently, using real cars as models presented some interesting problems for the folks at Industrial Light and Magic, who had to figure out how a recognizable chunk of steel can fold into robot
Believe it or not, I think they used some sort of "computer" at some point to actually do the special effects.
I looked at my watch when the movie was over and was very surprised....because I wasn't wearing one when I went in.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bf1IP8qrsyM This is when Hollywood fails. If you into dancing and ice skating cars - who really needs to see a film , btw these are shown as tv adverts in europe.
Sure it isn't traditional Transformers, but it is definitely an visual spectacular. You have to remember, they had to write a movie for people that had never heard of Transformers, and somehow make it plausible to today's critical 12 year old. This might be a bit of a letdown for the generation that grew up on Transformers, but you have to remember, that generation is between 22 and 32 now. Anyone younger just won't get it. And so I think they did a great job, even for this guy who still has his old Starscream toy.
Ok, you didn't like it. There are a lot more who did.
I really enjoyed it too. The problem is the nerd vocal minority who whinge and bitch about every little thing.
"OMG ITS NOT LIKE THE OLD CARTOONS THAT I WATCHED WHEN I WAS 8 BACK BEFORE INTERNETS AND BEFORE I SPENT ALL MY TIME ONLINE BITCHING ABOUT HOLLYWOOD HAS DESTROYED MY CHILDHOOD OMG"
pfft. It's a fun movie. It has cars, robots, boobs, car chase & explosions. What more could you want.
Get over it.
An old girlfriend of mine always thought life was full of drama. If you kissed her she had to turn it into one big long sloppy "kiss at sunset" kind of thing. I found it really annoying, because she would always have the mentality of "oh baby, let's make this long and last forever" and in my mind all I could think was "sit on my face, bitch!"
I think there's a similar problem in Hollywood: we have a group of people obsessed with drama (rather than telling a story) to the point that we end up with a bunch of scenes that are nothing but overly dramatic and annoying. They've got drama soaking their brains and all I can think is "sit on my face, bitch!"
Well, maybe that's more my problem since I lack a girlfriend currently. Still, I think the point stand: Hollywood needs to give out free women at movies.
I disagree. Half the people who didn't like it complain that there was too much time spent on plot development and the other half complain there wasn't enough. It had a half-way decent plot that was carried by some really kick ass action sequences and some truly humorous moments (like the "20 minutes devoted to finding the glasses in the house", the bulk of which was actually the autobots amusingly trying to hide in the backyard). Seriously, it's the Transformers, what did you expect Dostoevsky?
....that they are going to elaborate on the electrical device?
*shrug*
I guess that identifies me as a geek, then?
Powerful is he who overpowers his temptations.
I thought the movie was superb. One of the few movies I've been too that got a ovation from the audience at the end.
It was a mindless action movie and there is nothing wrong with that. Certain "critics" act like every movie needs to have some deep philosophical meaning.
I wanted to see giant space alien robots beat the crap out of each other and the movie delivered in spades. You claim that most of the action shots are already in trailers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Apparently you missed the last half of the entire movie.
To me it's as if you went to a fireworks show and are now complaining that they didn't take the time to explain the type and origin of each and every shell that was ignited.
Myself, I prefer to just enjoy the show. If I want the meaning of life I'll pick up Kant.
And yes I made up the word actionny. We're talking about Hollywood here.
I didn't suggest a CitroenBot Transformer, just using the guys who made the ads.
Anyway, I wouldn't call a Camaro beautiful. Brutal & unsubtle maybe, but then that fits in with the Transformers ethos.
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I was talking about "action shots" in general, nothing specific about this movie. Sometimes the action shots are so close that all we can see is a huge full-screen blur.
Then there's the camera shot length. If you keep switching the point of view around, make it last at least 3 or 4 seconds so we actually know what we're looking at, and from where.
I thought the story for Transformers was pure dreck. Most of it made little sense. It felt like the story was written by a 13 year old. It's sad when a cartoon makes more sense than a live action movie. Huge portions were pointless and completely irrelevant to the main storyline. It was pure Michael Bay crapola. He even managed to squeeze in hints of a goofy love story.
That said, anything with the Transformers was awesome. It was immensely entertaining watching them transform and battle. It was good enough that I came away satisfied despite all the crap.
I generally liked the robot designs, although not so much Megatron. And the small Transformer was obnoxious. Why they couldn't have Rumble or something is beyond me. My main problem with all the Transformers is that they were far too complicated. They all had these tiny moving parts and coupled with Michael Bay's penchant for twitchy cameras it made it difficult to sometimes follow the action. There were times where I couldn't tell if I was watching an arm, a leg or a head. And when the robots were intertwined it was even worse. This was particularly bad for the Decepticons because they were so monochromatic.
I thought it was funny when the small robot, made up of a good deal of very resilient steel of some sort transforms into a small stereo and this woman carries him around like it's no big deal.
The Popular Science article does little more than serve as an advertisement for this movie. "The Best Special Effects Ever?" That's what they imply every time they have an article on some new effects-laden movie. I agree, the effects were very good, except when an actor occassionally wasn't looking in right the quite direction or really acting at the right moment. But they were great.
However, for me, the best special effects are those that don't remind me they're special effects. And for that I'd probably have to go back to the earlier Star Wars movies, or perhaps 2001. Nevertheless, I did enjoy Transformers. I do think the story would have been far better had they just followed the story in the cartoons more closely.
Two words: Michael Bay.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Wait a minute though, the movie was targeted at the 22-32 generation. Go take a look at the IMDB reviews and watch the trailers. For fun, watch the trailers for Starship Troopers and Robocop at the same time. I can't find the link now, but I read about 6 weeks ago that it initially had an R, until strings were pulled to get it back to PG-13.
All of which means that my 9 year old son and his friends aren't going to go see it, which is a shame because they're bigger fans than I ever was. I guess we'll just rent the 1985 movie again.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
I was extremely dissappointed in the film. But it's a must see disappointment. The spectacle is worth it alone.
When you see scenes like this during a moment that was far from funny, I wondered where they were taking this movie. That scene includes (in the movie) a fantastic long shot of a gunship firing and circling on the robot, but to mix it with camp comedy is a tragic mistake for American cinema.
The portrayal of a top secret government agency as keystone cops and a FBI raid that might as well have included the 3 Stooges and some Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld music just to top it off was well out of place. The film goes past campy then immediately is supposed to draw you back into the seriousness of the moment.
I'm not a Bay hater. I like his style, he has an energy to his shots and his films show the budget on screen. Having said that, Pearl Harbor sucked. What had the potential and formula to be a great film (love triangles classically have been the best stories. Look at any Opera) ended up being a crappy chick flick with bombs.
I realized why this movie had the final cut it has and why the producers would let this 144 minute movie that should have been trimmed by 30 minutes get a global release; the international markets.
Show US goverment agencies as idiots, American computer hackers fit the stereotype that they do nothing but play videogames and live at home with their mother, the pee jokes will go over well in Japan, there is an Austrailian that is smarter than the US Department of Defense, and the action scenes should please everyone.
Michael Bay made a movie with a little something for everyone; I just which that the US cut was 30 minutes shorter. You could really rename this movie "A Boy and his Car", cut the movie to reflect it as there is plenty of footage and it would be a pretty good movie.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
That's a major problem in a lot of recent movies. It's like some idiot in Hollywood is teaching that "if 95% of the screen moves, people will think it is more actionny."
Agreed. There's basicly two forms of shooting:
1) The "in persona" shooting
2) The "godlike" shooting
The first is great for movies where you're trying to sell someone's story. Doesn't mean you can't overview shots, but that's really more like setting up the scene. E.g. "Saving private Ryan". Here it's perfectly acceptable to be handheld and shaky, lose focus and jump trying to find what to film.
The second is when you're like setting up the shots, with cameras convieniently placed at optimum angles all the time. You can go down the battlefield, but you're still an observer optimally placed. Example: Witch-King battle in LotR.
Then there's the Hollywood version - you're not anyone in particular, but you move and flash around like some crazy guy in "Deja vu" trying to capture a shot before you miss it. What the hell is the point? You're not trying to present one individual's confused view. You're just showing a lot of garbage, that's all.
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...that it would've been more interesting, most likely.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can't go to "special effects" movies anymore. With the advance of digital technology it seems there is no gimmick that gets left out of a movie. "Whiz Bang" movies today reminds me of a 13 year old girl starting to using make-up and who just packs all sorts of junk on her face. It was Michelangeo who said its not what gets put into a work of art that makes it great but what gets left out. Too many movies pack on layers of audio visual junk that cause the sum of the film to be less than its parts. The more "real" they try to make things look the phonier they look too me. The gimmicks stand out on their own as if in relief, and they dont even blend into scene or movie quite often. So much money gets spent making scenes with these gimmicks that I think people get reluctant to leave them out and they just over-inflate the films run times. Scenes of secondary import to the story become too long because there is some special effect. The worst for me are the sound effects. I never heard so much excessive, synthetic noise pollution in my life. I don't know how people can spend money at theaters anymore all things considered. First a patron gets pelted with 20 minutes of ads and trailers and then (if its a FX movie) get assaulted with over-cooked AV. Thank God for DVDs with a remote.
Special Effects are on set. Visual Effects are post production CGI, compositing, etc.
A special effect is a car being rigged to explode on set. A visual effect is a giant 4 story CG robot kicking that car.
We're two entirely seperate industries. Thanks for your interest however!
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Some years ago, when morphing was new, I was over at Pacific Data Images. An unhappy young woman was seated at a display, with a picture of a car's front in one window and a tiger's face in another. She was trying to come up with a set of control points for the morph. It just wasn't working.
You can morph anything to anything; no matter what points you pick, the start and end states will be the input images. Keeping it from looking stupid is the hard part.
The trend today is to do the tough morphs behind the scenes; the parts in front are moving around without too much distortion, while the stuff that's changing in blatantly unrealistic ways is obscured. This is a cheat, but that's how Hollywood works.
Right now, effects technology is ahead of screenwriting. With a big enough budget, you really can do anything on screen. But look at the action movies coming out: Spiderman 3. Pirates 3. Shrek 3. Die Hard 4. Harry Potter 5. And last year's Rocky 6. Not much originality there.
I get the impression that that scene is actually not meant to be as comedy value as it would seem - that actually happened during the US Invasion of Grenada in 1984 - ground forces were pinned down in the Governor-Generals mansion on the island, unable to contact the fire support aircraft overhead nor other units to request support. In the end, one of the soldiers placed a credit card call to Fort Bragg in the US in order to request a fire support mission and he got the same run around by the operator.
Volkswagen wouldn't allow it. They don't want to be associated with war. Given the origins of the original Beetle, can you really blame them?