How the Transformers movies would work if I was in charge
All the fights from the first three Michael Bay Transformers movies supercut together. No plot. All is as it should be.
Michael Bay
Sorkin’s self plagiarism
This doesn’t really kill the magic for me. I stopped for a moment and pondered how I felt, but it’s not like he ripped off a speech from a movie and claimed it as his own… (unlike Anthony Albanese – an Australian politician who ripped off Sorkin).
Nor is he simply reusing the same footage over and over again – ala Michael Bay…
But some of the lines are oddly specific.
Why Michael Bay likes explosions
Correlation would seem to indicate causation in this case… even though cool guys don’t look at explosions.
There’s a bigger exploration of the phenomenon known as “Bayhem” here. Some further stats…
Bay and switch: Transformers scenes taken from older Michael Bay movies
Michael Bay could probably make a blockbuster just out of the off-cuts of his previous works, so it shocks me that he resorts to using bits that aren’t off-cuts at all. Well. Shocks is the wrong word. It’s just clever.
But you can’t get away with it in the YouTube age.
Transformers 3: More than meets the eye?
This week. Hopefully. Amongst a fairly packed schedule. I’ll watch Transformers 3.
Now, I’ve geeked out a bit over Transformers in the past, and some people have suggested that the movies are some sort of artistic nadir. Some have suggested that a third movie is scrapping the bottom of some well plumbed depths, to mix a metaphor. But not me. Because I realise that unlike Cars 2, this isn’t an automotive movie created to shift more merchandise. This is an automotive movie (featuring battling alien robots no less) that is created from the merchandise. Inspired by toys. It’s completely different. It’s not selling out to the corporate masses – it’s the natural conclusion of a market predicated on convergence of revenue streams.
Not to mention the artistic merit, and Michael Bay’s status as the maestro in his particular field. Not convinced. Watch.
Whoops: Cops take out Bumblebee
So Transformers 3 is in the process of being shot. And they closed some streets for filming. Only, nobody told this cop who was racing towards some sort of crime, and took out Bumblebee.
From the news story:
The police officer driving the SUV is a 25-year veteran senior explosive ordnance technician. He was taken to a local hospital and sustained minor injuries.
Law enforcement sources tell FOX 5 that he was driving to a call for a suspicious package incident nearby and was using a different radio channel than the police officers who were securing the perimeter for the movie.
The police issued the following statement. No civilians were hurt. But the alien robot wasn’t mentioned. Talk about a cover up…
“Earlier today, a MPD marked cruiser responding to an emergency assignment, collided with a vehicle involved in the filming of a movie at Third Street and Maryland Avenue, SW. The officer sustained minor injuries and was transported to a local hospital. No civilian injuries have been reported.
The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the facts of the crash and filming of this movie on closed DC city streets has been suspended until safety procedures can be reviewed.”
Bugger.
Bay of Plenty
If you’ve always thought your photos were missing that special something. Perhaps an explosion. Or Shia Lebouf. Then Get Bayifying. A nice online webapp that turns your photos into a still from a Michael Bay movie. You too can turn a photo like this (with the obligatory ancient wonder in the background)…
Into this… Jets. Guns. Explosions. Saturated Colour.
Beautiful. No wait. Baytiful.
Fox Trot
There are lots of PR lessons we can learn from celebrities today. Firstly. Megan Fox has lived up to her name, biting the hand that feeds her. Or at least the hand that raised her from obscurity.
Director Michael Bay cast Fox in Transformers, and the starlet had some rather unkind words to say about him in a magazine. In her interview with a British magazine, Fox had said of Bay:“He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. “He has no social skills at all.”
Ouch. That isn’t very nice. Some of the crew responded with a letter via Michael Bay’s blog – which he contributes to, but clearly doesn’t run, because he pulled it a couple of days later and posted his apology.
I subscribe to Michael Bay’s blog with google reader – so it’s not completely lost to you. And the SMH has a story on the letter today. Here’s an excerpt.He granted her the starring role in Transformers, a franchise that forever changed her life; she became one of the most googled and oogled women on earth. … Wait a minute, two of us worked with Angelina – second thought – she’s no Angelina. …We know this quite intimately because we’ve had the tedious experience of working with the dumb-as-a-rock Megan Fox on both Transformers movies. We’ve spent a total of 12 months on set making these two movies. We are in different departments; we can’t give our names because sadly doing so in Hollywood could lead to being banished from future Paramount work. We actually don’t think she knows who Hitler is by the way. But we wondered how she doesn’t realize what a disgusting, fully uneducated comment this was? Hopefully Michael will have Megatron squish her character in the first ten minutes of Transformers 3. We can tell you that will make the crew happy! …Nice. Firstly, let me say, Godwin’s law needs to be more widely broadcast – comparing anybody – particularly a movie director – to Hitler is just plain silly. Secondly, if you’re working in a close knit industry like Hollywood – or a regional area, or a city, or the Christian community – don’t bag out people who you’ve worked with. It’ll no doubt hurt you more than it hurts them.
Transforming the movie industry
I’m pretty excited about Transformers 2. If you’re a guy you probably understand why already.
If you’re not excited – then you should be. Director Michael Bay has given some reasons why on his blog.
I will not reproduce his post in full. Here are some highlights…
Robots
- 14 robots last time, 46 robots this time (ILM only)
- If you had all the gold ever mined in the history of man, you could build a little more than half of Devastator.
- Optimus Prime will be life size on IMAX screens in many forest fight shots.
- Devastator’s hand is traveling 390 miles per hour when he punches the pyramid.
- The pyramid destruction simulation was 8 times bigger than the old rigid simulation all-time record holder at ILM.
- All robot parts laid out end to end would stretch from one side of California to the other, about 180 miles
- Devastator’s parts stacked tip to tip would be as tall as 58 empire state buildings.
- If all the texture maps on the show were printed on 1 square yard sheets, they would cover 13 football fields.
Disk space
- TF1 took 20 Terabytes of disk space. Trans2 took 145 Terabytes. Seven times bigger!
- 145 terabytes would fill 35,000 DVDs. Stacked one on top of the other without storage cases, they would be 145 feet tall.
Rendering times
- If you rendered the entire movie on a modern home PC, you would have had to start the renders 16,000 years ago (when cave paintings like the Hall of Bulls were being made) to finish for this year’s premiere!
- A single imax shot in the movie (df250) would have taken almost 3 years to render on a top of the line home PC running nonstop.
- IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame!
Imax
- Optimus Prime will be life size on IMAX screens in many forest fight shots.
- Imax frames take about 6 times longer than anamorphic to render.
- IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame!