hey welcome to green-light my name is javonni santos and if
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today on DVD film discussion we're talking about transformers cheating shots and planning action
scenes the first thing that I kind of want to say here about Michael Bay is that you know as much
as everybody's trying to figure out still about Michael Bay and that it seems like everybody is
still trying to figure out you know whether or not he is in alt or you know which is irrelevant
now the guy's a commercial man and yeah he's kind of like an aunt or on his own especially nowadays
I mean there's directors like Chris more recently most notably did an action movie it was die hard
5 I can't remember what it was called Wow I like to live free or die hard which is part four but
this was a good day to die hard so good day to die hard was actually well done but Chris Moore
is not going to have the the type of angles and shots that Michael Bay will have he's the kind of
filmmaker that doesn't he's all about off setting the camera and making sure it has an interesting
angle to look at the action front so with that being said it's always on what the camera sees
and he understands that that is the major point I'm trying to make here is that he understands
that then with this scene alone this is just a talking scene with with Shia LaBeouf and Megan
Fox surrounding their in the car in bumblebee car and the car static the camera isn't the Ratana
dolly and it's constantly swaying and moving and looking at them and jerking little tricky little
and getting some light in there the real light leaks on set they really did that so um and they
had a blank background they did this again in Transformers part two which they kind of show
you they have a it's at night so they have it's just a black background it's just a black sky
they don't light for that camera shakes little like I wouldn't say it's natural light leaks
it's light leaks that they added there on set it's a carrot it's a light that's either on the
right or left side of the camera lens pointing at it and smacking the light on to the lens which is
something that JJ Abrams does a lot and he does those lens flares and stuff like that a lot you
can get them online on YouTube and find a bunch of them so if you don't know how to make one or
didn't make one and you need one right away you can use that and then key it to whatever it is
you need car passing by or something lights and stuff like that so with this being said with the
bland background like that with the white they also did it with the black one in Transformers
part two but they had a line like a little farther away so it can blur out in the of like lights and
it was Orange because it was nighttime so like the streetlights look a little orange and stuff like
that even though they're changing now everything is LED and all that stuff with the streetlights
um I think it depends on the movie and what they have there but if you're doing this artificially
it depends on one year because by the time like you know a couple like another ten years from now
it may not look that way you know they're it'd be all like lit up with LED lights and stuff so but
the orange works right now and you can do that and if not you do it the other way but orange little
lights like Christmas lights really far away in the background and distance like you have it way
in the background blurred out and you're moving that camera and it's always moving and you get
in front you can have it behind the car you can have it on the side or wherever it is the camera
is seeing and just behind that should just be total black it just like to look at Transformers
Revenge of the Fallen you'll see you'll see all these little things that I'm talking about these
little details give that feeling ill tanu guy worked with I thought I was going to give the guy
a heart attack yeah I can't get the observatory it hasn't been shot in five years I said it was
a big movie you can do it go to mayor's office you can do it this is the past see right in
there this is where he's running black ops gonna come right up on that edge there I can't get the
bridge of four helicopters underneath is it you could do it go to the mayor's office is a big
movie we're keeping this film down in California we structured the budget in order to keep it in
the United States which is not to say that the movie couldn't be made elsewhere it's just I
think easier and more comfortable for Michael's to have you know a crew around that he's used to
kind of like in here you know Sam I actually cut my fee so that I can shoot here with my crew that
knows how to shoot fast and it is and it's good on the fly between that and sound your illusion
is sold so that's one way of cheating a shot and it Michael Bay does this a lot including
with Victoria Secret commercials and stuff like that so moving on is planning so another thing
is when you're doing action this is a major thing here is you want to plan everything when you're
doing action scenes including a running scene and you're gonna have to plan it anyways even if it's
a running gun micro-budget shoot if you're doing like a quick chasing down an alleyway yeah you got
a you're gonna have to plan it there you're gonna have to know that in your in the back of your mind
you're gonna have to plan at least an hour or two before the actual shooting of just straight
planning the shot and working it out so meaning you're just gonna do it over and over and over
again for about an hour too until you basically get it but you just do it over and over again
maybe not that one shot just do different angles if anything if you're doing running gun you have
no choice you you you don't have much time in this location or whatever what have you you know this
is a type of thing where you know it could really like save you at the end of the day pre-planning
it show up to your locations days before and walk through it walk through it think about it really
visualize it if you're you're a filmmaker you're a visual if your visual tell is storyteller because
I say if on that because people were like could be more Quinton Tarantino oriented with dialogue they
could write characters like myself very well but I can't do that I can sit here and jibber-jabber
very easily especially now in quote-unquote talking to myself in comparison to actually
writing it out which is something I've been you know messin with a lot so I've been messing with
that with my writing I'm always trying to experiment and go you know a step further
with my filmmaking and always challenge myself and get better at parts that I'm not good at so that's
more the way I am doing things I guess you know when it comes to art you kind of just got to go
off feeling off-the-cuff because if you go towards a route that somebody else says or how I say it's
not going to be for you you know so these are just things these are ideas that I'm giving you to get
them in your head so you're able to think about your projects in a different way think about them
in a different light it'll stick there in the back of your mind somewhere because of the inspiration
that you got from the filmmaker that you respect either from me or from these guys which is why
I'm doing it because I have that feeling towards them and I love Michael Bay growing up he was an
easy filmmaker to get into real quick because of the way it was shot and stuff like that between
him Martin Scorsese and and Pt Anderson and David Fincher angles is a big thing for me
there's this Decepticon called scorponok's that's tracking them he's tracking them under the sand
its jaws but it's in the desert and we were actually looking through one of the books of
all the characters and we kind of went to hey there's a scorpion in the desert and Scorponok
is perfect too because he's also sort of different than the other Decepticons he doesn't particularly
turn into a vehicle or whatever his form is very much about the environment the Scorpion is great
for the desert and it's sort of a good you know shout out to the fans of like beasts Wars and
some of the incarnations of Transformers are a little bit more animal based than the vehicle
based in pre-production they built all these animatics so they know anything that has a
lot of of actually stuff for this Transformers coming through or you know you're being chased
by one or whatever it is they have these animatics bill the the computerized sort
of animation of the scene before they even shoot it Scorponok was one of the ones that we in the
department animated completely in 3d you know like I wanted to have the the notion of these
components from the sea stallion helicopter which is basically what he is birthed from
so he has these kind of sea stallion and helicopter components to him and
the turbines for his hands and I wanted to see how these things could turn and how that
he could dig in and then shoot the sand out the exhaust so all those things we developed
in the department because we thought it was just a [ __ ] and looking scorpion
like there was something I didn't look they were taller than that these are target practice
right now we're at Holloman Air Force Base in Illinois Gordo New Mexico there's actually a
very active military base because they do a lot of support work for the war effort in Iraq right
now synthase a missile range everywhere you go there's the chance of live ordnance you go to
this fence on the scout and it says don't walk in live ordnance could be possible unexploded
bombs blah blah blah and I'm like okay so we step over the fence and was weird walking and
I kept walking you know but looking down and so we actually had a minesweeper clear when we shot
there for good five acres you see a little bit of gold that they are the two mandibles Kenny
move over this way but the idea that they bust through and then hit the wire pull the boy you
know probably no matter what you want a monitor you know either side and that's you know it'd
be nice whatever he does every day this it should be small and build like a crescendo
we are an almond missile range don't pick up anything with a red tip hey that's like a bomb
I'm gonna like this down up baby ready
then Mexico they all had a really good time we blew up hundreds and hundreds of pounds of black
powder and thousands of feet of primer court so there is that where I told you about wetting it
down the chunk you see the chunks in there Michael good we had primer cord which can take down a tree
or destroy a car it's a little like rope like explosive I had them lay out like 200 of these
strands so that they can fire it on a millisecond thing where it's like hot and makes it look kind
of like a wave coming at you they put the heist Wall Street on didn't they put just carpet on top
of it and then they put sand on top of the carpet and the one this was ignited in a sequential order
the carpet just lifted up and it bounced the sand high enough and it gave Michael the exact look
that he wanted good were you still in it when it's fallen yes good there were a lot of bombs a lot of
explosions a lot of straight hits there are people flying through the air we had guys on ratchets
so what happens in this shop has me squinting like crazy is score / Knox is running through
the ground do-do-do-do-do of course I'm not the smartest Ranger so I'm looking around
he's right behind me funk right through the chest and then cool takes me back and eats
me apparently Decepticons eat children the idea is we're trying to time the sand so the burst
out happens with core panache we're imagining where his entrance point would be in the sand
at some point we might change our actor into a CG replicant of this guy to be able to manipulate him
all right let's go to the tail please
Eiffel wanted a Scorponok steel slithering through the sand we just made a whole track
right out of plywood would actually had a groove in it they're putting the lightweight plastic down
and then you put a razor blade in front of it and as cooperating is going through it it
just cuts that path guys I'm going to show you an animatic what we're doing it's a pretty cool shot
trailer shot we're going right down hey watch this Homer he jumps out so I need you my body
so he's got to have that of your faces
running towards that that umbrella guys that umbrellas where we're running all
right but the actors they had to run and I'm like Tyrese don't trip
cuz that's a real real explosive if it goes off you better run all right
yeah this is it yeah it's really that fear on their face was them being real
and I said just remember to at one point look back and look up
in each of the shots that we set up we have to have a representative size for Scorponok this is
an island sphere it's a lighting reference for a pre environment that we're in it helps the artist
Africa back at ILM to correctly place all the reference lights and shadows and kind of match
everything and make it look like it fits back in the plate you can see in the plate we had a
really good elements to start with in this case and anybody that works in CG knows that sand is
one of those things that you just the minute you hear that you start to think oh you know the the
particle work that's involved with sand can can really drag out you can see in this plate right
here as these prime record elements go off we get this nice plume of sand here and what we've
done is taken that same thing left it in the plate and added our own our robot inside there
and sort of buried him in a in depth and and as he comes forward we reveal more and more of him
Oh what is that you know it's not a bad job
I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode of DVD film discussion since
this is being about transformers is kind of quick not sure if this is
going by kind of fast this episode but I hope the information serves you well and
please don't forget to subscribe just tell me in the comments below any Michael Baden
movies you like I want to explore a little bit more one of my favorites is the waa