Michael Bay is writing Transformers 2

[xAgonyxScenex]

Ok so he;s not writing it per say...the title is def misleading =P

http://www.superherohype.com/news/topnews.php?id=6785

Michael Bay Has Written Transformers 2
Source: Rotten Tomatoes (http://beta.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_2/news/1708602/), IESB (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=227&task=videodirectlink&id=665)
February 12, 2008


Transformers 2 (http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=37679) director Michael Bay told Rotten Tomatoes (http://beta.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_2/news/1708602/) at the Visual Effects Society awards that he's already written the sequel and will pass on his script to the screenwriters, who are coming off of the strike:

"I've been writing Transformers 2," said Bay. "We've got our characters all designed. I always write all my scripts, my movies anyway so at least I've got something to give the writers. It's like a template. We have a really good outline so I worked on that." It might be a tad unorthodox, but Bay has high pressure demands. "We had to because I want to make my date. I'm not going to let the strike take me down."

Bay also spoke to IESB (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4291&Itemid=99), who he assured that we won't be seeing Dinobots in the follow-up. ILM's Scott Farrar also told the site (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=227&task=videodirectlink&id=664) that there will be a lot more robots this time and that the animatics look amazing so far.

Transformers 2 (http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=37679) is scheduled for a June 26, 2009 release.

[Bumblebee1983]

Ok so he;s not writing it per say...the title is def misleading =P

http://www.superherohype.com/news/topnews.php?id=6785

Michael Bay Has Written Transformers 2
Source: Rotten Tomatoes (http://beta.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_2/news/1708602/), IESB (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=227&task=videodirectlink&id=665)
February 12, 2008


Transformers 2 (http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=37679) director Michael Bay told Rotten Tomatoes (http://beta.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_2/news/1708602/) at the Visual Effects Society awards that he's already written the sequel and will pass on his script to the screenwriters, who are coming off of the strike:

"I've been writing Transformers 2," said Bay. "We've got our characters all designed. I always write all my scripts, my movies anyway so at least I've got something to give the writers. It's like a template. We have a really good outline so I worked on that." It might be a tad unorthodox, but Bay has high pressure demands. "We had to because I want to make my date. I'm not going to let the strike take me down."

Bay also spoke to IESB (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4291&Itemid=99), who he assured that we won't be seeing Dinobots in the follow-up. ILM's Scott Farrar also told the site (http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=227&task=videodirectlink&id=664) that there will be a lot more robots this time and that the animatics look amazing so far.

Transformers 2 (http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=37679) is scheduled for a June 26, 2009 release.

Very dedicated director. I admire that.

[MitP]

Does this mean TF2 will be the first movie to credit Michael as a writer?

Nelson, can you confirm any of this?

[darthrage]

Hmmm, thats a curious question whether it would creditted in his name.

I thought it might be something along the lines of Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and then with an additional Story by Michael Bay.

Or will it be credited as Written and Directed by Michael Bay?

[nelson]

http://weblogs.variety.com/ (http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/02/oscar-watch-bay.html)


Transformers director Michael Bay returned to the scene of the crime Thursday night at the Cary Grant mixing stage at the Sony lot to revisit the Oscar-nominated achievements in VFX and sound. The place was packed with filmmaking geeks eager to hear and see the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into a formidable FX epic like Transformers.

It was tough for Bay to go back, he admitted after the show, as he's already deep into pre-production on Transformers 2, which is set to start filming on June 2. Bay didn't let the strike stop him. "The strike was a drag," he said. "But I like to write myself. So I wrote 60 pages. I showed the writers something to look at. We'll get back to the torture chamber on Monday." Transformers 2 will deepen the different robot characters as well as the humor, he said. "There's a geriatric robot. If there's an actors strike we'll just stop and start again. We'll make our date." (The movie is scheduled to open June 26, 2009.)

After The Rock, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor, Bay is tight with the Pentagon and thinks nothing of picking up the phone to get them to reroute a C130 gunship with Seals in it for a few hours. "We pay for the fuel," he says. "The military looks at this as a recruiting effort. The jargon is real. I told them what was happening, and that's what they said. I shot it like a documentary."

Bay, who has a reputation for being tough on crews, endured some good-humored riffing during the show-and-tell, from star Shia LaBeouf as well as his sound designers, editors, and mixers and special FX and ILM VFX artists. Bay was proud that he made Transformers "for a price" he said, in California and New Mexico. "We have the best crews."

For Bay, sound is "50 % of the movie, while the visual effects are a whole other movie unto itself." He shot as much of the film as possible in real locations with live (often dangerous) on-camera stunts and real FX supervised by the legendary John Frazier. In stark contrast to a Star Wars episode which boasts mostly blue screen shots, Transformers had only two days of blue-screen shooting (when the young leads climbed on the shoulders of the robots).

Even the famous shot of the bus that is split apart by a giant robot was a live-action bus blown in two going 60 mph on the freeway with a 30-foot CG robot added six months later. "There's one million details these guys put in the movie," said Frazier, who tried to keep enormous spaces open in the shots for the CG animators to work in.

For LaBeouf and the other actors, "acting without anything there is hard," said Bay. "It's so different when you don't have any environment to react to." LaBeouf described a P.A. holding a long big stick with a green ball on top and shaking it. "They're angry now, shake it faster," he described Bay saying. ILM VFX supervisor Scott Farrar showed the actors a pre-vis--"a cartoon of what's going on in the scene," said Bay, adding, "I always like to put my actors under duress." According to LaBeouf, hanging from a building 20 feet in the air to talk to Megatron or being surrounded by explosions while the cameras wore protective gear was the norm.

On the VFX side, "it's lighting," said Bay. "Everyone looks at light every day and when something looks fake it's not lit well to your brain. We worked on the light, that's why the robots look so real, these things sit next to humans." Bay flew up to ILM in San Francisco frequently, and communicated via satellite link with a pen pointer. He'd never dealt with animation before, which is about performance. "It was painstaking, like Pixar cartoons," he said, "a pain in the ass."

Scott Benza, the animation supervisor, was there to "bring life to the robots," he said. He worked with 30 animators on 16 characters and 47 transformations--each one unique. "It encompasses everything from subtle acting to a full on action scene with brutal robots fighting each other. We gave each artist the freedom to go to town." Optimus Prime has 10108 parts. All the pieces had 4 to 16 layers of information: details, scratches, and metal flake paint with a clear coat finish.

The robots were heavy and massive and athletic and nimble, all at the same time, like Ninja fighters. "They had to have weight and mass and be very cool," said Farrar. The transformations involved "clever people solving puzzles, fitting pieces from one form into another. It would take brute force on each shot until it worked."

The robots also had to act--with complicated facial rigs for the eyes, nose, and mouth-- and each one was different. They rebuilt Bumblebee's eyes three times, making the iris go up and down, until one day in dailies "we saw his soul," said Farrar.

The VFX team took the live-action shots and created CG environments to match them. Said Farrar, "it's about how to make the big guys who are not there look real. You have to go way beyond--the metals look metallic, they look like part of a scene, they fit in with buildings. We are there to put things in the movie that can't be photographed or are difficult or too dangerous to shoot."

Russell Earl did lighting and rendering. "We'd go back and recreate in the computer Scorpinox jumping out of the sand," he said. "We'd copy the scene and use a CG version to match." Adding reflections and highlights and shadow are a big part of making the robots' 20-foot height look real. And making the environment "dirty." Flying debris. Particles. Compositing all these elements is the other huge challenge.

Bay has worked with the same sound crew for 12 years. He affectionately razzed sound mixer Kevin O'Connell as "the biggest loser in Academy history." He's had 19 noms and no wins. This is his 20th go-round.

O'Connell, supervising sound editors Ethan Van Der Ryn and Mike Hopkins, sound rerecording mixer Greg P. Russell and sound mixer Peter Devlin explained how they capture all the distinct sounds on set (dialogue, planes, guns, ricochets, explosions, 9 sets of sounds specific to the robots) and collect it all for the sound mixers to file and manipulate, along with the music. "We take hundreds of sounds," said O'Connell, and try to focus the energy." The goal is to key the audience into what's important in a given scene, and not wind up with "a train wreck of sound."

The sound designers had to come up with characteristic personalities for the different robots, and make the large robot sounds work--partly by throwing the sound to all the speakers in a theater, not just the "dialogue" speaker in the center of the screen.

The sound of Optimus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen, is about air. Bumble Bee is about buzzing. The sound crew brought a volunteer up to a mike to record sound for Bumble Bee as he groans on the battlefield. The audience listened to the actor live, then heard the sound integrated through the Bumble Bee sound matrix on screen. It magically worked. Big applause. The magic of sound

[redqueenar]

Goodness, if O'Connell doesn't win this time it will be an absolute CRIME! I felt so bad last year, reading about his Mom and how she had passed without seeing him win. He *has* to win, jeez!...

[Skowl]

Check it out!

http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/02/oscar-watch-bay.html

Kup, maybe? Vector Prime, Brakedown? Or a new character?

Personally, I love the way Bay is doing things now, just dropping little bits of info and hints here and there. It keeps me interested in the film and makes sure I don't get bored waiting, but it also doesn't give too much away.

[MitP]

It was tough for Bay to go back, he admitted after the show, as he's already deep into pre-production on Transformers 2, which is set to start filming on June 2. Bay didn't let the strike stop him. "The strike was a drag," he said. "But I like to write myself. So I wrote 60 pages. I showed the writers something to look at. We'll get back to the torture chamber on Monday." Transformers 2 will deepen the different robot characters as well as the humor, he said. "There's a geriatric robot. If there's an actors strike we'll just stop and start again. We'll make our date." (The movie is scheduled to open June 26, 2009.)

Wait a minute...could he mean Kup? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kup)

[Bumblebee1983]

Check it out!

http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/02/oscar-watch-bay.html

Kup, maybe? Vector Prime, Brakedown? Or a new character?

Personally, I love the way Bay is doing things now, just dropping little bits of info and hints here and there. It keeps me interested in the film and makes sure I don't get bored waiting, but it also doesn't give too much away.

AARP ought to be tossing in an endorsement, right? ;)

[Z28 Autobot]

Kup would be cool..or Brawn...as an old foggy bot..

[Q_Silverbolt]

I hope the next movie will still retain a sense of reality.

[Bumblebee1983]

I hope the next movie will still retain a sense of reality.

Don't know why I'm replying, but I feel I must set some people straight. It's my lot in life. Such a hard job.

Anywhoos, movies are not supposed to be reality. They get you out of reality.

And these are giant robots. It's called creativity, and damn it sells. :cool:

[uraydo]

http://weblogs.variety.com/ (http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/02/oscar-watch-bay.html)

I hope Bay is serious about wanting to do more with the robot characters. It may be too late for Bonecrusher, but we most look to the future.


seriously, how cool is a villain that just hates everything?

[optimusprime87]

if Bay is writing or already has written the new transformers movie does any one know if he will include combiners like the constructicons or the airelbots, it would b a kewl idea if the movie had them in it possibly up against unicron

[xAgonyxScenex]

Don't know why I'm replying, but I feel I must set some people straight. It's my lot in life. Such a hard job.

Anywhoos, movies are not supposed to be reality. They get you out of reality.

And these are giant robots. It's called creativity, and damn it sells. :cool:

a sense of reality as in, remember the logo scene in the island. you can have over the top action, but keep it 'realistic'

[StefsChemicalRomance]

It better not be Kup. Hes a grumpy old fart. But then again, that'd be awesome :D LOL

[guitarded]

Nothing says Geriatric like "Alpha Trion" or A3... whatever

Kup would be a good choice as well...or maybe an entirely new character altogether

[Bumblebee1983]

if Bay is writing or already has written the new transformers movie does any one know if he will include combiners like the constructicons or the airelbots, it would b a kewl idea if the movie had them in it possibly up against unicron

Nobody knows anything about the new robots...YET.

*evil laugh*

Umm...yeah, but on a serious note, nobody knows anything about TF2 except what Bay says. And what he says could be true or untrue....we'll just have to wait and see!

[Xaniss]

Hehe, when I read 'geriatric robot' I did immediately think of Kup and laughed... but Guitarded could have a point with Alpha Trion, that is one elder bot.

But I love the article you posted Nelson - just reading about the work that went into this film is mind-boggling enough without even seeing the actual finished piece.