According to a report on Variety, Michael Bay is putting the pressure on the VFX teams to ensure Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is “awesome.”
“He’s brilliant, but he’s a challenge,” says Matthew Butler, Digital Domain’s VFX supervisor on the film. Not only is Bay demanding, as top directors generally are, but “he’s incredibly fast-paced. He’s a whirlwind to keep up with, both on the set and in post.”
Scott Farrar of Industrial Light and Magic, lead VFX supervisor on both “Transformers” films, sounds somewhat awestruck as he compares the sequel to its predecessor.
“Michael took the production value up many, many notches,” he says. “Just the backgrounds alone are huge. It’s a combination of ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Ben-Hur,’ in regards to fantastic backgrounds and the unbelievable sets we worked at around the world.”
Whilst those working on Revenge of the Fallen are sworn to secrecy, Farrar has let slip that the visual effects in the film include some 60 robot characters.
Everyone involved in “Revenge of the Fallen” is keeping the details under wraps, but Farrar says there are some 60 robot characters, and they play in settings around the world. Some, like refineries at night, were chosen to boost the visual drama and show off the scale of the giant ‘bots.
What’s more, this time the Transformers will interact much more with the world around them. Farrar highlights “the splashes and the hits and the fighting on dirt or moving, banging into trees,” explaining, “Things splinter and break, they spit, they outgas, they sweat, they snort.”
The film will also be shown on the much larger IMAX screens which in turn necessitates that all the CG work must be performed at a much higher resolution. Butler says at that scale it can take several days just to render a final frame. Days to render a final frame and around 60 transforming robots to deal with? I”m guessing Michael Bay isn’t alone in wanting time off before being willing to start all over again on Transformers 3…
Source: Variety
