Movie Chronicles
We’ll be hosting a blow by blow live Twitter event from a British IMAX (the proper type) screening of Revenge of the Fallen at 5:30pm BST (9:30am PDT, 12:30am EDT). It is sure to include a whole host of spoilers. If it didn’t constitute as piracy there would be pictures too. Follow us on Twitter as we report on the Transformers 2 movie as it unfolds in front of us.
I’ve embedded our tweets below for a preview!
Another round up of the interviews, press articles and whatnot that keeping popping up here there and everywhere.
This interview comes from The Guardian’s “Film weekly” interview with Michael Bay and was posted to the official Michael Bay site.
Some interviews recently spun the “I’m taking a break” stance Michael Bay has on Transformers 3 to give the impression he was quitting the franchise altogether. This is not the case and in all likelihoods Michael Bay shall direct Transformers 3, due for release in 2012.
USA Today have a short article on the Transformers/GM relationship and an interview with Michael Bay.
“They were responsible for building the cars, and I was trying to get my check because we built the cars, fronted them the money, and they were late on paying us,” Bay says. “I was like, ‘We better get our check fast before they go bankrupt.’
Chevy won’t reveal what it cost to provide cars, but spokesman Steve Janisse says 67 vehicles were used, and 52 of those were “non-salable,” specially built prototypes used for testing, engineering and display.
[...]
Bay says the cars themselves become like celebrities, something he witnessed while shooting in a remote part of the Middle East. “The money they spend is pennies for the amount of goodwill. Bumblebee is one of the most famous cars in the world,” the director says. “Literally, we’re in this poor little town in Jordan, and all these kids surrounded (the car). They all knew Bumblebee’s name.”
Number 18 has been covered in an M&Ms and Transformers themed coat – full gallery available at Joe Gibbs.
Shia performs a rendition of Stan Bush’s “The Touch” to much amusement and pain.
The movie in some way includes Obama, to which Bay comments, via Digital Spy,
Bay said: “The Obama thing? I met him in an airport where he was carrying his bag by himself and we talked about movies and apparently he likes my movies. So I figured we’ll just put him in.”
The director joked that he was able to include the up-to-date reference because he had only completed making the film last Wednesday [June 10th].
Michael Bay is now in the record books for the largest explosion filmed whilst actors are present. It was shot in New Mexico. The NZ Herald, from whence this news came, offer up and expansive overview of Transformers 2 and have some tidbit interview comments from Megan Fox and Shia as well,
“If Michael Bay can make me look that good in shorts, then I don’t mind if people think I’m being exploited. And it gives me an advantage because even if I do a mediocre performance, people don’t expect anything of me, so they’re impressed.” And incidentally, although she is adorned with tattoos, claims to be bisexual, and does her best to come across as “dangerous and dark” a la Jolie, she insists it is not calculated. “It’s more of a curse than a blessing to look like Angelina,” she says, straight-faced. “Seriously, there are a lot of films I’ve had to pass on because I don’t want people to think I’m trying to emulate her.” (Apparently she was offered the next Tomb Raider but turned it down for this reason.) As for Lebeouf, an edgy leading man and an example of the core audience of a film like this, says, “Transformers is escapism in the same way Star Wars was for its generation. If you want magic tricks, theme park rides, the roller coaster vibe, Transformers is for you.”
After recovering from the Star Trek press tour, Orci and Kurtzman answered some questions from the folks at Film Journal. Points include the story’s emotional core, the strike and the inspiration for the sequel.
“For us, the action always emerges from the characters; the audience tunes out random action scenes that don’t move the plot forward or take the characters in some new direction,” Kurtzman says. “So in Revenge of the Fallen, there are several sequences that we pitched to Michael in detail as part of the characters’ stories and he ended up shooting them almost exactly as we pitched them. Of course, he also comes up with great ways to embellish the sequences and no one is better at that than he is.”
That information will come in handy as the duo makes their long-planned transition to directing. “The plan is to find the right film for us to direct in the next couple of years,” Orci reveals. “We’re happy being the guys that write the words, but we want to try everything. It’s possible that we’ll each direct our own projects, but we might be too jealous of what the other is doing and so we’ll both have to do it!” While neither claims to have a dream project right now, there is one franchise that Orci says he’s hoping to see realized on the big screen someday. “I’d love to see [Nintendo's] The Legend of Zelda done right.”
More Revenge of the Fallen video game previews have surfaced at Game Trailers, including Art Director and Producer interviews, a Sideways and Devastator walkthrough and an Optimus Prime downtown walkthrough. Following these there are tow YouTube videos, including the opening scenes and a Breakaway training routine.
Not strictly press, but not really big enough for its own post, another Human Alliance video review:
We’ll be hosting a blow by blow live Twitter event from a British IMAX (the proper type) screening of Revenge of the Fallen at 5:30pm BST (9:30am PDT, 12:30am EDT). It is sure to include a whole host of spoilers. If it didn’t constitute as piracy there would be pictures too. Follow us on Twitter as we report on the Transformers 2 movie as it unfolds in front of us.
Chief robot spotter Daan contacted us to tell us about a new robot spotting in England. The video below may shock you. Scum British teenagers steal a scooter and mess around with it, before receiving an abrupt surprise when they try and set fire to it. Best viral video so far.
Kelv ragging this scooter we nicked. Well funny hes showing off to the girls. But WTF happened when we tried to torch it! Havent seen Kelv since. Sucker. But checkit!
Another viral video, in French this time, love this one as well.
Real Effing Deal
Real Effing Deal
Can you spot the robot’s shadow? Click the image for full screen.
This next scoop comes via GiantEffingRobots, “Rooftop Robot Spotted”
The official Michael Bay site has offered up some facts and figures about Revenge of the Fallen, please beware of spoilers. Devastator packs a punch of 390mph and he is one (or seven if you count the parts) of the 46 robots in the Transformers sequel.
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!ILM screen time
ILM Screen Time is about 51 minutes.
Devastator
* Devastator is as tall as a 10 story building.
* Devastator has more than 10 times the number of individual parts found in an average car.
* Laid out end to end, Devastator’s parts would be almost 14 miles long.Devastator totals
* Number of geom pieces: 52632
* The total number of polygons: 11,716,127
* The total length of all pieces: 73090 feet
* The total length of all pieces: 13.84 miles
The official Transformers website has updated with links to all the assorted games, banner creators, fan art etc. Also included are new wallpapers, buddy icons, screensavers and the Soundwave satellite mode navigation we saw on the UK TF2 site.
Bumblebee (Mac)
Bumblebee (PC)
Optimus Prime (Mac)
Optimus Prime (PC)
Starscream (Mac)
Starscream (PC)
However you make these robots, they always come out looking uber geeky.
The Transformers 2 viral site, The Real Effing Deal, has updated with new robot sightings, videos and news stories – including a Leo Spitz video rant at Robo Warrior.
Download a zip file of four Leo Spitz videos from The Real Effing Deal, three are Ramon Rodriguez and the fourth shows what looks like Starscream darting in front of some Fireworks.
Download the Real Effing Deal videos (18mb)
“Exclusive: It is Japan and all but”
Another TRED-head who’d like to remain anonymous just sent us this link. We’re the FIRST on the net to break this story.
Now we all know the Land of the Rising Sun is known for robots of all stripes — small to effing huge — so spotting a bot in Japan is normally no big deal. But this one’s LOOSE. And HIDING. And it looks more advanced than any Japanese robot I’ve ever seen. I’m starting to correlate all the data we’ve been getting for the last few days and all I can say is, this is NOT good, people. They’re landing, spreading all over the world, and lying in wait for…something. Why are they here? Either they want our resources, they want to enslave us, they want to use our planet as their new homeworld…or maybe something else. We’ll probably never know until it’s way too late.
I don’t know what “gespinnt” means, but he’s right, the “part” was effing huge!! It looks to me like that car actually TURNED INTO a bot. The physics just seem…impossible. Unless the Germans have invented some kind of morphing technology…or maybe learned it from aliens. Either way, here’s what worries me: if robots can hide IN PLAIN SIGHT, we’ll NEVER see it coming! We could all be surrounded by bots right now. What if this computer I’m using suddenly transforms into a killer cyber-organism because it doesn’t like what I’m typing??? Yeeesh!
A dios mia!!! TRED-heads, you need to check out this video. Watch the upper right for what looks like a grande effing robot! Australia, Peru, now SPAIN! Either there’s one bot-like entity on a world-wide tour, or there are LOTS of them hiding out effing EVERYWHERE.
Dudes, seriously. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Either someone’s yanking our chain here, or we’ve got giant robots — possibly giant ALIEN robots — appearing all over the effing globe. I suggest you go back and bone up on your “How to Survive a Robot Uprising” book, the one we mentioned a few months ago right here on TRED.And, yo, if you see something else like this, send it to us ASAP (and not to ANYONE else, if you know what I mean).
Paramount Pictures have launched their next Revenge of the Fallen promotional tool – an augmented reality tool that uses a plugin and your webcam to superimpose Optimus Prime’s helmet on your head, or a mini Bumblebee that stands on a card.
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