Chapter 180 - Hangman and Cable Car

Lin Mingyang had really put in a lot of effort in order to help Megan design and shoot this set of photo shoots, but the results were also very obvious. Michael Bay had seen the photos and instantly clapped his hands, and the female lead was finalized.

After the starring list was determined, DreamWorks announced the film's shooting budget, because of this live-action Transformers this subject matter of the grandiose, many people are on the amount of investment of 180 million U.S. dollars said incredible, we must know that Sony in order to shoot the "New Spider-Man", spent 250 million, and hippity-hopping "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" rumored to cost more than 200 million, DreamWorks proposed a shooting budget in the blockbusters! era of rampant blockbusters does seem a bit underwhelming.

Spielberg this time is to learn a lesson, his new "War of the Worlds" on the scale of the scene, on the special effects wonderful degree and this "Transformers" is almost the same, but the actors are all big names, as a result, Spielberg heartbreakingly spent 250 million dollars, but did not get the expected market reaction.

In fact, for special effects-based movies, the role of stars is minimal. Now look back at the "War of the Worlds" movie, if the protagonist did not use Tom Cruise, and other actors do not use first-line stars, but instead of some second- and third-line stars, the box office will not have a big impact, and the investment can be less than $15 million or so.

So this time Spielberg will select the actor's attention on the newcomers, especially those in Hollywood in the rising stage of the new star, the asking price is not high, good acting skills, popularity is not low, it is the first choice of special effects blockbuster actors.

At first Lin Mingyang fully meets this condition, although his price has been among the ranks of Hollywood first-line movie star, but compared with his popularity and box office appeal, every penny spent on him is absolutely worth it.

Lin Mingyang won the movie star trophy at this year's Oscars in a blowout, a sudden turn of events that caught Spielberg off-guard. After repeated consideration, he decided to continue to let Lin Mingyang, whose value had risen a great deal, to be the lead actor. The two sides quickly reached an agreement, and Lin agreed to star in the film for $17 million, which was only a $2 million increase from his role in The New Spider-Man.

The media speculated that Spielberg's "face" played an important role in getting Lin Mingyang to star in the movie at such a "low price".

In the 180 million dollar budget, Spielberg asked Michael Bay to control the total amount of all the actors and actresses within 25 million dollars, light Lin Mingyang alone has accounted for the hit head, the rest of the 8 million dollars, the leading lady Megan Fox spent 4 million dollars, the rest of the money, Michael Bay can only be a fine-tuning, the rest of the film's roles, the audience saw the Basically are very strange faces.

The Oscar-winning actor joins the movie, the screen couple of "Follies" reunites, and the Transformers fans have all kinds of speculation about the film, from the producers announced the production plan of the film, the media on the hot topic of Transformers has never stopped discussing.

Despite all the speculation, the cast and crew have been very tight-lipped. Michael Bay and all the staff of the cast and crew signed a demanding confidentiality agreement, and as the two main stars of the film, Lin Mingyang and Megan rarely talk about the film on joint occasions.

Strictly speaking, Transformers should be an action movie with a sci-fi twist, and Michael Bay is famous for his brilliant presentation of on-set special effects. He is so obsessed with, and good at, live effects that the best sequence in his box office flop sci-fi flick Escape from Clone Island was actually a traditional street car chase.

While making this movie, Michael Bay was not about to give up his style, and he believed that live effects were not incompatible with the sci-fi content, as the former actually added to the realism of the movie. During the filming of Transformers, Michael Bay still insisted on not using digital special effects, but relying on traditional demolition and modeling to achieve the same goal.

In Michael Bay's movie certainly can not be less explosive scenes, although Hollywood in the flame, sparks, shock waves, gravity engine, debris, smoke and a whole set of digital special effects production technology is relatively mature, fully capable of creating a relatively real picture, but it is difficult to perfect, two to unlimited into the perfect unlimited cost. The so-called "hundred-foot pole more on a foot", to make the level of special effects above the picture for Industrial Light and Magic is not a problem, but to make a superb, breaking people's imagination of the fantastic picture, its cost will be exponentially increased.

As a comparison, the traditional live special effects, explosion effects have been greatly improved control, enough to complete a variety of effects according to the director's requirements. From his own style point of view, Michael Bay's choice is very wise.

In order to maximize the realism of the film, in this completely digital special effects technology to synthesize the "Transformers" picture of the film, Michael Bay is still in some scenes of the shooting of the use of models.

KNB, a veteran Hollywood modeling and makeup effects studio, produced 10 large-scale models of the Kongs for Transformers, including Optimus Prime's head, Megatron's legs, and Stunner's paws in addition to Bumblebee as a whole. The large, detailed solid models are mainly for close-ups, especially when there are few animated scenes, and can save the trouble of "virtual background painting" and "digital compositing" while conveying a more tactile sense of reality.

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In order to accomplish director Michael Bay's vision, not only did the actors have to take great risks on location, but the on-set VFX team also had to think of all sorts of ways to help the director realize the crazy ideas he had in his head.

But when it came time to shoot the scene where the Decepticon robot Roadblock chases the hero around a junkyard, the special effects team encountered a very tricky problem. It took them three days to come up with a workable solution. Michael Bay was furious.

Lin Mingyang was dragged to the scene by the assistant director to be the "firefighter". Michael Bay's violent temper is well known in the crew, in addition to the film's executive producer Spielberg, only Lin Mingyang can do this in the crew.

After Michael Bay lost his temper, he slowly calmed down, and Lin Mingyang's timely appearance just gave him a step. When everyone was sitting calmly in the conference room, Lin Mingyang was able to figure out what happened.

It turns out that during the shooting of this scene, the "roadblock" in the process of chasing the hero, handily overturned a car in the way to the side. To realize this car rolling in the air, the traditional practice is to use a small pneumatic cannon tube, placed in the car chassis on one side, after the remote detonation, the reaction force will push the car rolling in the air.

"I've heard that this same special effects technique was used in the recently being filmed Casino Royale, which caused Bond's Aston Martin DBS-type sports car to tumble seven full revolutions while traveling at high speeds, and is said to have set a new stunt world record." Van Deegan, the head of the special effects team, cited recent examples, and although Casino Royale is currently still being filmed, this kind of technical maneuvering is no secret in the biz.

His explanation made Lin Mingyang feel more and more puzzled, since there was a solution to the problem, why did they delay in drawing up a shooting plan. He asked suspiciously, "Then why don't we use this technique?"

Michael Bay, who hadn't said anything, came out with the answer at this time in his low voice: "Because it's difficult to control!"

"Then apart from this 'pneumatic gun barrel', we don't have any other technical means available?"

"There's the more traditional 'rollover' special effect..." van Dijkan looked at Michael Bay, who was sitting diagonally across from him, "This technique involves utilizing a sloped barricade to send a traveling of a car chugging up one side and then it tumbles. As far as I know, the black sedan in The Matrix 2 that did the harrier flip over Trinity and Murphys' heads was filmed that way."

"I used that technique ten years ago when I did The Brave and the Bold, do you remember that shot of Sean Connery's little black sedan flying in mid-air? That was filmed using this technique." Without waiting for Lin Ming Yang to ask, Michael Bay himself explained, "But in this movie we're in now, a lot of the cars are at a standstill for no reason and very unlucky to be wreaked havoc by the Decepticon robots, so the 'sloping roadblock' technique can't be used at all."

"These two methods are the most commonly used means at the moment, other than that, we haven't thought of a better solution!" Van Diegan added.

"I have a solution...it might work!" As everyone was at a loss, Lin Mingyang suddenly came out with this sentence, and everyone in the conference room stared at him in unison.

In terms of special effects technology, Lin Ming Yang was considered a complete layman, but because of this, he was able to come up with some unconventional means, such as this time when he was inspired by the movie 'The Matrix' that Van Deegan had mentioned when he was explaining the 'Slope Barricade' just now. Of course what inspired him wasn't how the car rolled through the air in that movie, but how people achieved the air roll in that movie.

As we all know, "The Matrix" successfully utilized the "hanging wire" technique in Hong Kong kung fu movies when shooting the characters. Since steel wire can hang people, of course, can also be "hanging car", Lin Mingyang's idea is to use the "hanging" to the "air car" scene.

On the basis of the idea, Lin Mingyang further proposed the specific operation steps: "We can use the steel cable of the elevated crane to hold the roof of the car on one side, and at the other end, the huge pulling force generated by the high-speed hydraulic pump will tumble the car and pull it into the air."

Michael Bay and Van Deegan's eyes lit up at the same time, Lin Mingyang's idea had opened up their minds, and his proposal had a high degree of practical maneuverability. Michael Bay stood up excitedly, "Felix, you are simply a genius, how did you come up with this idea?"

Lin Mingyang shrugged, "I used to do this on toy cars when I was a kid!"

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Lin Mingyang's idea has been proven to be completely feasible, and like the "crane", the "crane flying car" is more of a spectacle, the car rolls horizontally in the air for a longer distance, the lag time is longer, and the aerial posture is more graceful, which is very much in line with Michael Bay's aesthetic preference for action shots. This is very much in line with Michael Bay's aesthetic orientation of the action shots.

Lin Mingyang gave him this trick, which not only helped him to solve a lot of shooting problems, at the end of the movie, in the city battle, there is a car by the "Starscream" to fly horizontally across the street and crashed into the corner of the building on the third floor of the scene in the shooting of the use of heavy-duty elevated crane suitable for high-rise buildings with the same technique. The scene was filmed with a heavy elevated crane suitable for high-rise buildings, using the same technique.

Car chases have always been Michael Bay's strong suit, with both "Jedi 2" and "Escape from Clone Island" featuring high-speed and destructive car chases, and he continues his preference in this movie.

"Audiences want to see Transformers fighting each other, not them racing!" After reading his submission for the stage shoot, Spielberg had to issue a kind reminder to him. Michael Bay was then able to tighten up his Transformers filming a little bit in order to keep these scenes from overpowering and stealing the show from the robot fights.

But even so, he still designed a number of chase scenes. In order to capture the dynamics of the car chase, the special effects team designed and built high-speed moving camera cars according to Michael Bay's wishes. These cars are equipped with a camera arm on the roof that can be maneuvered, as well as a super strong anti-vibration device, so that even when the camera follows the car at a high speed of 100 miles per hour, it is still able to move smoothly and freely, and capture the intense and exciting car chase scene from all angles.

In the scene where Bonesaw chases Optimus Prime, Bonesaw scoops up the vehicle with his long shovel and throws it around. "This is very similar to the runaway car being dragged by chains in Jedi 2 and the rolling train wheels in Escape from Clone Island.

In order to shoot a more immersive destruction, Michael Bay and the special effects team jointly designed and manufactured a super-strength "bumper cars": that is a body of ultra-high-strength steel pipe bracket reinforcement of the car, placed in the front part of the car's camera is also closely protected, so that the stuntman can drive the cloak of this "Armor" guy directly into the car flying over, and the camera will record the scene of the collision without fail. Lin Mingyang although very doubtful Michael Bay so obsessed with destruction is meaningful, but also have to admire his bold imagination.