Chapter 655: Special Effects Production

Inside the soundstage converted from the Hughes Aircraft Plant, several agents guarded a gray-haired old man, firing their shotguns across the room as if a powerful enemy lurked in the empty air.

"The Air Force has responded!" a sharp-looking black agent shouted, ducking behind a computer desk. "They're sending F-22 Raptors to Las Vegas."

"Cut!"

Behind the director's monitor, Duke called a halt.

"That's a print!" he shouted.

Over ten crew members immediately walked onto the set to clean up the mess on the floor, while Duke led the rest of the production to the next location.

For the scene they had just shot, casting a black actor was practically a necessity, but Duke didn't resort to inserting a quirky, comedic stereotype. He wasn't Michael Bay; he had no intention of injecting absurd toilet humor into the film. He had simply cut that original character entirely, giving the role to a black agent from Sector Seven instead.

Every director had their own style. Even when shooting commercial films, a massive gap existed between Duke's style and Michael Bay's.

The crew left the set, which had been practically obliterated during the shootout sequence, and moved to the other side of the soundstage. The most eye-catching feature here was the towering model of Megatron. Although built entirely from Polystyrene, it looked incredibly lifelike. Even before being processed through a camera lens, it seemed to possess a vitality of its own to the naked eye.

Just as Duke had said, the film didn't need clunky, cold machines; it needed advanced, intelligent lifeforms much like humanity.

Duke methodically directed the entire crew. It had been nearly a week since they returned to the soundstage. Compared to The Dark Knight, his demands for the cast's performances in Transformers weren't nearly as strict. Neither Sam nor Mikaela offered much room for the actors to flex their skills, not to mention that Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard's acting chops were more than a tier below Heath Ledger and Christian Bale's. Yet even if their skills had been comparable, these two roles simply gave them no room to shine.

Sam was just an on-screen surrogate for teenage audiences, and Mikaela's existence was even simpler—she was eye candy.

These relatively simple requirements kept the shoot moving smoothly. Although Duke noticed a rather sharp conflict brewing between Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard, he paid it little mind. After he issued a single warning, both actors were smart enough not to bring their personal issues onto the set.

At least it didn't affect the progress of the shoot.

That was enough for Duke. Hollywood sets were never completely harmonious. As long as it didn't affect the film, Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard could treat each other as their absolute worst enemies for all he cared—it had nothing to do with him.

Duke wasn't foolish enough to think a single word from him would make Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard drop their grudge and become the best of friends.

In fact, most Hollywood crews operated exactly like this.

In an industry built on cutthroat battles for fame and fortune, it wasn't that tight-knit friendships didn't exist among actors, but nobody would casually trust or get close to anyone else.

Shooting a movie and expecting the lead actors to become personal friends—only a director having water in the brain would do something so foolish.

Take Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, for example. By all appearances, the two were great friends, but as an industry insider, Duke knew the truth. Their working relationship far outweighed their personal friendship.

With the vast majority of actors Duke had worked with, it was nothing more than a simple professional relationship.

Having fought in Hollywood for so many years, Duke deeply understood the complexity and volatility of this circle. Let alone friends, even former besties like Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts would turn into bitter enemies competing for a single role.

Or to put it another way, not a single one of the actors Duke had worked with would ever become a member of his core team, not even Tom Hanks.

His production style also dictated that the actors' acting skills were not actually a particularly crucial element.

From the moment he entered Hollywood up to now, out of all the films Duke had directed, the only roles that truly gave actors the space to fully express their craft were Captain Miller and Joker.

As the various departments took their positions, Duke walked over to the massive Megatron model to give a few instructions to Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard. The former needed to deliver lines explaining Megatron's true purpose for coming to Earth. The latter had practically no lines, but the camera would still pan to her appropriately—she just needed to show off her sexy figure, exactly as before.

"Scene twenty-seven, take nineteen..." the slate operator called out. "Action!"

A group of people walked toward Megatron, examining it with amazed gazes.

"This is NBE-1!" Sector Seven agent Simmons announced.

"Sorry, sir," Andrew Garfield interjected, his hands shoved into his pockets. "I don't mean to intentionally interrupt you, but this is Megatron! He's the leader of the Decepticons!"

"He has been kept in a frozen state since 1935," another agent said, pointing at Megatron. "Your great-great-grandfather discovered him. This is the greatest discovery in human history."

The close-up camera swept past Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard, who was pressed tightly against him. It deliberately lingered on Amber Heard for two seconds, giving her a massive close-up shot, before panning over to Agent Simmons.

"What you're looking at is the source of modern technology." The Sector Seven agent paced back and forth with his hands behind his back, exuding arrogance. "Microchips, lasers, spaceflight, cars—all obtained through reverse-engineering him."

He walked over next to Andrew Garfield and deliberately emphasized his tone. "NBE-1, that's what we call him!"

Perhaps because he wasn't too demanding about the actors' performances, the morning's scenes went very smoothly. Even the group shots required relatively few extra takes. By the afternoon, several scenes involving the AllSpark and the robots were printed after just a few attempts, allowing the crew to wrap up early.

Although the crew wrapped up early, Duke's work wasn't finished. Returning to Warner Studios in Burbank, he went to the special effects studio set up by Industrial Light and Magic to check on the progress of the visual effects production.

The sheer number of special effects shots required for this movie far exceeded those in Iron Man.

The original first installment of Transformers had arguably enjoyed the best critical reputation and the most coherent plot in the entire franchise, but it was also the movie where the Transformers had the least screen time. Setting aside the fact that the primary protagonist, Optimus Prime, made a belated entrance, the Transformers essentially only appeared in fleeting glimpses throughout the rest of the film.

In Duke's hands, the movie underwent major surgery. The most significant change was streamlining the plot and characters, thereby dedicating more of the film's runtime to the Transformers.

Especially Optimus Prime. According to his vision, Optimus Prime had to debut no later than twenty-five minutes into the film.

This naturally led to a reduction in the human characters' screen time.

This would inevitably draw criticism from certain professional critics, but who cared what they thought?

After the film's release, what the audience would really care about was the fate of the Transformers, the fight scenes, the audiovisual impact, and the special effects.

With the Transformers getting more screen time, the number of visual effects shots increased accordingly. A one-year timeframe was quite tight to complete the effects for such a film. Ever since the character designs for the Transformers were finalized, the visual effects artists at Industrial Light and Magic had been busy working on the CGI.

However, Duke also limited the reliance on computer graphics for the Transformers and background elements during action scenes. Most of the car crashes and explosions were shot using practical effects, placing the camera lenses right inside the vehicle collisions and explosive blasts to make the sequences look even more thrilling.

The Transformers' designs were incredibly complex. Even a simple movement like rotating a wrist required dozens of visible components. Each of Ironhide's cannons was composed of roughly 10,000 individual parts. Bumblebee used a single armor panel to act as eyebrows and had to pivot multiple facial components just to form a smile. On top of that, the eyes of every Transformer character were specifically designed to be dilated and brightened.

Among these details, Duke specifically instructed Industrial Light and Magic to moderately brighten the eye glow of characters like Optimus Prime, lest some audience members fail to distinguish the Autobots from the Decepticons during the chaotic scenes.

This made distinguishing them very simple: red eyes meant Decepticons, and blue-green eyes meant Autobots.

Over the past few months, Industrial Light and Magic had been designing and producing the computer animation for the Transformers' transformations. They carefully cross-referenced every detail on the vehicle models. Initially, the transformation processes they designed followed the laws of physics, but the resulting effect looked neither exciting nor smooth.

For a film where visual effects were the main selling point, this was simply a fatal flaw.

Later, Industrial Light and Magic even proposed a ridiculous plan to use liquid metal for the Transformer characters' surfaces, earning them a vicious chewing out from Duke.

"These are Transformers, not the T-1000!" he snapped back.

By now, Industrial Light and Magic had chosen a "Rubik's Cube" style that completely abandoned the laws of physics. This way, whether transforming from a static or dynamic state, the Transformers would look more interesting, realistic, dynamic, and fast, rather than like clumsy beasts.

One important decision during Industrial Light and Magic's special effects production was to keep the wheels in contact with the ground for as long as possible. This way, the Autobots could maintain their momentum while transforming, thereby preserving a baseline of realism.

These plans also received Duke's approval. He knew exactly where the film's selling points lay. Boxy, thick, and clunky Transformers would simply be a disaster for a commercial sci-fi film like this.

In addition, Duke specifically asked action choreographer Jimmy Carter to collect several clips of kickboxing matches and recordings from action movies that blended combat styles like judo and Muay Thai. These were provided to Industrial Light and Magic's animators for reference, in hopes of making the film's fight scenes look more graceful.

Special effects production was undoubtedly the top priority of this film. During the soundstage shoot, Duke constantly communicated and exchanged opinions with Industrial Light and Magic about it. By the time Duke left Los Angeles and headed for Las Vegas, the visual effects production was basically on track.