Chapter 656: Pursuit

As December arrived and a portion of the soundstage scenes wrapped up, Duke moved the entire crew to Las Vegas. Because the city was such a bustling metropolis, the shooting schedule was only finalized after Tina Fey's repeated negotiations with Las Vegas City Hall.

Although City Hall had given them tremendous support, Duke didn't have much time to shoot. The climax had a strict one-week filming deadline. Fortunately, all the Transformers would be generated using CGI in post-production, so he wouldn't need to capture them on camera.

Even so, Duke remained completely focused. Before every take, he had to account for how the shot would look once the Transformers were added in. Filming wasn't moving incredibly fast, but it was rolling forward steadily on schedule.

Unexpected things always happened on set, though, and Duke would occasionally come up with a new idea and alter the shooting schedule on the fly.

"Cut! Take a thirty-minute break!"

The megaphone blared across the set. After calling a halt to the entire crew, Duke hopped down from the camera mounted on the dolly tracks. He walked to the other end of the avenue, climbed a slightly elevated set of steps, and surveyed the entire set from his vantage point.

This was the famous Las Vegas Boulevard. Right now, not only was it temporarily closed off, but it looked as utterly devastated as if it had just suffered an alien invasion. The street was littered with scrapped vehicles and chunks of asphalt.

Standing on the steps, Duke looked at the distant M1A2 Main Battle Tank. He thought for a moment before making up his mind to add another sequence to the massive battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons.

He gathered the heads of cinematography, pyrotechnics, stunts, and props in the makeshift set area. Then he called over Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard, his male and female leads.

He had a brief word with Joss William and John Schwartzman.

"I want to add a more impactful sequence of shots here," he said.

Then, Duke turned to Andrew Garfield and waved to the assistant behind him.

"Bring the AllSpark over here!"

The assistant immediately fetched the AllSpark prop and handed it to Duke.

"Here's the setup, Andrew," Duke said.

Since this was an impromptu addition, there was no script for it. Duke pointed at the high-rise ahead and explained the details.

"You'll hold the AllSpark and run toward the designated building," he said.

"Run through it with me once."

Duke took off his baseball cap, handed it to the assistant behind him, then pulled off his sunglasses and hooked them on his shirt pocket. He jogged forward a few steps.

"Then, an F-22 Raptor drops from the sky," he told Andrew Garfield, who was jogging beside him.

"Let's just run through the whole thing together."

The two ran toward the car models set up by the prop department. About twenty feet away, Duke came to a halt.

"Andrew, once you run to this spot," Duke said, turning to look at him and pointing at the three cars being loaded onto the catapult rigs. "Starscream drops down, flips those cars, and blocks your path. Then Ironhide and Ratchet charge in from behind and engage Starscream in a fierce firefight. You use the chaos to sprint past them."

"I understand."

Having been on the crew for so long, Andrew Garfield understood the film's style. He knew Duke wanted to pack in even more action and explosions.

"Also," Duke said, waving him over.

Andrew Garfield followed him to the pyrotechnics area. Duke pointed at some ropes as thick as a thumb.

"These are detonating cords," he said. "We're going to lay a lot of these on the ground during the shoot. You have to sprint past them quickly. Do not trip over them."

These were standard Hollywood pyrotechnic tools. Although the explosions looked terrifying, they didn't pack much real destructive force. Still, Andrew Garfield kept it in mind. If he actually got caught in a blast, even if it didn't cause serious injury, it would definitely hurt.

Filming an explosion sequence was not only incredibly expensive but also overwhelmingly tedious. Just setting up the scene took nearly two hours. Fortunately, this kind of shot didn't demand high-level acting. If Duke had to yell "Cut!" it would be nothing short of a disaster for the crew.

After checking the crew's preparations, Duke took his place behind the dolly-mounted camera and raised his megaphone.

"Andrew, are you ready?" he shouted toward the front of the lens.

Andrew Garfield took the "AllSpark" from an assistant, gave Duke a thumbs-up, took two deep breaths, and fixed his eyes ahead.

"Action!"

At Duke's shout, Andrew Garfield deftly dodged two overturned cars and sprinted toward the high-rise. He clutched the AllSpark—the artifact capable of wiping out humanity—tightly to his chest.

He was fast. In just a dozen seconds, he covered dozens of feet. The target grew closer and closer. Just as he rushed past the entrance of an Estée Lauder boutique, Andrew Garfield looked up at the sky.

Even though there was nothing but thin air up there, he perfectly nailed a look of slight terror at seeing Starscream and slammed on the brakes.

"Boom! Boom!"

Over twenty feet ahead, the three cars were flipped by the invisible Starscream. Flames and thick smoke surged into the air as the three General Motors vehicles were launched by the catapults, sending showers of sparks into the sky.

Clutching the AllSpark with one arm and shielding his head with the other, Andrew Garfield looked back.

"Ironhide! Ratchet!" he yelled.

After a three-second beat, multiple spots in front of and behind him detonated simultaneously. The smoke and fire signaled that the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons had begun.

"Ironhide! Ratchet!"

According to the character's design, the male lead, Sam, was no longer just an awkward high schooler; he didn't lack courage in crucial moments.

"Cover me! Cover me so I can cross!"

With that, he bolted forward again. He dodged a burning car on the side of the road and steadily picked up speed, nimbly hopping over the detonating cords laid across the asphalt.

Andrew Garfield sprinted faster and faster. Wherever he ran, flames and smoke erupted. Once the post-production effects were added, it would look exactly like Starscream was hunting him down!

"Boom!"

Just over twenty feet to his left, another car was blown high into the air by an explosion.

Braving the drifting smoke, Andrew Garfield executed a combat roll onto a black mat placed on the street and took cover behind a small truck. He took a few rapid breaths before peeking back the way he came.

Naturally, there were no robots to be seen—they would be added in post with CGI. However, the explosions and fireballs kept triggering. Cars flipped, rolled, and crashed into one another, all proving the sheer ferocity of this invisible battle.

Three cameras tracked Andrew Garfield's movements the whole time. A camera assistant wearing a Steadicam rig stepped out from a hidden spot and pushed in close to capture an extreme close-up of his face.

"Okay, cut!"

The explosions finally came to a halt. Although Duke wasn't entirely satisfied, they had basically achieved the desired effect. He raised his megaphone.

"Good job, we're moving on!" he called out.

Both the prop department and the pyrotechnics crew had worked with Duke for over a decade. The unspoken understanding between them was absolute.

A successful director represented more than just himself; behind him stood a massive, successful team.

"Duke, great job!" Taking advantage of the break in filming, Hasbro's CEO, Brian Goldner, walked over.

"We've destroyed a street in Las Vegas," he said.

Although it was a slight exaggeration, the closed-off street truly looked like a disaster zone.

Even though no actual pavement or buildings were damaged, the wrecked cars and the fake "asphalt chunks" blasted by the explosions were scattered everywhere.

That wasn't a major concern. The production team had already hired a specialized cleaning company. Soon, their crew would enter the street and scrub it spotless.

Since he was speaking to the head of Hasbro, Duke kept his explanation brief.

"Right here, the US Military will help take down a few Decepticons," he said. "Since Transformers are living organisms, they can also die. They aren't invincible."

Standing behind the camera with his arms crossed, Brian Goldner looked out at the ravaged street.

"I agree with your take," he told Duke. "I think we reached a consensus on this a long time ago. The Transformers are powerful, but they aren't invincible. I might not understand the military, but I know that every powerful being has a limit to what it can endure."

"Compared to these massive alien lifeforms, humans are indeed very weak," Duke said.

He took a step to the side and pointed at the Bumblebee model still resting on a trailer not far away.

"But when facing these mechanical beings, we aren't completely defenseless," he continued. "Just as you said, they are powerful, but not invincible. Some human heavy weapons can still inflict damage on them."

"You can gauge that balance yourself," Brian Goldner said.

He knew very well that Duke was only explaining this out of respect for Hasbro, the original creators.

According to their agreement, Hasbro had very little say in the script or the filming process. Even if Duke hadn't bothered explaining, Hasbro had no right to interfere.

However, Duke understood the importance of smooth communication and seamless cooperation for the film's success—not just with Hasbro, but with the US Military as well.

The Pentagon had provided massive sponsorships for the production. If calculated at market value, it amounted to tens of millions of dollars. Furthermore, this wouldn't be their only collaboration, so he had to properly consider promoting the US Military's image.

While he wouldn't go as far as his past life's version—where the US Military couldn't find a worthy opponent on Earth and had to resort to fighting aliens—making humanity too pathetic wouldn't go over well with audiences either. After all, the people watching the movie were humans, not mechanical lifeforms from Planet Cybertron. Duke wasn't James Cameron; he wasn't going to direct a plot where aliens ruthlessly massacred mankind without a fight.

While Duke was shooting in Las Vegas, Anna Printz led a second unit to the Hoover Dam. They would shoot a few scenes with the male and female leads there, but primarily, they were capturing B-roll footage for post-production.

With Anna Printz's capabilities, managing a shoot like that would be no problem at all.