Chapter 665: A Master of Balance

"The nominees' luncheon should be wrapping up soon."

At the break table in the editing room, Mike Dawson checked the time and said to Anna Printz, "I bet a hundred dollars Duke doesn't get a Best Director nomination."

For an old-school Hollywood figure like Mike Dawson, earning a Best Director nomination for a superhero movie was simply impossible.

Anna Printz, however, didn't see it that way. She set down her coffee and said, "Alright, I'll take that bet. A hundred dollars says Duke definitely gets a Best Director nomination."

Duke finished his coffee and swept a bored glance over the two of them. "If you guys have nothing better to do, go help out in the visual effects studio."

Sitting next to Duke, Tina Fey laughed. "The results will be here soon."

As if on cue, Nancy Josephson called less than three minutes later. But after she hung up the Mobile Phone, an expression of sheer disbelief crossed Tina Fey's face, as if Transformers had actually landed on Earth.

"What's wrong?" Anna Printz asked.

"Did we miss out on the Best Supporting Actor nomination?" Mike Dawson immediately guessed.

Even Duke's eyes revealed a hint of curiosity. Tina Fey had been heavily influenced by him; she wouldn't react like this even in a serious emergency.

"The nomination list is out." Tina Fey dropped the stunned expression and said directly, "The Dark Knight received nominations for Best Supporting Actor, Best Sound Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Makeup, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, and..."

She paused, then added, "...and Best Director. A total of nine nominations."

"No Best Picture?" Mike Dawson pressed.

Tina Fey shook her head. "No Best Picture nomination."

Duke and the others mirrored the stunned expression Tina Fey had worn moments ago.

For a film to receive a Best Director nomination but miss out on Best Picture wasn't entirely unprecedented in the history of the Oscars, but it was incredibly rare.

They exchanged glances, and Duke sighed. "The School truly is a master of balance."

"Those people should go into politics..." Anna Printz shook her head. "...instead of judging film awards."

After all, Duke and the others were industry veterans. It didn't take much thought to figure out the School's intentions. The Dark Knight had provoked an overwhelmingly strong reaction; discussions about it had transcended the film itself and spilled over into real society. Coupled with Duke's massive box-office appeal, if the School completely ignored it without providing an explanation, they would undoubtedly suffer a barrage of attacks from countless media outlets and fans.

At the same time, discriminating against superhero movies was a School tradition. That bunch of stubborn old men certainly didn't want to break with tradition so easily.

Giving Duke a Best Director nomination while snubbing The Dark Knight for Best Picture would appease the media and the fans while preserving their own traditions as much as possible.

Furthermore, Duke's own status and influence were simply impossible to ignore. This also served as a concession to him.

"It's just a nomination," Duke instructed Tina Fey. "Notify Warner that the promotional focus still needs to be on Heath Ledger. We have to guarantee his Best Supporting Actor award."

If Heath Ledger were still alive, his chances of winning Best Supporting Actor would have faced infinitely greater odds, but passing away often proved more effective than the best public relations campaign.

By the same logic, Duke was still alive—and living very comfortably at that. It was impossible for the School to award him Best Director just for The Dark Knight.

After having Tina Fey continue monitoring The Dark Knight's progress at the Oscars, Duke turned his attention back to the post-production of Transformers.

After completing the rough cut, Duke began fine-cutting the film without the visual effects added. The goal of the fine cut was clear: shrink the film's runtime to under two and a half hours and make the overall pacing much tighter.

Strictly speaking, this was also a standard superhero movie, but unlike films like Spider-Man, Duke wasn't going to let Transformers feature a lyrical romance like the one between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. The bond forged in adversity between Sam and Mikaela would surpass ordinary romance, and much like the film's pacing, this relationship would leave the audience breathless from beginning to end.

This sharp, high-speed MTV-style visual editing was the well-known "Duke Rosenberg style."

In truth, no matter who directed the live-action Transformers movie, the true stars of the show were undoubtedly the Transformers themselves.

Alien machine lifeforms transforming into ordinary mechanical equipment to avoid the notice of normal people—all sorts of transformations, from cars and planes into robots with both feet planted firmly on the earth—the visuals were like a dream.

But to make it feel real and believable required exceptionally brilliant visual effects. Duke had extremely high demands for Industrial Light & Magic Company, the studio handling the VFX, repeatedly making them revise the rendered shots.

He wanted the robots on the silver screen to be vivid and lifelike. Whether they were hovering in the air, burrowing under the sand, or sprinting down a highway, they needed to look as if they existed in the real world.

The robots were digital creations, but the tanks and planes serving as their physical reference points were real; there could be no ambiguity about that.

Following Duke's requirements, the VFX artists at Industrial Light and Magic used digital technology to blend the two together on the blue screen to construct the final effects shots.

At the same time, cooperation with the military was absolutely crucial. The film contained a massive number of battle scenes, marking the largest-scale collaboration in history between the military and Hollywood on an action movie. The sponsorship provided by the Pentagon saved the production crew a substantial amount of money, allowing more funds to be poured into post-production.

Excluding the several months spent on preparation, the entire on-location shoot for the film took only 75 days, with some shots utilizing IMAX 3D Cameras.

The scale of the production process for Transformers could only be described as massive.

Although filming was complete and post-production was progressing smoothly, Duke didn't relax in the slightest. For a movie like this, any oversight could result in incredibly severe consequences.

To coordinate the work between various departments during post-production, he placed a folder in the shared computer network titled "Editing Samples," which all colleagues involved in the production could freely browse.

Duke knew very well that film was the product of teamwork. If he didn't test things out personally, he would never achieve the ideal visuals.

The film's editing remained completely faithful to Duke's requested style. In the completed fine-cut segments, there were countless action scenes, innumerable character appearances, rapid-fire witty dialogue, and one visual effect after another—along with, of course, endless high-speed panning shots that practically left viewers gasping for air.

To some extent, whether it was editing or VFX production, everything had to be tempered and refined countless times so that Duke could use his perfectly synchronized team to turn the images in his mind into a finished product.

The VFX department utilized six video workstations and two mass storage devices specifically designed to store all the shots and their corresponding preview sketches. To ensure unhindered communication of daily work results between Industrial Light & Magic Company and Duke, a dedicated multimedia network was also set up.

Transformers was massive in scale. The editor, Mike Dawson, possessed immense experience and skill, and he fully understood Duke's vision. He was always able to weave fast-paced combat scenes, incredibly complex visual effects, and just the right amount of subtle humor into a gripping story.

Aside from the initial rough cut that ran over six hours, Duke had dozens of hours of footage on hand, all of which served as alternative shots for the film.

No matter how a movie was shot, it could never be a simple copy-and-paste job—especially not with Duke making so many changes. Ever since he entered the industry, when had the amount of footage he shot not been a dozen or even twenty times the length of the final cut?

From the preparation phase to the end of filming, Duke had accumulated a massive amount of footage. Once post-production began, there were times when the crew's sole purpose seemed to be finding unused shots because he would often be unsatisfied with the editing results and scrap them completely.

Excluding days off, Duke went to the workshop every day, carefully pondering the visuals he wanted and then describing them to the rest of the team.

Sometimes, he preferred to see the editors' results first, letting them cut their own versions before spending an hour or two studying and reviewing them. He didn't want a lifeless, cobbled-together product; he wanted sequences of shots that flowed smoothly and naturally.

Under these circumstances, the movie's action scenes underwent repeated editing. Duke often had to process eighty to a hundred sequences of shots in a single day. Every single shot had to be treated with absolute care, as they were all vital components of the film.

To complete the work efficiently, Duke utilized a total of six editors, including Mike Dawson, though the other five primarily worked under Dawson's lead.

Grand scale and fast pacing were the biggest characteristics of Transformers, necessitating a highly capable editing team that could constantly propose useful new ideas.

Even so, there were many times when the crew would look at each other in dismay, entirely at a loss. For a big-budget, massive production like this, processing the completed footage while guaranteeing both quality and quantity required multiple editors cooperating flawlessly.

To find the right feel, Duke repeatedly watched the first few episodes of the 1984 animated series during his free time, but he didn't intend to be overly influenced by it. After all, a movie and an animated series were completely different works.

Moreover, none of the editors, including Mike Dawson, were diehard fans of Transformers. While this made it easy to accidentally cut scenes that might be crucial to Transformers fans, it also ensured the editing results were more accessible to the general public, preventing the film from pandering too heavily to the fanbase.

This movie was incredibly ambitious in scale, and the content from the original animated series was simply unsuitable for being transplanted into the film. Mike Dawson hadn't even watched the previous Transformers animated series or the animated movie, because he believed it would be completely unhelpful in producing a "Duke Rosenberg style" movie.