Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Movies Media

Explaining the Special Effects Behind Transformers 208

ntmokey writes "Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the special effects behind the Transformers movie, including some exclusive shots from Paramount Pictures. Apparently, using real cars as models presented some interesting problems for the folks at Industrial Light and Magic, who had to figure out how a recognizable chunk of steel can fold into robot. In the end, the solution was the development team getting hands-on in the auto shop. And lots of grease."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Explaining the Special Effects Behind Transformers

Comments Filter:
  • They should've (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maroberts ( 15852 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @09:55AM (#19743083) Homepage Journal
    ..simply hired the guys who did the Citroen [visit4info.com] adverts.
    • How could they justify that enormous film budget if they have used a relatively cheap and fuel efficient car. Moreover, compared to other european brands (and even their partner, Peugeot) and despite good results in WRC, Citroen cars don't are not considered cool or beatiful.
      • The Citröen Xsara Picasso is a pretty cool minivan, and I want a Citröen C1 diesel (very similar to the Toyota Aygo) for my work commute.

        The newest iteration of the Renault Twingo, however, isn't as charming as it used to be.
      • Pleeze (Score:4, Interesting)

        by maroberts ( 15852 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @10:56AM (#19743651) Homepage Journal
        I didn't suggest a CitroenBot Transformer, just using the guys who made the ads.

        Anyway, I wouldn't call a Camaro beautiful. Brutal & unsubtle maybe, but then that fits in with the Transformers ethos.
    • by arivanov ( 12034 )
      There are a few copies of the ads on gootube, though IMO only this one is really cool:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X7PAdSfHO8&mode=re lated&search= [youtube.com]

      As far as cool I would disagree with you. The C4 (especially the 3 door one) cool.

      Granted, it is probably the first cool looking car Citroen has put out for nearly 20 years. Otherwise the early Citroens used to be "the kings of cool" on European roads. Just ask anyone who is old enough to remember the flying Citroen out of the Phantomas movies and its
    • by Kj0n ( 245572 )
      This may be slightly off-topic, but you should read this [iamlivid.com]. It is absolutely brilliant.
  • by kidcharles ( 908072 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @09:57AM (#19743099)
    Sure, you can explain the special effects, but can you explain that anguished feeling of betrayal after discovering that Bumblebee is a Chevy Camaro? Can you!? Rest in peace, my childhood...
    • Simple. They're GM's little bitches, whored out for the sole purpose of making a 2.5 hour GM commercial.
  • To miss. Much like all the rest of the cack out just now.

     
  • by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <<deliverance> <at> <level4.org>> on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @10:02AM (#19743157) Journal
    Et tu anonymous blogging internet marketoids?
  • the secret (Score:5, Funny)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @10:04AM (#19743181) Homepage
    Apparently, using real cars as models presented some interesting problems for the folks at Industrial Light and Magic, who had to figure out how a recognizable chunk of steel can fold into robot

    Believe it or not, I think they used some sort of "computer" at some point to actually do the special effects.
    • Having seen the HBO special on TV, I thought it was interesting that rather than do everything in CG, they actually did most of the special effects with real cars, explosives, and lots of stunt crews.

      It may look just as good as CG in the theater, and you might never be able to tell the difference, but seeing the cars explode and fly everywhere really put me in the mood to want to see the movie, and I think the director really has the right idea in mind: mindless carnage.
  • http://youtube.com/watch?v=bf1IP8qrsyM [youtube.com] This is when Hollywood fails. If you into dancing and ice skating cars - who really needs to see a film , btw these are shown as tv adverts in europe.
  • by fizze ( 610734 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @10:23AM (#19743379)
    ....that they are going to elaborate on the electrical device [wikipedia.org]?

    *shrug*
    I guess that identifies me as a geek, then?
    • ...that it would've been more interesting, most likely.
    • by mblase ( 200735 )
      ....that they are going to elaborate on the electrical device?

      Well, in the movie, there was that brief joke where Sam's dad thought the mess in his backyard was caused by a falling power transformer.

      The joke completely bypassed most of the audience, of course.
  • My impression. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MaWeiTao ( 908546 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @11:03AM (#19743705)
    I thought the story for Transformers was pure dreck. Most of it made little sense. It felt like the story was written by a 13 year old. It's sad when a cartoon makes more sense than a live action movie. Huge portions were pointless and completely irrelevant to the main storyline. It was pure Michael Bay crapola. He even managed to squeeze in hints of a goofy love story.

    That said, anything with the Transformers was awesome. It was immensely entertaining watching them transform and battle. It was good enough that I came away satisfied despite all the crap.

    I generally liked the robot designs, although not so much Megatron. And the small Transformer was obnoxious. Why they couldn't have Rumble or something is beyond me. My main problem with all the Transformers is that they were far too complicated. They all had these tiny moving parts and coupled with Michael Bay's penchant for twitchy cameras it made it difficult to sometimes follow the action. There were times where I couldn't tell if I was watching an arm, a leg or a head. And when the robots were intertwined it was even worse. This was particularly bad for the Decepticons because they were so monochromatic.

    I thought it was funny when the small robot, made up of a good deal of very resilient steel of some sort transforms into a small stereo and this woman carries him around like it's no big deal.

    The Popular Science article does little more than serve as an advertisement for this movie. "The Best Special Effects Ever?" That's what they imply every time they have an article on some new effects-laden movie. I agree, the effects were very good, except when an actor occassionally wasn't looking in right the quite direction or really acting at the right moment. But they were great.

    However, for me, the best special effects are those that don't remind me they're special effects. And for that I'd probably have to go back to the earlier Star Wars movies, or perhaps 2001. Nevertheless, I did enjoy Transformers. I do think the story would have been far better had they just followed the story in the cartoons more closely.
    • I hated this movie because of all the parts that weren't "transforming robots fighting with each other". The concept doesn't have to be so shitty like some here would say. The Dreamwave and IDW Transformers (and the old Marvel US series from about issue 40 onward) series feature excellent writing and turned the TF universe into a legitimately good space opera. Those comics aren't without their flaws, but they show that it's possible to write something based on a toy line, take it seriously, and churn out s
    • It's sad when a cartoon makes more sense than a live action movie.

      Why?

      I think it's sad that cartoons are automatically relegated to children's entertainment, and even worse, that they are expected to be nothing but fluff. Many cartoons have depth, vision, and meaning; there's nothing wrong with challenging the mind of a child, or an adult, for that matter...though movies like this one seem to lower the bar across the board. Perhaps Devo was right.
  • When I first read the headline, I thought "Hmmm...did somebody find a neat trick to do with all those laptop, phone charger, and LAN switch power supplies?"

    Then I thought "Oh, the Transformers MOVIE. Duh. It should have said that."

    I think an article about the first would have been more interesting.
  • When it came to breathing life into characters such as Bumblebee, the protective Autobot, ILM needed to think backwards to fill in the blanks (and the junk in the drunk) between finished robot sketches and real-life GM cars.

    Oh noble Bumblebee, how I thought I knew you!

    • You didn't watch your Futurama, did you? Of course not, or else you'd know what happens to robots that don't watch their alcohol intake. Do you want Bumble to rust?
  • It happens after every big fx movie.

    "Effects like these would be impossible 2 years ago".
    "It took us hundreds of people to make".
    "One frame renders in a week on a supercomputer".
    "Each robot is made out of a milliard of unique polygons and pixels".
    "It was very hard for actors to talk to nothing".

    But actually we know all this. Yes it was complex. Maybe this is why they took something like 100 million dollars for it.
    I prefer to enjoy the work they did, versus read the same retired "look at how complex it was"
    • If you want a good "behind the scenes" documentary, the one on The Last Starfighter is easily the best. CGI was in its infancy then - these days, it's just "bigger and more" of techniques that were pioneered with movies like TLS and Tron. The TLS documentary (which is on the TLS DVD) includes some great stories about the tricks they pulled and breakthroughs they managed in order to get the thing done - even more impressive when they tell you that the rendering hardware (which was, truly, a supercomputer)
  • by chromozone ( 847904 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @01:12PM (#19744919)
    I can't go to "special effects" movies anymore. With the advance of digital technology it seems there is no gimmick that gets left out of a movie. "Whiz Bang" movies today reminds me of a 13 year old girl starting to using make-up and who just packs all sorts of junk on her face. It was Michelangeo who said its not what gets put into a work of art that makes it great but what gets left out. Too many movies pack on layers of audio visual junk that cause the sum of the film to be less than its parts. The more "real" they try to make things look the phonier they look too me. The gimmicks stand out on their own as if in relief, and they dont even blend into scene or movie quite often. So much money gets spent making scenes with these gimmicks that I think people get reluctant to leave them out and they just over-inflate the films run times. Scenes of secondary import to the story become too long because there is some special effect. The worst for me are the sound effects. I never heard so much excessive, synthetic noise pollution in my life. I don't know how people can spend money at theaters anymore all things considered. First a patron gets pelted with 20 minutes of ads and trailers and then (if its a FX movie) get assaulted with over-cooked AV. Thank God for DVDs with a remote.
  • by shidarin'ou ( 762483 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @01:26PM (#19745087) Homepage
    Special Effects are on set. Visual Effects are post production CGI, compositing, etc.

    A special effect is a car being rigged to explode on set. A visual effect is a giant 4 story CG robot kicking that car.

    We're two entirely seperate industries. Thanks for your interest however!
    • Special Effects are on set. Visual Effects are post production CGI, compositing, etc. A special effect is a car being rigged to explode on set. A visual effect is a giant 4 story CG robot kicking that car. We're two entirely seperate industries. Thanks for your interest however!

      Eh, whatever. That's a distinction that's only important to the people whose names are in the credits crawl. To the audience, though, it's all just "effects". Special, visual, foley, whatever.

      We're to the point where film m

  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @01:43PM (#19745219) Homepage

    Some years ago, when morphing was new, I was over at Pacific Data Images. An unhappy young woman was seated at a display, with a picture of a car's front in one window and a tiger's face in another. She was trying to come up with a set of control points for the morph. It just wasn't working.

    You can morph anything to anything; no matter what points you pick, the start and end states will be the input images. Keeping it from looking stupid is the hard part.

    The trend today is to do the tough morphs behind the scenes; the parts in front are moving around without too much distortion, while the stuff that's changing in blatantly unrealistic ways is obscured. This is a cheat, but that's how Hollywood works.

    Right now, effects technology is ahead of screenwriting. With a big enough budget, you really can do anything on screen. But look at the action movies coming out: Spiderman 3. Pirates 3. Shrek 3. Die Hard 4. Harry Potter 5. And last year's Rocky 6. Not much originality there.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

Where there's a will, there's a relative.

Working...