More than Meets the Eye

It's Saturday already! My goodness.. The past week has flown by. I've still got about six shots on my plate to finish up before I head out from DD.. They're hopefully straightforward, but things do change, don't they? Earlier in the week Michael Bay dropped by the office and presented us with 30 minutes of footage from Transformers, most of which was shown at ShoWest earlier this year. He showed us a little bit more than the crowd there, but of which scenes, I don't know. Most of the effects work is pretty close to being done.. Looks like some comping and cleanup still need to get done, and certain scenes lit, but overall, this movie is going to kick ass. If you do a Google search for ShoWest Transformers, you'll get a bunch of reviews about the 20-25 minutes of footage that was shown. From an internal perspective of one company that's doing the work, there was a lot of talk about how it looks to be a good action film, with some humourous dialog throw in as well as some crazy overly dramatic dialog as well! Shia doesn't piss me off as much in this film as he did in Constantine, so that's a good sign. The female heroine, Megan, is easy on the eyes as well, which should make this film a must see.

A great scene that was touched upon in the original trailer was of Blackout transforming on the army base. While we see a glimpse in the trailer, the ShoWest reel has the full transformation, and the ensuring battle sequence. Let me tell you, this is going to be awesome when the sound and visual effects are complete. Holy Crap. Do you remember when you first saw the aliens emerge from the ground in War of the Worlds (the Spielberg one) and vaporize the first humans? Well, these scenes are on par with that one. We do get to see a bunch of the Autobots as well, and the voice work by Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) is just as I remember it, and it's eerily exciting to see him perform his talent on a huge mechanical rig. The other Autobots we see, but don't really hear, and we don't get a glimpse of any of the other Decepticons except Scorponok, who, in the last sequence of the ShoWest reel, wrecks havoc on a small group of special forces, which we glimpse in the trailer (when he emerges from the sand behind the guys). Later in the same sequence, the C130 pounding the area with shells is an awesome sight to behold.