Michael Bay has chimed in from Japan on his official website with his final message prior to premiering Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to those robot loving Japanese.
He and his effects team were working on wrapping up until the night before the premiere. Now that is dedication and coming in under the wire. Let’s all hope the hard work pays off.
Bay goes on to share some other interesting tidbits such as the number of unique robots in the film (42) and re-confirming four sequences filmed with IMAX cameras.
Speaking of IMAX, Bay suggests that version will be slightly longer with the extra screen-time devoted to ‘Bots brawling. He also says Optimus Prime will be 1:1 scale on a 50 foot+ IMAX screen in a few shots. IMAX screens vary in size but either way, the Autobot leader will be huge.
Here is Bays post in its entirety.
“Hey everyone,
In Japan today. After a month and half seven days a week most days going till midnight me and my crew have just about finished Transformers. I have never seen such a level of dedication from every crew member in a movie before.
Even today after the press in Japan and right before the premiere tonight, I have to sneak out to a digital house to approve the last few effect shots.
It has been a long hard road, but really fun one to travel. What you will notice that is strikingly different than Transformers 1, is the level of animation detail. The robot characters (42 in all), you really can feel empathy for them. What is also very different is the sheer scale of the movie. We have been very tight holding back much of the best imagery in commercials and trailers.
The way to see this movie is on IMAX. Never before has there been 4k rendered character animation shot on full IMAX 70 mm film. This is a first and the results are stunning. You will see Optimus Prime in a few shots where he is actually perfectly to scale on the IMAX 50 foot tall screens.
For IMAX, I created a slightly longer cut with more robot fighting. Four scenes were shot on IMAX cameras so the screen will fill the full IMAX screen for these scenes.
Haters beware.
Michael”
