Then came Jeff White, the Creature Technical Advisor (such titles!). “Autobots had more rounded curves, and Deceptions has sharper angles. The exteriors were kept as is, but Michael said ‘it should show something as if people lifted the hoods of their cars’ we were starting to get nervous about how they’d move, and figuring out how Megatron would move his shoulder took weeks, but we figured it out. We wanted the externals to looks like the motivated things. We did some jiggle tests to figure out the weight, we wanted to show the weight but also movement. The transformations were an interesting process - it took a lot of research. We wanted to be very dynamic, but it had to be full of energy, of the Michael Bay style. We had to make guns come out of nowhere. To make it work we looked at a lot of live action stuff, like those breakdancing moves. Though Ratchet’s transformation is a throwback to the old school transformation of his character. But for all the transformations, they would have to go out and in, and fold. There could be no linear tracks. And the transformations would last as long as the shot. It was about filling the shots with the most interesting transformation. There was no internal consistency, because of the camera. You had to make some modifications for the shot. The analogy would be a Rubik’s cube.It would be like us peeling off stickers in the back to make it perfect. We wanted you believe things came out of the truck, but we’d do anything to make it work. Once they’re in their robot form it is consistent, though. We looked at Michael’s movies to see what he likes. In one shot it’s almost the same as in Bad Boys where you’d see them stand up.”

“I always forget the names of the Transformers that we settled on. We made up fake names until the end. We had a bunch of names, like Incinerator, who became Blackout. One name became another. Like Barricade.”

They’re aware of even more cheating “In one shot Megatron gets hit by a missile, and so some guts would come out, but be back later. We had to scale it back. Michael shoots a lot of dirty plates, and we love that, but we’d also have to augment that just to compliment his work. One of the big challenges was when the robots ripped down the building. We could take the building and paint a map on it and map where the crashing would happen. We had to supplement it with fire escapes, which Michael was insistent on. Who doesn’t love coming to work to blow stuff up? We had to do sand, which is hard, but we used pretty much every trick in the book.”

“For a pretty small team of people (in comparison to, say Pirates 3), it’s really a testament to what we got done. I got a letter from a 12 year old, who said ‘I loved the film, and my favorite part was when Bumblebee peed on that dude.’ In the end of day the shot came out nicely, and Michael approved that one on the first take.”

Back to the new designs: “If Michael did what was already done, it wouldn’t have been interesting. It’s hard not to nitpick, but people got over it. We had six of the world’s biggest fans, who won a contest, to talk to us about the new designs, and they had some deep discussions.”

White is working on Indy IV. I had to ask, could he say anything? “I don’t know? Can I? I’m working on it. But saying that may be too much. Going from Transformers to Indy, I’m working my way through my childhood. And that’s what brings a lot of people to ILM. Towards the end everyone was putting in a lot of effort, but it’s the people. And then the titles. Right before that I worked on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. That’s sort of the gamut of the effects work, from in your face, to making you believe in what happens in Indy. That’s what makes it interesting.”

And with that we went to lunch. Afterwards, we got a bit of a tour, and walked around the hallowed halls. Posters lined the walls with their previous accomplishments and intimidated. Effects stuff from E.T., Innerspace, and both Ghostbusters. If you look at that photo of me with Carbonite Han, you can see that I’m trying to match his face, but I failed, because I was way too happy to be photographed with Carbonite Han to feign distress.

And then we left. And then I cried.