I can literally feel my insides shaking from explosions and gunfire. While I’ve been on the set of dozens of movies while they filmed both big and small action sequences, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like what I witnessed on the set of Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight. Not only did I stand near massive explosions with over a dozen people firing very large weapons, I watched Bay stand right in the middle of the action, wearing very little protection, Red Epic Dragon camera in hand as he tried to get the right shot. Keep in mind, Bay had a number of other operators using very large cameras so he could have easily stayed in video village (where the director normally sits, watching the action unfold on monitors), but that isn’t where Bay likes to stay. I saw first-hand that Bay always wants to be in the middle of the action, holding a camera, making sure every angle is covered. As a fan of his work for over two decades, finally getting to see him work up close was extremely cool and something I will never forget.
While Paramount has asked us not to reveal some of the specifics of Transformers: The Last Knight, I can say the action scene I got to watch unfold involved a number of the cast and members of the military – including plenty of retired SEALs - trying to escape a crashed Osprey. As they exited through the back of the downed vehicle, they were immediately under attack, and I got to observe take after take of large, loud explosions and gunfire as they attempted to find cover. And unlike a lot of movies that might film a small sequence of the scene and then call cut, Bay let the scene play out so each take would last twenty and thirty seconds with gunfire ringing out the entire time. It was the first time on a set visit where every single person was either wearing earplugs or covering their ears during filming due to the volume. As you might imagine, it was an awesome day to stop by.
Before going any further, let me back up a second. Back in early August, I joined Bay on the set of Transformers: The Last Knight with a few other reporters while the production was filming outside Detroit. While on set, we spoke with the cast and filmmakers and I’ve put together a big list of things to know. Check it out below and when you're done make sure to check out some of the other links:
- A few years have passed since the last film.
- Michael Bay says The Last Knight will use the large screen IMAX format a lot more than any of the previous films.
- The film will shoot in Iceland, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Cuba, Michigan, Arizona, Namibia and California.
- Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura says The Last Knight is going to explore the mythology of how Transformers “were created, where did it start, where did they go from being a sort of a slave-race to a sentient race--we're delving into that aspect of the mythology, so the characters that are involved in there are Megatron before he's Megatron, Optimus before he's Optimus, the Librarian, the Quintessons, there's a whole group of things that have to do with how, in a sense, the Transformers were birthed, and also with how they were divided. What brought up the division, and what were the jealousies involved.”
- In the writer’s room, when they were developing ideas to turn into films, Di Bonaventura says “It was not immediately obvious that this was going to be the choice. It evolved over time. As it turned out, there was not one idea that won the day for this movie. It ended up being two ideas in particular, so there was a bit of a combination thing that happened over time.”
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- Regarding how much The Last Knight sets up the Bumblebee spinoff and future sequels, Di Bonaventura says, “you've got to be careful with that stuff, because then you start thinking about the other movies and not about the one you're making. I would say, we definitely spent some time going "How does this link up and where are these other things going to go?" So I think in their initial construction in the writer's room, and the initial sort of thinking, we spent a lot of time on that, thinking about the interrelationship.” He went on to say, “some of the things will have a very direct relationship. You'll see some things in here that are laying a pipe. You won't necessarily know that it's laying a pipe for another movie, but it's there. So there's probably, in a really meaningful way, two or three things in this movie that really have a meaningful aspect...and then there's a bunch of little things. But we're not making this movie to set up the other movies.”
- With the Bumblebee spin-off movie on the horizon, Di Bonaventura says the script is currently being written by Christina Hodson.
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- Di Bonaventura said the Cybertron animated movie is currently being written and it’ll be in continuity with the mythology of the films. He went on to say, “We're not trying to affect the animated movie, and the animated movie is not trying to mimic or take from us.”
- Regarding other Transformer movie spinoffs, we asked Di Bonaventura if they might want to do a different time period. He said, “you could easily make an argument that in Roman times, you know, there were--you know what I mean? That seems like a good period.” Meaning insert Transformers into ancient Rome and see what happens.
- With The Last Knight being the fifth film in the series, some might wonder if they need to see the first four films to enjoy the latest one. According to Di Bonaventura, “The opening of the film will introduce the sort of exploration of the mythology that we're going to do. Therefore, it's not necessary to have seen the films before, because it's going to establish the--let's call it the mystery of the movie, and the direction the movie is going to go in. If you've never seen another Transformers movie, you don't need to.”
- Fans of the Dinobots should be excited to hear Grimlock is back and will have a much larger role in the film. Di Bonaventura says we’ll see more of his personality in The Last Knight. He revealed, “He's funny. He's like a naughty dog in this movie. He's really sheepish when he does something wrong. He's a great character. He's really--we're bringing out a side of him that you're going to like--you're going to relate to.”
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- Regarding the antagonists of the film, it looks like we’re going to get a new villain. Di Bonaventura said it will be “A surprise, I think, as you discover who the villain is. So in that respect, that is a very different kind of Decepticon form, if you would. I think that the understanding of the mythology, as you begin to unveil it, you'll understand just how big the jeopardy that we're going to face is.”
- The film will explore the history of the “Primes.”
- Get ready to see a submarine Transformer.
- Michael Bay said that he’s done 90 setups in one day twice on the Transformers movies. Which is insane.
- Bay revealed a day on the Transformers set is 12 hours. When I asked him if he ever does six day weeks he said, “I hate it. It’s too hard. Really hard. I’m too much of an old man for that shit now. I don’t like it. You know why? You gotta regroup and the movie starts to take a life of its own. You gotta keep the beast going. You gotta edit. You gotta see what little pieces you’re missing.”
- Regarding how the fifth installment will raise the bar, Bay revealed, “What I'm excited about, the palette on this one is the most different I've ever done. It will be the most different. The 3rd act is spectacular looking. It's stuff that I've never done that excites me. It's stuff that's really complicated.” He went on to say, “The 3rd act is pretty interesting, just visually really interesting. I don't want to say a lot about it. It's just challenging to build, to make it work. I've never seen it in a movie before. What we're doing.”
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- Something I didn’t know about the military's involvement in the Transformers movies is if the DOD offers their official stamp of approval, they have final say on the script if they’re involved in the movie. Bay revealed, “There was something that happened where an Autobot gets killed, and they go, ‘Nope. We will not participate.’ It’s by accident, but they go, ‘Nope, we won’t participate.’ So they’re very adamant. ‘We will not kill an Autobot.’ They go, ‘We cannot let kids see that this has happened.’ And I totally get it.”
- Bay revealed when the production moves to England they’ll be shooting “a lot of authentic, very old stuff. Castles that are very rarely filmed in. We’ve got some places that have never allowed any filming before, which is pretty neat. And because of the name of the movie, we got into Downing Street. I don’t know how that happened. But that never happens.”
- With all the properties trying to expand their movie universes, don’t look for Transformers to include M.A.S.K., Micronauts, or G.I. Joe.
- Mark Wahlberg’s character Cade Yeager starts the film on the run and said the film is “a man on the run adventure story.” The reason his daughter (who was played by Nicola Peltz in Transformers: Age of Extinction) is not in the film is she’s in hiding. Wahlberg said it’s “a nice departure from what we did before.”
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- Santiago Cabrera plays a mercenary who’s out to get all the Transformers. He says, “I was a SEAL but I’ve retired and I’m on contract, I’ve been hired –The TRF (stands for the Transformers Response Force) has been formed to fight the Transformers, so my orders are I don’t care if they’re Autobots or Decepticons, we gotta stop this war. So I’m a team leader and I’ve come with my team to fight them and what I find and when I see Cade Yeager is harboring them he becomes the enemy basically.”
- At some point in the film Cabrera will get in a fight with Bumblebee.
- One of the big action set pieces involves Drones and Cabrera controls at least some of them.
- While some movies film with one camera the entire shoot, on The Last Knight, crew member Adam Morgan revealed, “There are a lot of different formats. We have three different 3D cameras, some are 3D IMAX, some are regular 3D, then a bunch of 2D with optics, some 2D with spherical, some film, some GoPro. Michael really likes to mix it with different formats.” They are also using the RED 6K WEAPON DRAGON camera on set.
- The three different 3D rigs are the ALEXA 65 IMAX rig, the RED WEAPON 6K rig, and a IMAX Phantom 65, which is a side-by-side integrated lens system that was built by Phantom and IMAX together. According to Matt Blute, the Stereographer on set, “the volume plays differently given the sensor size and the lenses that you use. So one of the things we have to do is balance how are the shots that we're using the IMAX camera for primarily with the shots we're using the RED camera for, how is that all going to play together and what's the effect that it is going to have? Because the IMAX with the larger sensor and different focal lengths for the same field of view does feel bigger and has more resolution, so we want to take advantage of that but want to make sure it works throughout the story.”
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- To help with the 3D, Bay has a 3D van where a group of people are watching all the shots and making sure everything is perfect. They make sure all “the cameras are working together in sync, so all the focus, iris, zoom, all of the properties of the camera are working correctly, that they’re aligned so that the 3D is technically comfortable to watch and correct given the artistic goals that we're going out for.”
- According to Blute. what’s great about the 3D van is “you have the ability for the filmmaker to control exactly what the 3D is going to look like in real-time so that the whole creative team -- director, director of photography, production designer, actors -- they can all see their creative choices in 3D in real-time as opposed to having to convert it later and figuring out how the 3D is going to work then.”
- Transformers: The Last Knight is the first time the IMAX ALEXA 65 cameras have been used in a 3D configuration live-action film.
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- Regarding the action in The Last Knight, Duhamel said, “This one just seems bigger than anything that we did before. We did a lot of big stuff. Taking over Michigan Avenue in Chicago for two months was insane. But it seems like every day there’s something that I can’t believe we’re doing, and for a part of the movie that will probably be 10 seconds, 15 seconds. It’s just these massive set pieces everyday with four different cranes, a helicopter and the Porsche Cayenne with the crane arm on top of it. I just did a movie called Spaceman that’s coming out at the end or middle of August. And we did it probably for the cost of the coffee budget on this movie. Literally.”
- Isabela Moner describes her character as a tomboy and says when we meet her she’s homeless and joins Mark Wahlberg and the team in defeating the Deceptions. She’s also the one that brings Sqweeks, who is a mini-Transformer Vespa, into the group as they’ve been together for a while. Apparently Sqkweeks is broken, so the only thing he can say is chihuahua. Moner’s character lost her family in the battle of Chicago.
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- Originally Sqweeks was going to be an all CGI creation but when Moner was in Michael Bay’s office, she asked about having a real version on set and they thought it was a good idea do they built a practical one. It’s remote controlled so it can interact with the actors. It doesn’t move but it has sounds and lights.
- The film will feature a large horse battle in England that takes place in the past.
- Bay revealed they’ve got an idea for what could be a really fun R-rated Bumblebee movie but it’ll never happen because Hasbro would never approve it. He said the idea is “very Quentin.”
- Hot Rod is in the film and he’s got a French accent, but he’s not from France. Bay said “he just likes the accent.”
- Regarding how the movies develop the Transformers personalities, Bay said “We just start spit balling. That's the fun of it. Transformers can kind of go anywhere so it's fun. And then what I like about Transformers I tell the writers is…we literally lock ourselves in a hotel room and we spitball and have art working simultaneously developing as we're writing. And we just start just kind of through art and the writers it just kind of comes out.”
For more on Transformers: The Last Knight:
- There’s an R-Rated, “Very Quentin” Idea for the 'Transformers’ Bumblebee Movie We’ll Never See
- Don't Expect Michael Bay to Direct a Marvel Sequel
- Expect More Grimlock, Dinobots in 'Transformers: The Last Knight'
- First ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ Trailer Reveals Two Species at War – One Flesh, One Metal