Lin Mingyang really put a lot of thought into helping Megan design and shoot this set of photos, but the effect is also very obvious. Michael Bay immediately made a decision after seeing the photo, and the heroine was determined.

After the starring list was confirmed, DreamWorks announced the filming budget of the film, because of the grand surname of the live-action Transformers theme, many people expressed their incredible investment of $180 million, you must know that Sony spent 250 million in order to shoot "The New Spider-Man", and the frolicking "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" is rumored to have cost more than 200 million, and the shooting budget proposed by DreamWorks is indeed a little insufficient in this era of blockbusters.

Spielberg has learned a lesson this time, his new work "War of the Worlds" is similar to this "Transformers" in terms of scene scale and special effects, but the actors in it are all big names, as a result, Spielberg spent $250 million heartily, but did not get the expected market response.

In fact, for movies based on special effects, the role of stars is minimal. Looking back at the movie "War of the Worlds" now, if the protagonist did not use Tom Cruise, and other actors did not use first-tier stars, but used some second- and third-tier stars, the box office would not have a big impact, and the investment could be reduced by about $15 million.

So this time, Spielberg set his sights on the selection of actors, especially those rising stars in Hollywood, who are not at a high asking price, have good acting skills, and are not low in popularity, and are the preferred actors for special effects blockbusters.

At the beginning, Lin Mingyang fully met this condition, although his worth has become one of Hollywood's first-line movie stars, but compared with his popularity and box office appeal, every penny spent on him is definitely worth it.

Lin Mingyang won the actor trophy at this Oscars, and this sudden change caught Spielberg off guard. After thinking about it repeatedly, he decided to continue to let Lin Mingyang, whose value has risen a lot, as the starring role. The two sides quickly reached an agreement, and Lin Mingyang agreed to star in the film for $17 million, which is only $2 million higher than when he starred in "The New Spider-Man."

The media have speculated that Lin Mingyang starred in this film at such a "low price", and Spielberg's "face" played an important role.

In the budget of 180 million US dollars, Spielberg asked Michael Bay to control the total remuneration of all actors within 25 million US dollars, and Lin Mingyang alone has already taken the lead, and of the remaining 8 million US dollars, the heroine Megan Fox spent another 4 million US dollars, and the rest of the money, Michael Bay can only be careful with calculations, and in the remaining roles in the film, the audience basically sees very unfamiliar faces.

The new Oscar actor joined, the on-screen couples of "Youth Musical" reunited, and the various speculations of Transformers fans about the film, since the producer announced the film production plan, the media has not stopped discussing hot topics about "Transformers".

Despite the constant speculation from the outside world, the tone within the crew is very tight. Michael Bay and all the crew members signed demanding non-disclosure agreements, and as the two leading actors of the film, Lin Mingyang and Meghan rarely talked about the film in the opening occasion.

Strictly speaking, "Transformers" should belong to the action movie with a sci-fi surname, and Michael Bay is famous for his wonderful presentation of special effects on the scene. He's so obsessed with and good at on-set special effects that the highlight of his failed sci-fi film "Escape from Clone Island" is the traditional street car chase.

When making this film, Michael Bay did not intend to give up his own style, he believes that live special effects and sci-fi content are not contradictory, because the former actually adds to the realism of the film. During the filming of "Transformers", Michael Bay insisted on not using the digital effects part, and turned to traditional blasting and modeling methods to achieve the same goal.

There must be explosions in Michael Bay's films, although Hollywood is relatively mature in a whole set of digital special effects production technologies such as fire, sparks, shockwaves, gravity engines, debris, smoke, etc., and is fully capable of creating relatively realistic pictures, but it is difficult to be perfect, and second, it takes unlimited money to achieve perfection. The so-called "100 feet to the top", making special effects above the level is not a problem for industrial light and magic, but to make a super-first-class, breaking people's imagination of the dream picture, the cost will increase exponentially.

In contrast, in traditional live special effects, the controllability of explosion effects has been greatly improved, enough to complete various effects according to the director's requirements. From his own style point of view, Michael Bay made a wise choice.

In order to maximize the realistic effect of the film, in this movie, which completely uses digital special effects technology to synthesize the "Transformers" picture, Michael Bay still used models in the shooting of some scenes.

KNB, a veteran Hollywood model and makeup effects studio, produced 10 large-scale models of King Kong for "Transformers", including Optimus Prime's head, Megatron's legs, and vertigo's paws in addition to the "Bumblebee" as a whole. Large, detailed solid models are mainly prepared for close-ups, especially when there are not many animated scenes, and it can save the hassle of "virtual background drawing" and "digital compositing" while conveying more realism at your fingertips.

-- In order to fulfill the vision of director Michael Bay, the actors in the film not only had to risk a lot of life to shoot on location, but the crew's on-site special effects team also racked their brains, and they had to come up with all kinds of ways to help the director realize the crazy ideas in his head.

However, when filming the scene where the mad robot "Barricade" chases the hero in the scrapyard, the special effects team encountered a very tricky problem. It took them three days without coming up with a workable plan. For this, Michael Bay lost his temper.

Lin Mingyang was dragged to the scene by the assistant director to be a "firefighter". Michael Bay's short temper is well known in the crew, and he can still speak when he is angry, except for the film's executive producer Spielberg, only Lin Mingyang can do this.

Michael Bay also slowly calmed down after losing his temper, and Lin Mingyang's timely appearance just gave him a step. After everyone sat calmly in the conference room, Lin Mingyang figured out what happened.

It turned out that during the filming of this scene, "Barricade" overturned an obstructive car to the side in the process of chasing the hero. To achieve this shot of the car rolling in the air, the traditional method is to use a small pneumatic barrel, placed on the side of the car chassis, and after remote detonation, the reaction force will push the car to roll in the air.

"I've heard that this special effects technique was also used in the recent filming of 007: Casino Royale, which caused Bond's Aston Martin DBS to roll seven laps at high speed, and is said to have set a new world record for stunts." Van Digan, the head of the special effects team, gave a recent example, and although "Casino Royale" is still being filmed, this technical approach is no secret in the circle.

His explanation made Lin Mingyang more and more puzzled, since there was a solution to the problem, why couldn't they come up with a shooting plan for a long time. He asked suspiciously, "Then why don't we use this technology?" ”

Michael Bay, who had not spoken, gave the answer in his deep voice at this time: "Because it's hard to control!" ”

"So apart from this 'pneumatic barrel', we have no other technical means available?"

"There's also a more traditional 'rollover' effect," Van Digan looked at Michael Bay, who was sitting diagonally across from him, "and this technique uses a steep roadblock to drive a moving car up from one side and then it rolls." As far as I know, the black sedan in "The Matrix 2" that does a harrier roll over the heads of Trinity and Morpheus was filmed like this. ”

"I used this technique 10 years ago when I was filming Death Island, do you remember the shot of Sean Connery's black car flying into the air? That's how it was filmed. Without waiting for Lin Mingyang to ask, Michael Bay himself explained: "But in our current film, many cars are unlucky to be ravaged by crazy robots in a stationary state for no reason, so the skill of 'slope barricade' is not used at all." ”

"These two methods are currently the most commonly used, and we haven't thought of a better solution than that!" Van Digan added.

"I have a way... Maybe it works! When everyone was at a loss, Lin Mingyang suddenly said this, and everyone in the conference room stared at him in unison.

Lin Mingyang is a complete layman when it comes to special effects technology, but it is precisely because of this that he can think of some unconventional means, such as this time he got inspiration from the film "The Matrix" that Fan Digan mentioned when he explained the "slope barricade" just now. Of course, what inspired him was not how the car rolled in the air in that movie, but how people rolled in the air in that film.

As we all know, "The Matrix" successfully used the technique of "hanging Weiya" in Hong Kong kung fu films when filming the actions of the characters. Since the wire can lift people, of course, it can also "crane the flying car", Lin Mingyang's idea is to apply the "hanging Weiya" to the scene of the "flying car".

On the basis of the idea, Lin Mingyang further proposed specific steps: "We can use the steel cable of the overhead crane to buckle one side of the roof of the car, and at the other end, the huge pulling force generated by the high-speed hydraulic pump will roll the car into the air. ”

Michael Bey and Van Digan were eye-catching at the same time, and Lin Mingyang's idea opened their minds to them, and his proposal was also highly practical. Michael Bay stood up excitedly, "Felix, you're a genius, how did you come up with this idea?" ”

Lin Mingyang shrugged, "I used to do this in toy cars when I was a kid!" ”

-- Lin Mingyang's idea has been proved to be completely feasible in practice, and like "Hanging Weiya", "Crane Flying Car" has a more spectacle effect, the car rolls farther in the air, stays in the air for a longer time, and has a more graceful attitude in the air, which is very in line with Michael Bay's aesthetic orientation for action shots.

Lin Mingyang's trick not only helped him solve many shooting problems, but also in the urban war at the end of the film, a car was swept across the entire street by the "Red Spider" and crashed into the third floor of the corner building.

Car chase scenes have always been Michael Bay's forte, and both Jedi Men 2 and Get Out of Clone Island have high-speed and devastation car chase scenes, and he continues his preference in this film.

"The audience wants to see the Transformers fighting each other, not their races!" After looking at his submitted stage shooting plan, Spielberg had to give him a kind reminder. Michael Bay only then restrained a little during the filming of "Transformers" so that these scenes would not dominate and steal the limelight from the robot wars.

But even so, he still designed a lot of chase scenes. In order to capture the dynamics of the car chase, the on-site special effects team specially designed and built a high-speed moving camera car according to Michael Bay's wishes. The cars are equipped with a controllable camera boom arm on the roof and a strong anti-vibration device, so that the camera can move smoothly and freely even when following the car at a high speed of 100 mph, capturing the thrill of the car chase from all angles.

During the scene where Bone Crusher pursues Optimus Prime, there is a shot of Bone Crusher "scooping" the vehicle with his long machine shovel, which is very similar to the runaway car being dragged by chains in Jedi Men 2 and the rolling down train wheel in Escape from Clone Island.

In order to capture a more immersive and devastating effect, Michael Bay and the special effects team designed and built an ultra-high-strength "bumper car": a car with an ultra-high-strength steel tube bracket reinforced body, and a camera placed in the front of the car was also tightly guarded, so that the stuntman could drive the "armored" guy directly into the flying car, and the camera would record the collision scene exactly as it happened. Although Lin Mingyang was very skeptical that it made sense for Michael Bay to be so obsessed with destruction, he also had to admire his bold imagination.

(To be continued)