Transformers: the Last Knight
Trevor Hogg discovers how ILM constantly pushed the bar to create bigger and better effects for the latest Transformers film
Behind the scenes with ILM on how a rebuilt Optimus Prime, the complex planet of Cybertron and more came to our screens
michael is getting older and bolder, so that’s Working in our favour right now! John frazier, sfx supervisor, transformers: the last Knight
There is no bigger Hollywood production than one directed by Michael Bay, and the fifth instalment of the cinematic franchise about galactic giant beings using Earth as their battleground, Transformers: The Last Knight, is certainly big. The director has welcomed cinematographer Jonathan Sela (A Good Day to Die Hard) to his inner circle of trusted collaborators, which includes production designer Jeffrey Beecroft (Twelve Monkeys), special effects supervisor John Frazier (Spiderman 2) and the team at ILM.
“Michael is like a kid in the theatre on a Saturday afternoon with popcorn, and is from the time where we watched amazing things happen on the screen, like Lawrence of Arabia,” explains Jeffrey, who first met the director when they both were making adverts for Propaganda Films. “My job is to help Michael realise the world of whatever we’re working on, whether it’s 13 Hours [The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi] or it’s Transformers: The Last Knight. I wanted to create incredibly visceral worlds for these characters to exist in, knowing that they’re robots from space. I came up with the idea that the Transformers were actually knights, and they had a chivalry code.” Jeffrey also looked at the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, which discusses archetypal heroes in mythology the world over, as he thought it would be an “interesting way to take the franchise,” and Michael agreed.
“I built quite a lot of sets because we’ve always worked under the idea that anything surrounding the actors should be real,” says Jeffrey. “In Detroit, I built an elevated train track and put buildings in part of the Packard Plant that exists there. We built a tomb that they enter and there’s a whole underwater sequence. A lot of that was built. The bow of the submarine and the submersibles were built. We were in a junkyard in Arizona and I built this little house,” he explains.
3D printing was utilised to create items such as the sarcophagus adorned with knights and a skull. “We grew some of the swords, like Excalibur. There is some pencil, but almost everything is designed in 3D so that it’s ready to go right into a computer.”
Key software was Maya, Rhino and Cinema 4D, with contributions from illustrators around the world being imported as .opj files. “All of our robots are designed in 3D so that we can see them from all sides, and then they’re given to ILM. You want to give the robots distinct personalities, colours and silhouettes so that you know who is who right away. When I was developing Lockdown on the last film, I started working with concept designer Vitaly Bulgarov. We took parts of the face, broke them up in different ways and then patterned them on the actor.”
“Michael is getting older and bolder, so that’s working in our favour right now!” laughs SFX supervisor John Frazier, who