by Nancy Jundi as originally published by CinemaEditor Magazine
As far as summer blockbusters go, you’d be hard pressed to find a bigger production than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In a town held ransom by strikes, first by writers and then by actors, this seemed to be the only movie Hollywood just couldn’t stop. With a director like Michael Bay and an editor like… Wait… How many editors are on this? Five!?! Honestly, when I found out there were 5 editors I thought, “OY! I’m sure someone else would like to assemble that article…” And then I realized I would be a jealous mess if that happened. These guys are not your run of the mill ordinary editors either. These folks have credits like Public Enemies, The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Miami Vice, Tomb Raider, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Speed Racer, Star Wars: Episode III, Titanic and every Michael Bay movie to date under their belt.
They’re the action movie editorial team equivalent to the 2008 U.S. Olympic Basketball teams.
And now for your lineup!
Tom Muldooon started in San Francisco at the age of 18 in post-production, mainly in television. He moved to LA and got into music videos and commercials, where he met Michael Bay. Since then, he has gone on to movies and continued to do commercials with Nomad Editorial.
Joel Negron began his career working for an independent trailer house editing trailers and TV spots for different studios. Joel’s experience cutting trailers on 35mm film and cutting TV spots on various video formats naturally launched him into the age of computer editing where he quickly rose from assisting to editing. He assisted on movies such as True Lies and Mars Attacks! before rising to additional editor and editor on Sleepy Hollow, Big Fish, Enemy of the State, and XXX .
Paul Rubell came up the editorial ranks as an apprentice and assistant in features, working with Robert Altman and Sam Peckinpah, among others. His first editing gigs were low-budget features. The work was slow at the time, so he moved to TV for a spell, to develop his craft. He hooked up with a TV director he liked, and ten years flew by. It was then that he learned he had been branded a “TV editor” – as silly as it was unfair. Soon he was back in features and has spent the last several years bouncing between Michael Bay and Michael Mann projects.
Glen Scantleberry’s career formed in the low budget independent film world of San Francisco. He cut a documentary for Neil Young and went on to be Young’s film archivist for a couple of years. Glen’s first feature credit was Tom Wait’s Big Time. He then worked for Francis Coppola cutting Godfather III and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He has written and directed three independent feature films with his wife Lucy Phillips.
Roger Barton interned for KROQ radio during college, giving him his first exposure to editing; splicing 1/4″ tape to make PSAs out of voice-overs and music. A couple years later he was producing segments for a reality show where he had to pitch, shoot, write and edit his own segments. He had an on-line editor who always fixed any shortcomings he had as an inexperienced field producer. The process proved painful for him, but in the end very gratifying since all the bad work looked great! He was hooked from then on and devoted all his efforts towards becoming an editor.
First Assistant, Calvin Wimmer has worked in Oliver Stone’s cutting room on JFK, Nixon, and Any Given Sunday. He is a veteran of the first Transformers and has earned his stripes assisting Rubell on Hancock and Barton on Speed Racer amidst numerous other credits.
All of you have resumes with very large, effects heavy projects on them. What, personally and professionally draws you to these types of films?
PR: Have you seen the list of upcoming films? 90% of them are based on comic books or video games. The simple answer is: you go where the action is. (Pun not intended.)
TM: It’s a challenge to tell a story with plates originally and watch it evolve into a full on feature. Having done it a few times, I’m comfortable with that sort of story telling. And my kids really love it!
JN: VFX heavy films are usually on the forefront of the technology. I love everything about postproduction film technology. It was a very exciting time when editing went from 35mm film to computers and VFX have come a long way from the optical printer to the laptop. It’s always changing and getting better and the limitations are always being pushed in very exciting ways. Big, effects heavy movies lend themselves to creative and innovative sequences that elevate audiences enormously.
GS: I think I got drafted into doing large effects films because I met
Michael Bay and he liked Dracula. I did three in a row, The Rock,
Con Air and Armageddon. That sort of changed my direction from music-oriented films. After Tomb Raider I decided to take a break from heavy effects films. I got sucked back in on Transformers because I knew between Michael’s direction and ILM’s amazing work; it was going to be groundbreaking.
With this being a sequel, do you feel some of the pressure is off? Do you feel there was a pattern or formula you established in the first that you know the audience can connect to or are you more inclined to try different approaches with a scene?
RB: I can only speak for myself, but when I signed onto T2 knowing it had a 200 million dollar budget, regardless of how well the last one did, there is going to be pressure to deliver. Even though Michael carries most of that pressure, it certainly can have a trickle down effect. Lots of directors expect their crew to keep pace with them, but with Michael’s stamina, that can be very challenging.
PR: With a sequel, we have the psychological advantage of knowing that there is a built-in audience: no matter how badly we screw it up, the audience will materialize. We also have the tactical advantage of not having to set up the characters — we can leap right into the story. The writers, of course, can avoid certain characters entirely.
For those of you who worked on the previous Transformer film, was there anything you learned from the first that you’re taking into this one or anything you wished you had done on the first that you’re now cognizant of?
PR: We now know the voices & personalities of the robots that were in the first film. So we don’t have to waste time auditioning different actors, etc.
TM: It was beneficial to have worked on the first one. Developing the characters and knowing them from the first film has helped on the sequel. You know more of what the robots are like, how long plates should be on, how to block out plates that the robots are on and the work flow with Michael on a movie this big.
GS: I learned to definitely believe in hanging on effects shots, give the animation as much time as the shots allow. Even though many robot shots were 10 to 20 seconds long in the first film, they were so fascinating, so much detail the audience wanted to see them even longer.
With most of the back story having been told in the previous film, is there any sense of relief when dealing with so many characters both human and robot?
PR: It is a definite advantage to be working with pre-established characters. You can leap right into the story and assume the audience is with you. But even the nineteen people who didn’t see the first film will have very little trouble getting onboard with this one.
RB: One advantage this film has over the first is that most people who see Revenge of the Fallen will know at the very least, what a Transformer is. Our writers have developed an opening that builds on that but dispenses with the back story needed in the first film, which (if we’ve done our jobs correctly) propels us forward into what I think is going to be a really fun ride, newcomers and fan-boys alike.
Does it ever get any easier working with so many scenes that are missing vfx shots?
PR: You pick an empty plate and give it to ILM. Then they go to work. If the shot ends up looking great, you’re a genius. It helps to work with a director who has imagined the missing material and can tell you exactly what is happening in the shot.
GS: You learn to believe in the impact the vfx shots will have. Our sound effects, culled from the first one, help bring the missing vfx shots to life. Also the robot dialogue has been recorded earlier in the process for this movie, so we don’t have as many temp voices and assistants starring as robots while we cut.
RB: I think large vfx films can be a lot of fun to work on. They demand we not only have the ability to tell compelling stories, but often require us to view hours of empty plates to create something out of virtually nothing. The trick is keeping all those unlimited possibilities in service to the film’s narrative. Having said that, it can also be a pain in the butt and a lot of hard work, but the process exercises a creative part of my brain not usually stimulated while telling more traditional stories.
Revenge of the Fallen will be one of the first feature films cut on the Avid DX system. What, if any, are some of the pros and cons you’ve noticed with it?
CW: It’s always a challenge when you have 4-5 Editors working at once and 8 systems sharing the same material. I’ve not seen a system that could handle that load without a crash or two. I’ve found this new system to be pretty stable and it’s so much nicer working at this DNX36 compression. It looks great and doesn’t eat up a lot of storage. We really went back and forth over 36 or 115 because we wanted to be able to preview with the compression we chose. If we had chosen 115, we would never have been able to maintain the whole film on a portable laptop avid for the director, which has really provided him with a flexibility he’s never had. He was able to review editors’ work wherever he was working: soundstages at Playa Vista, locations in New Mexico and Egypt.
PR: PROS: Working at DNX36 resolution. It’s starting to feel like we’re cutting on film again, with respect to working with sharp, pristine images. It’s easy for us to see what’s in focus and easy to see nuance of expression. We’re able to see which actors need vfx work done on their complexions. The 3.x software contains many bug fixes and feature improvements. The ability to monitor more than 8 tracks of audio is a big advantage, as is the ability to hear unrendered audio dissolves. The “Select Right” function is a big winner. CONS: None to speak of. Keep going, Avid. Give us more of those bug fixes and feature improvements we’re hungering for.
JN: It’s the second film for me on AVID DX and other than a few small glitches (amazingly) it’s very solid. The HD image is incredible.
Without any spoilers, what do you think makes this sequel distinctive from the first? What can fans look forward to in your opinion?
PR: Fans of the robots will enjoy the enhanced back-story, new characters – and plot developments I am forbidden to reveal. Fans of the humans will love the humor, as well as genuinely emotional plot twists – which I am forbidden to reveal.
TM: The sequel feels much larger, has more kick a*$ robots and still retains all the humor.
JN: The only thing I can say is MORE. More robots, more explosions, more emotion and more humor.
GS: The biggest difference is that in the first film the audience got to discover the robots as the human characters in the film did. This time most of the characters already know that the robots exist, but are taken on a much larger journey to save the world.
Michael doesn’t tend to rely on static shots or long takes. Do you find yourself speeding up your rhythm to match his style?
RB: Style, by its very definition is subjective. Over the course of this production, we’ve had five editors on at different times and we each bring a different aesthetic to the table. Technically, that creates lots of challenges, but artistically it pretty cut and dry; we’re all here working on a Michael Bay movie so everything we do supports his vision of what the movie should be.
TM: Sometimes I have to speed up my rhythm, but other times Michael is willing to let things settle and slow down the pace. Because I’ve edited with Michael for so long, I’m comfortable with what he likes and his style.
GS: Every director has an internal clock, a speed that determines everything from how fast a dolly moves to how fast the characters speak. Michael’s may be turbo-charged but he always has time to let a joke play, or a dramatic beat of the story land. It’s best to take a couple of shots of espresso before entering the cutting room.
Michael is often criticized for emphasizing action over actor. As the editor, you see what comes in from the dailies – do you agree with the criticism or do you wish for more takes?
CW: Are you kidding me? More takes??? I can’t imagine someone covering a scene as well as Michael Bay. It’s rarely 15 takes of the same thing unless he’s trying to get a really complicated camera move timed a specific way to the actors or action. And you can count the number of 15 take setups on one hand. Almost every day of prepping dailies there’s someone calling out, “Hey guys come look at this!” for some killer shot that you don’t see every day. That’s a treat you don’t get on every film.
PR: That is unfair criticism. When you watch dailies, you see Michael guiding the actors inexorably, if not always patiently, toward what he wants. Along the way, he leaves room for a lot of improvisation. Audiences love the humor in his movies. That comes from him and his gut feeling for what makes a character funny. But I think you will see another side of these characters in this film, as they deliver some genuinely heart-rending moments.
RB: Michael has never been one to edit in the camera. He shoots every angle as a master and is very specific with his operators about what moments are important to him. I worked with a director once who would say to his six Camera Operators, “Go Fishing” which invariably meant I never had what I needed because of a lack in direction. Suffice it to say, we don’t have that problem here. In fact we suffer from a wealth of options and until we sit with Michael it’s hard to know which way he wants to play certain beats. It can be heartbreaking to see some of the shots we have to leave on the cutting room floor. The criticism aimed at Michael’s editing pace is unfair because it’s clear (to me, at least) he makes deliberate choices that cater to his audience – – He knows who they are what their expectations will be. A more interesting discussion would be “What came first, the cart or the horse?”
How has the process worked with so many of you having taken a leg of this marathon in the edit room? What’s the communication like and how has the workload been shared?
PR: Roger started the film and Tom jumped in shortly thereafter. A few weeks in, Joel joined up. After production wrapped, Glen and I joined the team. Michael calls us his basketball team. Michael gives us notes and we divvy up the scenes on a daily basis. It’s extremely loose and comfortable. We’re all longtime friends, and wander in and out of each other’s rooms to make suggestions and give high fives.
RB: To the uninitiated, this process can appear to be a giant cluster f&$k, but the truth is quite different. Michael told me once that one of the most important traits in directing these big movies is stamina and he works very hard to keep all of us busy and on the same page. If your ego is easily bruised, this may not be the cutting room for you because there’s a lot of overlap with so many editors. Any ownership belongs to Michael and Michael alone.
JN: I think the fact that we’ve all done this drill before helps a lot. Ego is checked at the door and we all help each other to make the best and most exciting film we can.
TM: Fortunately we’re all good friends. We always divide and conquer. Michael may stir us into different directions individually but we always work together discussing scenes no matter who’s working on it.
GS: It’s like different cells in a muscle. We all work together towards…. pick your sports metaphor…. crossing the goal line to make the release date.
Were any of you on location during the filming and did you utilize a portable Avid?
CW: We maintain the whole film on a laptop Avid that Michael can use wherever he’s shooting. We were turning over vfx shots under a tent outside of a sound stage in Playa Vista. We were sending him new Editors’ cuts via iChat on location in New Mexico and Egypt.
RB: It was Calvin who suggested we utilize a laptop Avid to help turn over some of our more ambitious visual effects during production. Some of these shots could not wait to get in the pipeline until post-production, so I would cut these scenes at Bay Films and travel to location to sit with Michael in between setups. This proved immensely helpful to ILM and Digital Domain to get these shots going, but Michael saw an opportunity we didn’t see coming. Michael wanted the laptop to travel with him wherever he went, with a separate drive that held all the film’s dailies. This allowed him to see everything we’ve cut so he could wrap his head around additional shots he needed. He also gave us continuous feedback about what he was seeing and while most of his crew was sleeping, he’d make selects for us to consider incorporating into the scenes.
Now that we’re deep in post-production the laptop bounces back and forth between our cutting room and Michael’s home, so that he can stay abreast of our changes and make more selects. The laptop has become an invaluable tool for all of us trying to finish a very big movie on a relatively tight schedule.
GS: I took a portable Avid to Miami for a week to work with Michael. It was brilliant. Just a laptop, two monitors and a hard drive the size of a cinder block. Carry-on luggage! The amazing part was that through iChat we were able to video-chat and send complete cuts of reels back and forth in seconds. It’s now possible for a director to sit anywhere in the world and “phone it in”…. as long as there is a good high-speed internet line.
Are you looking back at the wide range of audience groups that the first Transformers appealed to and aiming to please a particular age bracket or gender? How much do you feel a test audience response changes a film?
PR: The strategy of appealing to certain demographics certainly enters the equation in the scripting phase. Hopefully, those issues have been worked out by the time the film is shot. The last steps of that dance come when the film is submitted to the MPAA for a rating. As for a test audience, there are two ways to assimilate that data. The first is to watch the movie with a large audience and simply let their reactions wash over you and stimulate your intuition. The second is to pore over the data and pander to it. Both methods are in vogue. On the first Transformers, we screened works-in-progress several times to small groups, and took their comments very seriously. We had one formal preview, late in the game. We screened it simultaneously in two adjacent theaters, for two different demographic groups: younger kids and their parents, and older teens, twenty and thirty-somethings. It scored exactly the same for each group — so highly that we made virtually no changes.
Re-watching the first Transformers so much of the audiences ability to relate to these robots is dependent on the editing and score, especially between Sam and Bumble – Bee. With that in mind, how difficult is it to pace those scenes when the actual robot may not have been on the screen yet – or do you hold some of these cuts until the VFX have been delivered?
RB: Animatics are an essential tool for telling these stories. They inform everyone, from actors to sound designers what the basic story is. What invariably happens with Michael is he’ll show up to a location and see a whole new set of possibilities, so it’s our job to weave his practical footage around his epic pre-viz shots to make it feel as believable and compelling as possible. That’s not always easy when we’re not on set to download what’s in his mind, but we do the best we can. I generally follow where the actors take me when assembling a scene for the first time, but once a scene is assembled, there has to be a synergy between the editorial department and visual effects to thoroughly explore all the animation options. Often we’ll make adjustments to the cut to accommodate ideas they may have to punctuate a threat, give a robot more time to emote or to throw a punch.
JN: I would say using my imagination and gathering all the information from the various departments, script super, VFX etc., when assembling the scene I use the best plates possible for the construction of the scene and then it evolves as the temp animation blocking comes in. Fortunately we get a lot of iterations of shots and we adjust the cut as they come in and refine.
GS: We learned from the first one that after looking at plates for six months there is the tendency to cut into the middle of them for reaction shots. But once we got the full shots back we often cut the react shot out and stuck with the VFX shot.
I know sound on the first film was a monstrous undertaking. Has there been any less difficulty on this picture or does bringing gigantic robots to life still entail a great deal of stress in that arena?
PR: Much less stress the second time around, because the sounds have mostly all been worked out. We know what a transformation sounds like. Having said that, it’s still wildly labor-intensive for the sound editors. But the research and development phase has mostly been bypassed.
How much direction goes/can go into the animation? Is there ever an animation that simply doesn’t work that has to be sent back?
PR: Michael has video transmissions with ILM every day. These last anywhere from 1 to 3 hours. He sees visual effects shots in all stages of completeness, from the first rough animation to final rendering. He has to approve moving from one stage (animation, rendering, etc.) to the next. Sometimes the vendors knock it out of the park. Sometimes, it’s a total redo. The point is, on a movie like this, the directing never ends. Michael is constantly re-staging, re-choreographing, re-writing. It’s very exhausting for a director, who usually looks forward to post-production as a refuge.
Is the magic lost on you by this point or are you still able to sit back and look at this thinking “wow…that looks like a real life robot destroying that bridge.”
PR: Once the robots have been fully rendered, they become as real as the human actors.
GS: It’s still amazing…
CW: When you see a full render of a VFX shot for the first time you’re always blown away. That applies to the first shot you turn over and the last shot you turn over. I can tell you everyone on this film will be very happy to see that full render of the last VFX shot turned over…I just hope we see it before mid-June!
TM: Yes, I’m still able to look back at this and say “wow” because as the effects come in, you’re always amazed how it looks so real and it continues to get better until the point you see it in the theater.
JN: I love seeing the movie get better and better. No magic is lost in repeat viewings. Every time I watch a sequence something is getting better; the edit, the sound design, the mix, the score, VFX, even the color timing. It’s all very exciting and evolving constantly until the movie is in theaters. Even then it’s rewarding and exciting to feel the audience experience the movie.
RB: We had a screening today of our ending and at a certain point I was overcome with joy because the film is really starting to come to life. It’s definitely a summer popcorn movie, but the relationships work so well that the emotional scenes might catch people off guard. The whole experience will last almost a year for me and to see it take shape, both dramatically and visually is immensely gratifying and reminds me why I got in this crazy business in the first place.
