Did Michael Bay actually do something right?

The Transformers trilogy is absolutely awful. Like most of Michael Bay's 'films' they are one-dimensional action flicks trying to disguise themselves as something more meaningful. Sorry Bay, but you're not fooling anyone. There's not a single Bay film that I have found cinematically pleasing, nor have I ever found a reason to commend the director, except for one exception.

While I do not necessarily agree with Bay's style of filming or directing, there is at least one thing he's done right all these years (besides managing to perfectly resemble Michael Bolton): hiring an excellent team of visual effects specialists. More specifically, I'm talking about the Transformers movies. While I find them to be terribly painful to watch, there is certainly something to admire about the films. The visual effects behind the absurdly complicated alien robots is simply breathtaking.

To start off, Destroyer, an enormously impressive creation found in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, took 72 hours to render...per frame! Pretty crazy, huh? Let's be honest, though. Anyone can make something that takes weeks to render. That's not the impressive part. The impressive part is that the single Transformer was put together by 6-8 individually created, incredibly detailed vehicles. Imagine how long that would take you to create. Now, imagine how long that would take you to create a second time once your director told you it wasn't good enough. I can only assume you'd be pretty upset with that news. Essentially, the animators were instructed to go back and make the machines twice as detailed as it already was, and THEN to reconstruct the final robot with all 6-8 individual pieces.

Another kudos for Bay goes to his ability to bring in practical visual effects. On the set of Transformers 2, Bay was able to bring in a sizable number of military vehicles (tanks, bombers, F16s, you name it) to fly over set, drop flares, and just add some level of believability to his otherwise ludicrous film. Bay is also a fan of on-set explosions. They're dangerous, yes, but they make for one hell of an effect. It also saves quite a bit of postproduction time and effort. Speaking for anyone who's ever worked postproduction on a film, we all greatly appreciate it.

Bringing it back to postproduction visual effects, the aircraft carrier scene of Transformers 2 is also quite an impressive feat. I never really gave it much thought, but much more than most people would ever expect went into this scene. The team shot actual burning miniatures and debris with blue screens that were later composited into the completed animations. The people on the carriers were a mix of animations and people who were shot tumbling and falling. The aircraft were created by the animators as well. Basically, thousands of pieces were created for this scene simply to be destroyed over the course of a minute. It's like being a kid again after taking hours to build a LEGO model just to have your younger brother completely and utterly demolish it.

Animation is a crazy field to go into. It's often the defining point between a film's success and it's downfall. In Michael Bay's case, it's really the only thing he was able to do correctly.

I Can't Think Of Anything Clever

So I was going to think of a clever title, but I got nothing, so here it goes:

I'm going to write about the new Transformers Age Of Extinction trailer that was unveiled during the Super Bowl. To start off I started tearing when I saw it because I love these movies and it looked incredible. So let us begin.

Watching this trailer really made me open my eyes. Now, I know that I wasn't exactly able to pin point specific effects that will be used in class, however, I was able to catch a lot of cool effects in general. The way that the trailer was made utilized a ton of different effects. The use of explosions and particles were made great. Granted the Transformers are always done with such high quality that the amount of detail that is put into them is probably out of this world.

If I relate this post to my last two, I can most definitely imagine that the Transformers movies take much more computing power and many more computers in render farms to create this movie. They are both long movies and EXTREMELY high resolution. Especially with the detail, like I stated above. If you want to watch the trailer, it is right here. If you are as impressed as I am with how this trailer makes the movie look, I am pretty sure no one will be anything less than impressed.

The limitless possibilities of CGI and Animation

The video, brought to you by the YouTube channel, The Cgbros, is a character animation reel highlighting some of the best work of veteran animator, Greg Towner. Watching the reel is simply a riveting experience. Having watched all of his work up to this point, it's astonishing to find out that all of it was worked on by the same man. Towner certainly has quite the résumé.

I've seen all of these movies, and I've always wondered exactly how they were made. I mean, seriously! King Kong? That movie is almost entirely CGI and animation. Transformers? It has some of the most complex-looking CGI I've ever seen. At this moment in time, I find it absurd to even dream about the possibility of being able to make projects such as these in my lifetime.

Without the endless talent of Towner bestowed upon him by the limitless possibilities of CGI and animation, movies like this could never exist. That's a fact. I don't really know anything about how such creations came to be, but it's my goal to find out.