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Press Roundtable With Transformers Revenge of the Fallen DVD Writers and VAs

On the eve of the TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN DVD/BD release. ENI/Tformers was lucky enough to be able to participate in a roundtable discussion with writers Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman as well as an informal chat with many of the voice actors that gave life to the many characters in the two films. Many of the questions were also related to the upcoming Star Trek DVD/BD release but we are excited to bring this sneak peak first to our members here at Tformers!

Round Table Discussion with Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman writers of Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Question: What was your approach to the special features, on Star Trek and Transformers.

Bob Orci: We tend to sit down and talk very loosely about the experience of making the movie, and the differences are in the way that the movies were made, but not necessarily in the approach to the DVD extras. What’s really cool about the DVD extras is that in both cases they documented the things that we were all doing together from the minute that production starts until the day of release.

Alex Kurtzman: We try to be very open as possible (on the commentaries) and avoid comments like “I remember that day”

We grew up having nothing like this at all. For example, there was one screenwriting book when we were growing up. Only one. Now there are dvds, you can go online you can see everything. There is so much out there, I think we feel like “how cool is it for people to actually have the thing that we didn’t have. So we try to give as much to the dvd extras as we can.

Question: Without the resources we have available now, how did you learn your craft?

Kurztman: A lot of writing badly for a long time. (Laughter)

Orci: We met in High School senior year and we wrote together every year through college. For example, every time we watched a movie, we would sit down and write out every scene. We’d make an outline and see what the structure looked like on paper. Then we reverse engineered from that.

Question: When writing a sequel, is it more interesting to you to come up with a brand new adventure for the characters, or to reinterpret and revisit a previous episode or a previous situation? What would be more rewarding for you?

Kurtzman: Every franchise has a different need, so you have to look at them differently, based on whatever the mandate is there. In the case of Transformers it was very important for us to have a sequel idea that stood on its own. You need to be able to not have seen the first movie to appreciate the second one. But, I think for us, it’s always about going back to the sequels that we loved as kids and asking ourselves why we loved them. So, Empire Strikes Back, Superman 2, Aliens, Terminator 2, Star Trek 2. What do all those movies have in common? Well, they’re amazing stories, all on their own. You didn’t have to see the first movie, and there was some incredible, emotional test of character in all of those movies. Superman has to give up his powers for love. The Spock and Kirk relationship, being tested by Khan. or Ripley finding a daughter. All of those things are such big ideas in and of themselves, and you really can’t tell those stories in movie one, because movie one is very much about establishing a world.

Orci: How would you classify the first movie? As an original or as a riff on an old story… or both? We’d want some kind of similar balance with the second one.

Question: When writing Transformers, do you take into account how fast Shia Lebouf is going to be saying his lines?

Orci: Yes. Sure, we’ve made three movies with Shia so we have his rhythms in our heads for sure. And he knows that movies tend to run long, so God bless him he goes right through it.

Question: Did you expect the Transformers Sequel to be so divisive? People seemed to love it or hate it.

Orci: Yeah… Sequels are easy targets, and the film was undertaken under the pressure of the writer’s strike, it was bigger louder and longer than the first one.

Kurtzman: It’s very hard to gauge what’s going to work with people and what’s not going to work. Because what one person says is way too long, but my 12 year old cousin would say “I wish it was longer!” And so that totally confuses me, so I think that at the end of the day, Mchael (Bay – Director) has his rhythm and his pace and he can determine in the editing how long he wants the movie to be.

Question: How does music play a part in your writing process?

Kurtzman: It’s always the first thing actually. I don’t have anything in my ipod or my car that isn’t a soundtrack. It’s sad but its sorta true. It’s like how the ideas get dreamt up and all of Michael’s (Giacchino – composer for Star Trek) stuff is on there too, along with a million other composers. So all day long, I drive and day dream.

Question: You’ve written a comic for Star Trek, what are the chances of writing a comic story for Transformers?

Orci: Hmm. I guess the chances aren’t zero, its something above zero. But I don’t know. It sort of depends though we’re sort of …

Kurtzman: Yeah if we had a cool story to tell and we couldn’t tell it in a movie for some reason, yes we would absolutely think about it.

Question: Do you find it easier to write dialog for sequels considering you have returning actors such as Shia and Megan Fox, and you already have experience writing for them?

Kurtzman: As in knowing their voices? It’s a huge help, it’s a great thing to have. Like we said, Shia is an incredibly fun actor to work with and he can do dialog at any pace. Not every actor can do that. He really can run through things. Shia has a really good, I’ll call it a cheese alarm. If he thinks something is cheesy or inauthentic, he won’t want to do it. So when we are writing we rely on kind of knowing where his instincts tend to go in terms of scene work and what he likes to do. I think for him he can not act a scene unless he feels the truth somehow. It has to be truthful. Even if it’s a scene about giant robots, there has to be some truth to it. And if there isn’t, then he can’t do it – so that’s very helpful in knowing what to look for in any given scene.

I think Megan was really interesting in the first movie because she was very surprising. There’s a sweetness to her, and now I think that’s what made their relationship dynamic work really well. And I think for us knowing that it (the sequel) was going to be about whether or not the boyfriend that was going off to school and leaving her behind, and whether or not, that relationship could survive. Thinking about how that relationship was going to play out over the course of the movie, was what we needed. We talked to Bay and Megan a lot. We had a couple meetings where we would all sit in a room and we would all talk about the script, and the scenes and we’d rip stuff out. That’s where the actor’s voices become really great because, you’ve been living in your head for so long, and then you bring it to them and you can start rewriting once they get their hands on it. Like Shia and the parents, those kinds of scenes really benefit from the actor’ input. “see dad, that’s how you’re supposed to treat a child leaving for college”

Question: Has the economy changed your confidence or the types of projects you take? Does it affect the content of your writing?

Kurtzman: It affects the content in a global way, which is in the movies that are being selected to be made have to be, right now, very escapist; fun forget your life sort of stuff.

Orci: We aren’t seeing a lot adult drama. So the minute you’re writing “Transformers” you have to accept that genre. But the studios also want to be more conscientious budget wise, so yes they do want more robots but they cost, you have to make sure you do it at the right level.

Kurtzman: So what that means is hopefully your characters’ story are strong enough to sustain the affordability factor, which his that you might not get to have a robot in every shot.

Question: Did the success of the first movie emboldened you or intimidated you when approaching the second film?

Orci: We had a different kind of pressure on the first one. Now it was like ok we had a nice victory but now we have to do it again, but with the same amount of preparation and reverence to the source.

Kurtzman: But on the second we had everything in place, in the first movie we had no idea what the actors were going to look like. Or knowing who was playing what parts.

Question: You guys are on the front lines of a genre that is now being called “Reimagining”. How do you approach that?

Kurtzman: In the case of Transformers, we didn’t think it was re imagining because there was no movie before it. It was just a cartoon, so that was just imagining. What is this going to look like you know? The standards of story telling were so different when the cartoon was first invented. And you know, it was a cartoon. They literally didn’t have the ability to make a live action movie back then. We had to figure out what the balance of human and robot time was going to be. What the access point for the audience was going to be. Which character were they going to follow into that world, what is that story? Find the story of “a boy and his car” was… again we didn’t take that off of anything. But we tried to think what are the movies that we want this to feel like. So we kind of want it to feel like the movies we grew up on in the Amblin (Steven Spielberg’s company) vein, and that led us to “a boy and his car”.

Orci: Trek was different, because there were live action movies and TV episodes.

Question: When writing these iconic characters, who are yet very malleable, did you find you had to approach characters differently depending on what form they ended up taking? Say Sideswipe going from a red Lamborgini to a silver corvette – does that change how you write him? Or Bumblebee going from a Volkswagon beetle to a Camero?

Orci: The thing about making Bumblebee not a VW-bug and more of a muscle car led us to making him more of an action character than he was in the original series, where he was more of a child. So he could hang out with Shia but he was also one of the warriors. And he’d lost his voice as a result of war. It does change that a little bit but so many things go into figuring out these characters. You can write them one way and then when you see what the car looks like, or when you get different voice actors, they’ll bring different elements to you. So there’s a lot of stuff that you got to take into consideration.

Question: What was the hardest scene for you guys to cut from the script?

Orci: Actually, with Transformers, since they animate the robots after the fact, you can continue playing with their dialog up until the last minute. Scenes can be created after the fact, scenes that weren’t in the original script at all.

Question: How do the two of you work together? Do you have specific roles?

Kurtzman: Our writing is a dialog; it’s a process of debate back and forth. We sit across the table from each other with our computers and we decide what’s the right line…

Orci: And I think that process ended up in the Star Trek script moreso than any other project we’ve done. I think Alex is Kirk, I’m Spock. For Transformers, Alex is both Sam and Bumblebee.

Kurtzman: We write everything together. We might tinker with our own stuff on the side, but we go over every line together, in a room like an office.

Orci: We started writing together, pre-internet, so we’d be on the phone like this (mimes cradling a phone and awkwardly typing) And that’s how we’ve developed our voice. And that voice became the way we still write.

Question: What’s the difference between writing for Michael Bay and writing for JJ Abrams?

Kurtzman: They do look for different things but I think the have the same endgame goal. Mission Impossible (with Abrams) we kind of wrote together, Star Trek we wrote on our own. Transformers 1, we wrote but then on the second one, Michael was there from the beginning so it all kind of depends on the project.

Question: Do find that ideas bleed between projects?

Kurtzman: We try not to. When we pitched Star Trek as a Time Travel thing, Damon Lindoff (Lost producer) said oh I don’t want to hear about it. But that was inadvertent. We tend to have the same themes in our work, technology, advancement, it can be good or it can be bad depending on humanity. But we’re pretty good at separating it out, once you find what the good emotional content is – like the minute you know that Star Trek is a “brother story” its going to lead you different places than if it were a different story.

Question: Why aren’t you working on Transformers 3?

Kurtzman: We have been working on Transformers longer than I was in college.

Orci: I think we have a degree in Transformers now. And I think we’ve given it a lot, but…

Kurtzman: The Franchise is so wonderful it deserves to stay fresh.

Question: How do you approach writing a movie that is essentially a Toy-commercial, for example the upcoming “View-Master” film

Kurtzman: We’ve read a lot of the wildly cynical response to that. What I’ll say is that some toys should be movies and some toys should not be movies, and I’d like to believe we know the difference between those things. The movies that work, work when there’s a story there that you could take the toy out of, but then, when you put the toy in, it becomes an even more amazing experience, for whatever reason.

Spielberg actually told us once that his first draft story of E.T. didn’t have an alien in it. It was a family drama about a kid missing his father, and E.T. was born from that. And, that’s always stuck in our minds. You’ve got to be able to take out the thing.
VOICE ACTOR ROUNDTABLE

After the Orci and Kurtzman left, we were shown some of the features from the new DVD and Blu Ray releases of Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. Which included a tour through the fantastic animated menus, character bios and histories; the discs have a feature that allows you to trace each character back to his origins in the original cartoon, comics and toys.

But the Blu-Rays also have the exclusive feature of the “Alspark Experiement” which allows viewers to create their own Transformers by choosing car designs, paint applications etc. By choosing specific combinations, viewers can unlock additional robots, videos, and even a special message from Michael Bay

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< SPOILER >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Select Text to View
Although Bay didn’t give any specifics and wouldn’t commit to any details the secret video does allude strongly to the presence of Unicron in the third movie.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< SPOILER >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Pictured from Left to Right: Kevin Michael Richardson (Rampage/Prime #2), Andre Sogliuzzo (Sideswipe), Jess Harnell (Ironhide), Charlie Adler (Starscream) Fred Tatasciore (Kitchenbot), Mark Ryan (Jetfire)

Afterwards the Voice actors came in and spoke with us informally. The roster consisted of : Jess Harnell (Ironhide), Andre Sogliuzzo (Sideswipe) Fred Tatasciore (Kitchenbot), Charlie Adler (Starscream), Mark Ryan (Jetfire), Kevin Michael Richardson (Rampage/Prime #2)

As you would expect, the group was lively and very animated. All of the actors have worked together on a number of different projects both before and since Transformers, although they mused that its always quite a bit different because very often in Voice Acting, they don’t get to work with other actors. But rather they are alone in the sound booth with the director and technicians on the other side of the glass.

Sometimes the character descriptions are very detailed and sometimes they are vauge. Mark Ryan commented that Bay kept asking him to make Jetfire older and more crotchety.

Andre said that the description given to him for SideSwipe was simply “Very cool, like James Bond, but not Brittish”. This lack of context puts the pressure on the actors to create even richer back stories and inner life for their characters than they might otherwise do when acting in front of a camera. Many of the actors also said that Voice Acting is tied very closely to music. And all of the actors have musical backgrounds. Jess Harnell in fact was the lead singer for Journey after Steve Perry left and the bulk of Mark Ryan’s work has been in musical theater.

Since much of the Robot Dialog in the film was approximated until the last minute, this gave the actors an unprecedented amount of influence on the writing of their lines. Orci and Kurtzman met with the voice actors many times trying to hone the dialog and match it with the characterizations that the actors brought with them.

Ryan says he was able to give a great deal of feedback into the history of the Primes that Jetfire recites. Andre and Jess also made recommendations and suggestions for many of their lines.

The key to voicing any character whether it be a “Stinky Mushroom Boy” (there were lots of Smurf jokes at Charley Adler’s expense) or an 80 foot robot is creating the inner life of each character. Each character has to come from a true place and they’ve found that many directors are asking Voice Actors to sound “less cartoony”, which they uniformly agree means that they have to be even more thought out and genuine with their preparation and deliveries.

All of the actors expressed immense gratitude at being able to make a living doing a craft that shapes the childhoods of so many people.

As Jess says, “We aren’t doing brain surgery, but we are making kids happy and that’s thrilling”

The actors admitted to being humbled when they realize the influence they’ve had on so many kids. Mark Ryan even suggested that he’s started wearing a yellow shirt under his suit so that when kids ask him if he’s really bumblebee hiding underneath, he can “show them”.

Charley Adler admitted that although he did have experience working with the G1 Cast (he voiced Silverbolt in the original cartoon) he did not know much about the character of Starscream or his legacy. But when he found out that it was the role that Chris Latta originated he was saddened as the two had worked together a lot in the 80s, but he was determined to honor his friend with out imitating him.

Someone asked if the actors had any thoughts on the Skids and Mudflap controversy but the moderator took that opportunity to end the discussion. But the general sense amongst the group was that neither Tom Kenny or Reno Wilson meant any offense to anyone.


DVD / Blu-Ray Specifications

From director Michael Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg, in association with Hasbro, TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen, the latest spectacular adventure in the wildly popular TRANSFORMERS franchise will make its highly-anticipated DVD and Blu-ray debut on October 20, 2009.

The TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen two-disc Blu-ray and DVD feature
over three hours of in-depth, immersive special features that let viewers further explore the world of the legendary ROBOTS IN DISGUISE. Among the engrossing content is a multi-chapter documentary, including interviews with the cast and crew, that chronicles the entire making of the film from development and design to filming in locations around the globe, working with the U.S. military, creating the groundbreaking visual effects and putting it all together to produce the biggest film of the year. The discs also include an all-access featurette following renowned director Michael Bay through an entire day, a comprehensive exploration of the “confidential files” on a dozen of the TRANSFORMERS characters featured in the film, multi-angle breakdowns of some of the most sensational action sequences and much, much more.
The Blu-ray and two-disc DVD packages also will feature augmented reality technology that will allow owners to interact with a holographic image of OPTIMUS PRIME utilizing their webcams and a special website. Fans will be asked to piece together the Matrix of Leadership to bring OPTIMUS PRIME back to life, help repair his armor and calibrate his weapons by actually controlling his aim during target practice.
As an added bonus, the Blu-ray will include an exclusive interactive feature that gives viewers the ability to customize their own robot characters and get a glimpse at a rogue robot. Out of all the available permutations, one will unlock an exclusive interview with Michael Bay about his plans for the next adventure.

Two-Disc Special Edition DVD & Blu-ray:
The TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen two-disc Special Edition DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround, French 5.1 Surround and Spanish 5.1 Surround with English, French and Spanish subtitles. The Blu-ray will be presented in 1080p high definition with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital with English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese subtitles. The disc breakdown is as follows:

Disc 1:

Commentary by Michael Bay, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman:

Disc 2:

The Human Factor: Exacting Revenge of the Fallen—This multi-chapter documentary chronicles the entire creation of the film and includes interviews with the cast and crew:
Seeds of Vengeance - Development and Design - After the overwhelming success of 2007’s Transformers, how do the filmmakers top themselves for the sequel?
Domestic Destruction – Production: United States - Michael Bay believes in going big:  Big action and big explosions. Cast and crew are pushed to the limit as they traverse the U.S. from New Mexico to Pennsylvania.
Joint Operations – Production: Military - No other filmmaker in the world enjoys the kind of military access and cooperation Michael Bay has. Here we see just how efficient our armed forces are and the awe and respect shown by the cast.
Wonders of the World – Production: Middle East - You can’t really reproduce Egypt anywhere but Egypt so off we go to Giza and Luxor.
Start Making Sense - Editing - In order to turn over the massive amount of film as quickly as possible to VFX, four editors work tirelessly in a unique tag-team approach to shape the film.
Under the Gun – Visual Effects – Revenge of the Fallen features the most complicated VFX in film history. So complicated in fact that the filmmakers were unsure they would make the deadline. The DEVASTATOR VFX alone required 83% of ILM’s total render farm capacity.
Running the Gauntlet – Post-Production and Release - Working seven days a week, Michael Bay and company usher the film through sound design, Digital Intermediate color-timing and a globe-trotting whirlwind of premieres.
A Day with Bay: Tokyo—An intimate and fun all-access journey with Michael Bay as he travels to Tokyo, Japan for the world premiere of the biggest film of the year.
25 Years of TRANSFORMERS—Access an all-new featurette celebrating a monumental milestone for one of Hasbro’s most successful and popular franchises.
NEST: Transformer Data-Hub—Explore conceptual artwork created by the production for 12 of the most popular AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS from the film.
Deconstructing Visual Bayhem with Commentary by Pre-Vis Supervisor
Steve Yamamoto— A series of multi-angle pre-visualization sequences allowing viewers to learn how some of the film’s most spectacular scenes were created with an introduction by Michael Bay.
Extended Scenes
Music Video: Linkin Park’s “New Divide”


BLU-RAY EXCLUSIVE:

The ALLSPARK Experiment—Viewers get their chance to unleash the power of the recently recovered ALLSPARK shard on Earth vehicles. Begin by selecting and customizing a vehicle with a selection of parts and accessories. Then apply the ALLSPARK to this creation and watch what happens. Applying the ALLSPARK to certain custom combinations enables four new robot characters with special powers. If viewers discover all four, they unlock a fifth vehicle, which reveals a top secret message about the future of the TRANSFORMERS movie franchise.

NEST: Transformer Data-Hub—A database of some of the TRANSFORMERS characters that appear in the new film, offering users access to each robot’s confidential file including:
Innovative 3D spin galleries of each robot
A timeline for each TRANSFORMERS character charting its origins, back story and design evolution from toys to animated series to comics and finally feature films
Giant Effing Movie – A very personal look at the making of the movie.
The Matrix of Marketing—An archive of the film’s promotional media including trailers, posters and television spots.
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