Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1527843
The audience really reacts to the big reveal of Optimus Prime and Megatron. Do you have a favorite scene? I've been going to screenings and doing Q&As and stuž. [Spoiler] I watch the audience when they ‰nally come face-to-face, and he shoots him accidentally. On the stage. I said, 'I want the sound to go completely out, like just nothing for when he's shot. Let it ring out.' You don't hear anything until he grabs him again. At the audience previews that we had, I noticed that in that moment, everybody was completely still. There was not a single movement, and it really shocked me…I loved watching how I ažected this audience, emo- tionally, because it was not a single movement…You could hear a pin drop. It was pretty amazing. The third act was something that I knew [we] needed to land. You're just hearing the music and he's becom- ing Optimus, and he's become Megatron. The duality of that. That whole third act, I'm really proud of. Was ILM using motion capture or keyframe animation tech- niques? It was all keyframe by hand. ILM has multiple locations. Where was this †lm being pro- duced? We had a couple of dižerent o®ces. We would go to San Francisco occasionally, but then the whole animation team was mainly out of Sydney in Australia, so we ¯ew there ‰ve or six times just to have some face time with them. Otherwise, it was Zoom every day for dai- lies. When we would go over there [we'd] be there for a week or so. Coincidentally and luckily, Chris Hemsworth lived right there, and we would record him at his house. At what point were you recording the voice talent? I would say maybe the last year-and-a-half. You want to start re- cording, but the story is still changing. There is some overlap there, but…you want to make sure you're getting story pretty solid. It's [got to] be before you start recording. I would imagine that a project like this represents years of work? It was actually pretty crazy. I agreed I wanted to make this movie. My ‰nal day at Pixar was March—Friday the 13th—of 2020, and then the world shut down March 16th, 2020. I was like, 'No! This movie is still happening.' So all through the pandemic, I was on this ‰lm, and the animation didn't really slow down during the pandemic. Everybody was working from home. You're able to still animate and draw and everything, so it's been a wild ride on this ‰lm, but man, that's great! What's next for you? There's other irons in the ‰re, but nothing big to announce yet. ¢ J U LY • A U G U S T • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 4 C G W 1 7 Characters were modeled aŒer the "G1" design from the '80s cartoon.