TRANSFORMERS 2: interview of Natasha Devaud

As for the first movie, ILM did the visual effects along with Digital Domain (the vfx house belong to Michael Bay). Asylum also did some VFX.

ILM did the most complicated and impressive sequences of the show like the opening sequence, the forest battle and of course the enormous final battle.
The VFX supervisor was Scott Farrar who supervise the first movie and also Minority Report, A.I. or Men in Black.

Natasha Devaud explain to us her work on TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN directed by Michael Bay.

Hello Natasha, can you tell us on which sequences you have worked on ??
Hello. I got on the show pretty late in the game and only spent a couple of months on it, so I did a few shots wherever necessary, but weren't attached to any particular sequence. I did some shots with Jetfire on the airplane field, some around the fight between Megatron and Fallen on top of the pyramid, and some with quite a few guys in the desert for Jetfire's death.

After Iron Man and Terminator Salvation, you works again on robots ??
Is that just coïncidence or it's because you like very much robots ??
It's certainly not because I'm a big fan of robots, although they can be quite fun to light. It seems to be the current fade, like we had the big ship series (Master and Commander, Poseidon, Pirates) or the fantasy series (Harry Potter's, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Spiderwick Chronicles).

What was the most complicated sequence to do ??
The biggest and most complicated sequences on the show were the formation of Devastator and destruction of the pyramid, and the forest fight sequences.

Have you utilized the lighting and render techniques developped for Terminator Salvation ??
Not quite. Both shows were running simultaneously for the most part and Terminator Salvation was the test show for the latest lighting technique. But Transformers 2 had it's own challenges and novelties.

Did you used Nuke on this show ??
Can't say.

How did you manage so many robots at the same time ?? The render times should have exploded !
The rendering times were indeed quite impressive. We try to minimize the rendering times by limiting the geometry to what's visible on screen or simplify some of the materials or geometry if the characters are far away. Most robots are rendered seperately as it's often not even possible to load several of them in one session.

Have you encounter any problems ??
The biggest challenge was the IMAX aspect of many of the shots. We had to determine what resolution we had to render at (it ended up being 4k), and how to handle the elements and comps during the production to suit the IMAX resolution, so the details would look just as sharp as on the rest of the shots.

How many times did you have to finish the effects ??
ILM's involvement on Transformers was 15 months, but the whole production lasted about 2 years.

How was it to work with Scott Farrar who has a long experience in the pre- digital era ??
Very good. I've worked with Scott on a few other shows, he has a very good eye and always has very pertinent comments. His extensive experience, digital and pre-digital, is very valuable.

Thanks a lot for your time !!