How much interactive stuff like smoke is computer created?
Tons, I did Roger Rabbit and then we were scared to death of physical effects because we liked to shoot them as separate elements and layer them in after the act. But that looks pretty fake so we are fortunate today that we have these very sophisticated compositing tools – compositing just means putting all these pieces together layer by layer like a sandwich, building from the background to the foreground. When we shoot these movies with Michael they are very dirty – all the smoke, flames and explosions. That was kind of new for me on the first Transformers, but it is fantastic. You cannot believe how complicated a piece of smoke is that you photograph. If you look at a dust cloud there are all these colours, that are self-shadowing and there is tonal change as it moves and the way it reacts to the light. There are all these things that you would never guess. So it is fantastic for us to do that. The first Transformers had amazing effects. So how can you top them? It is hard. We were
