The fellow at the Don Murphy forums have provided some new shots of the Transformers fleet in preparation for transport — the Chevy Beat, Chevy Trax, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Ironhide and most importantly capturing our first clear shots of the slick silver car we saw at Fairmount, thought to be a Chevy Corvette ZR1 or C7, though the rear panels on both of those do not fit with this model. The latest rumor puts it as a reintroduction of the popular Chevy Stingray, with the styles and aura of previous incarnations. Whatever it is, it’s very sexy.
Automobile blog, Motortrend, are reporting that General Motor’s electric powered “Chevy Volt” will be making an appearance in the Transformers sequel, “Revenge of the Fallen”. What role the vehicle shall have in the movie is unknown.
Looks like Shia LaBoeuf, Megan Fox, Bumblebee, the Chevy Beat and the Chevy Trax turned up for filming at the Eastern State Penitentiary.
VDG was on hand to get images of the crew and automobiles turning up, even getting close enough to capture a shot of the rims on the Chevy Trax — showing a very nice Autobot logo in the center of the hub cap!
Faded Silver Screen were also on location to capture the vehicles coming and going on Fairmount Avenue:
EnergonKid has also given an account of the preparations for filming which include large blast shields:
I couldn’t get inside the prison, or get any decent pictures but I watched them unload trucks for a while. They were taking in lexan blast shields they put cameras behind when there is an explosion or sparks nearby. It seemed like an awful lot of support trucks. Tons of lighting and rigging. I would bet there will be some effect/pyrotechnics taking place, considering they’ve been prepping this for three days and the scope of the stuff they are taking in.
Lorenztom has also got a couple more shots of the Paris set at City Hall:
City Hall in Philadelphia is mocked up to look like Ecole Militaire in Paris for filming which took place yesterday. The setting for the scene is a holiday for Sam Witwicky’s parents — Kevin Dunn and Julie White.
Video and pictures from Mia show Bumblebee, the green Chevy Beat and red Chevy Trax in the area as well as a small explosion and panic in the square. If you scroll down you can see what seems to be an extension of this, although taking place at night, of continued mayhem and running — this time by Sam’s parents, who may or may not have been in the square at the time of the explosion:
PhillyFilmGirl also managed to get some candid footage of Sam’s parents in an alleyway running away from an explosion, surely with a robot CG’d in later amidst the flashing blue lights. The other video shows them running down the alley with a teeny “Smart Car” hastily flying past them — most likely fleeing from the same thing, rather than being a robot.
On Wednesday the vehicles of Transformers 2 were out and about in a chase scene on Front Street. Jalopnik were on hand to snap a couple of shots, showing Bumblebee either chasing, being chased by or leading the green Chevy Beat car we’d seen at Bethlehem, PA and under wraps in other locations.
They also got the first picture of a new Autobot, a red Chevy Trax — (possibly the twin of the Chevy Beat?):
It is also rumored that the thrid of the new Chevy trio may turn up — the Chevy Groove:
The problem with Arcee is quite simply — how do you create a believable Transformer that fits into the space of a fully functioning motorcycle. The answer is to get 6 custom built bikes from RetroSBK, after Dreamworks contacted owner Will Kenefick, so Ventura County Star report.
Kenefick has since worked ridiculous man hours to get these six bikes (the turnaround for one usually being 6 months), ready in time for filming. The 3 “hero” bikes and 3 “stunt” bikes were ready in time and some were in action at the start of June in Pennsylvania — Kenefick was on hand to fix and maintain the vehicles, sometimes getting only 2 hours of sleep. My guess is that the bikes we have seen were the 3 stunt bikes (this fits in with the call sheet), the 3 hero bikes being used for close up non-action shots, which is probably where most of the paint has gone!
He estimates that 1273 hours were put in and that each bike cost $40,000, with $10,000 on paint alone (which added a further 1036 hours of work). Because the bikes are small it is expected that they will be showcased at the movie’s première.
Mia has sent in via TLAMB some shots of Megan Fox and Ramon Rodriguez filming inside and with Bumblebee. Until now Rodriguez has only been mentioned in the call sheet — this is thought to be the first visual proof to confirm the rumors. This was thought to be filmed on Saturday near to the Richmond Power Station.
Prior to the Isabel Lucas shoot we saw yesterday and the Bumblebee skid, shooting was taking place at the Castle fraternity — on campus, “where the party’s at”, or some such. TFW2005 have provided pictures leading up to this, showing Michael Bay, Isabel Lucas and Shia LaBoeuf preparing for the scenes and taking time out with some fans. I especially like the shot of Shia taking some time out to sign a toy Bumblebee. Bumblebee, the real thing, can also be seen under his cover — rather indiscreetly:
Reporting to Powet.tv, Josh Landow was there later that day to capture video of Bumblebee screeching away and provide a report of the events that unfolded:
The frat house is known as The Castle because it looks like a castle. Bumblebee was parked out front and they made it look like he was parked in the bushes. There was a huge lighting screen over the car, and 2 giant light balloons (not sure how else to describe them) floating above the set.
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The first shot was a bunch of well dressed good looking college coeds walking around to and fro with some of them seemingly converging on the BB Camaro, saying things like “Wow! Cool car.”
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Next shot was the most involved and took about 3 hours to shoot from every which way, with different lighting, and with slightly different lines even. Shia and a few of the bit players were definitely ad-libbing or at least taking some liberties with the script. This shot consisted of Shia running out of the party because BB’s alarm was going off. Like I said BB was parked in the bushes which gets Sam into some trouble with the frat boys who came running after him asking “Hey Freshman, is that your car parked in our bushes?” Sam replies “uh uh no, it’s a friend’s car — he went to get a new shirt” (or something dumb like that — they kept changing that line). Fratboy responds “How about I park my foot up your ass?” Sam says “I’ll move the car now.” He gets in and has (fake) trouble closing the door because of all the shrubbery. It was hard to hear, but when he got inside the car, I think he said something about Decepticons. And yes it took 3 hours to shoot this.
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Then they moved the crowd back a good ways to shoot some more extras walking about before finally getting to the scene that I knew had to be coming. Bumblebee backs up and drives away (as seen in my video). This was shot using Bay’s camera rigged Porsche Cayenne. I think they shot this like 4 or 5 times with the cars backing up to reset after each take