Braden has returned to get more shots of Opti­mus Prime and Bum­ble­bee in action, this time with a short video. The images clearly show that Bum­ble­bee has under­gone some mod­i­fi­ca­tions, with a wider front grill, new lights and rims — reported to be a 2010 Chevy Camaro SS. There is also spec­u­la­tion that ceme­tery film­ing means some­body impor­tant that we know dies in the course of the film.

Via TLAMB

Saab His­tory are report­ing that the Saab Aero-X con­cept car will be used in the Trans­form­ers sequel as the alt ver­sion of Wheel­jack. Given that Gen­eral Motors are pro­vid­ing the cars for the movie it is highly prob­a­ble that this rumor shall unfold to be true.

Thanks The Missle!

Trans­form­ers 2 pro­duc­tion cur­rently resides at The Dairy Fields in Fair­mount Park, which are reserved for film­ing. Braden has been on loca­tion, scout­ing for us fans, to find what­ever scoops he can. He has noted that the actor trail­ers and cam­era equip­ment can be found off North 33rd street, close to the UPENN cam­pus. The vehi­cles how­ever are being kept in a sec­ond loca­tion, close to Walt Whit­man Bridge.

On his stum­blings he came across Opti­mus Prime, Iron­hide, Bum­ble­bee, an uniden­ti­fied grey con­cept car — prob­a­bly a Chevro­let (ZR1, C7?). You can find pic­tures below.

Via TLAMB

Thanks to Robo­quaker, we have a sec­ond set of images from the Smith­son­ian National Air and Space Museum near Wash­ing­ton DC.

These pic­tures show a small radio con­trolled car, rumored to be “Wheels” given the call sheet descrip­tions which sug­gest Wheels is fairly small. (Can you imag­ine it as a toy!?)

UPDATE: High Res­o­lu­tion images added. Repro­duced under a cre­ative com­mons license.

SHH have posted up a sec­ond set report to go with this:

I’m back one last time with a report about what I saw filmed at the museum on Sat­ur­day. Some poten­tially spoi­ler­ish stuff will fol­low, so be aware.

I arrived around 10 and stayed until they broke for lunch (around 2, 2:30). Got to see a lot of stuff filmed, it was really quite inter­est­ing stuff. Shia, Megan Fox, and John Tur­turro were all on set.

All film­ing pretty much took place around the SR-71 Black­bird today. When I first got there, Michael Bay was being pushed on a cart with a cam­era film­ing an RC car, an RC mon­ster truck to be exact. It would roll past the side of the Black­bird and stop at the front. After sev­eral times doing this, Shia and Megan would then run and fol­low the RC truck along the plan to the front (Shia was hold­ing what I can only describe as a plas­tic spoon prob­a­bly stand­ing in for some­thing dig­i­tal later). When he got to the front he would hold it up to the nose of the plane.

Poten­tially big SPOILERS may be here in this next part, but the next bit filmed was John Tur­turro and that unknown actor in the green hoodie from yes­ter­day film­ing a scene fac­ing the front of the plane. After some flashes of light, Tur­turro freaks out and yells “Decep­ti­con! Get behind the MIG!”. So it’s offi­cial, the Black­bird is a Decep­ti­con, or at least that’s what the char­ac­ters think.

After that they took a long time set­ting up and film­ing the RC car rolling straight towards the nose of the plane and stop­ping. They then placed a two foot tall cutout of a robot (what the RC car will trans­form into) in its place and took some shots to get ref­er­ences for the FX team. And finally, they had the car roll towards the plane and stop, then Shia crawled into view and held up his “spoon” to the nose of the plane.

The last cou­ple of scenes I saw before the broke for lunch was a scene with Megan Fox. It was far away from where we were allowed to stand and I couldn’t hear any dia­logue but the tiny robot cut out was stand­ing off cam­era and she was look­ing down at it while talk­ing. And lastly, Shia stepped in the scene next to her and was yelling at some­one off cam­era (though again I couldn’t hear any dialogue).

Fol­low­ing the Smith­son­ian rev­e­la­tion in the call sheet, fans rushed to the Smith­son­ian Air and Space Museum know­ing what, where and when to expect the Trans­form­ers film­ing crew to be doing. Topher­lyon has sent TLAMB his pic­tures of the event, and HowDe­sign have some up too. There’s a set report fol­low­ing the gallery that pro­vides some back­ground infor­ma­tion on the day’s events.

It is thought that the plane with the Auto­bot sym­bol on its tail, where no film­ing was tak­ing place, is Michael Bay’s per­sonal air­craft. You can also see sev­eral shots of the SR-71 Black­bird, which is now known to be Jet­fire. Out­side, Bum­ble­bee is clearly vis­i­ble as well as a green car (partly under cov­ers), thought to be a Chevy Beat con­cept, almost cer­tainly another Autobot.

Both Shia and Megan Fox have been spot­ted on set, though no clear pho­tos snapped.

I’ve got a first-hand Trans­form­ers 2 set report from Friday.

The mis­in­for­ma­tion machine con­tin­ues to roll for TF2. News was that TF2 would be film­ing in DC for a few days. Got a call from my buddy at 4pm yes­ter­day that they were film­ing at the Air and Space Museum, no not the one in DC, the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum by Dulles Air­port in Dulles, VA (30 –40 mins out­side DC).

My friend and I quickly left work and headed over to the museum because it was only 5 min­utes away. We arrived there and there was noth­ing to really indi­cate that film­ing was going on, it was very low-key. Found them film­ing inside and the only way you could tell it was for TF2 was from the crew’s badges (an Auto­bot logo fol­lowed by the num­ber 2).

Met up with our buddy and watched a few scenes being filmed. Saw Michael Bay film­ing, but couldn’t make out what was going on too well because they kept us back far enough. Museum secu­rity and crew were heav­ily guard­ing the area from peo­ple tak­ing pho­tos. My buddy said Shia and Megan Fox were there ear­lier film­ing some scenes and Shia would be back soon. We finally saw what looked like Shia dressed in an old time pilots out­fit (think avi­a­tor gog­gles and a white scarf around the neck). He was stand­ing between a pil­lar and a man­nequin dressed like him, along with sev­eral other man­nequins dressed in dif­fer­ent pilot out­fits. They repeat­edly filmed a secu­rity guard run­ning by as Shia reached out and put a taser to his neck and the guard would fall to the ground.

We chat­ted with a crew mem­ber and he men­tioned how not many peo­ple knew they were there and that they had been film­ing there since Thurs­day. At the time we were there, they were film­ing around the SR-71 Black­bird. I don’t know how legit this is, but the crew mem­ber said that the Black­bird is going to be fea­tured very promi­nently in the film, but that peo­ple aren’t really sup­posed to know that. So if true, let the spec­u­la­tion begin as to what Trans­former this will be [Jetfire].

They con­tin­ued film­ing the taser scene as the museum closed and we were ush­ered out­side. The crew mem­ber also men­tioned they would be going out­side to film some scenes in the park­ing lot later. So when we got out­side we found the coned-off park­ing lot with a few cars sit­ting hud­dled together under tarps. One was clearly Bum­ble­bee, the rims and parts of the yel­low bumper were vis­i­ble. There was also a lime green car. From the look of the shape and the front bumper I would guess that it is either a Toy­ota Matrix or a Scion xA, but I’m prob­a­bly wrong. The third car had a very strange shape and I could not make it out.

Unfor­tu­nately, I couldn’t get close enough to the cars to get decent pic­tures on my cam­era phone. We waited around for a while but by 6:15 we had to leave. They were still inside at that time so we didn’t get to see the new cars actu­ally being filmed.

So there you have it. They are film­ing there again today and I plan on going back to check out some more. I’ll be sure to send along any­thing new I find out.

Oh, one last thing, Michael Bay flew to the Museum (which has its own run­way) and there on the run­way sat a white plane with the Auto­bots logo on the tail. Pretty freakin’ cool. Can’t remem­ber if he had that dur­ing film­ing for the first one, but he’s got it now!

With the start of the Trans­form­ers 2 shoot in Beth­le­hem came hun­dreds of fans with cam­eras and videos. What do you get if you go on hol­i­day when shoot­ing starts? — A lot of catch­ing up to do! Lit­er­ally hun­dreds of image gal­leries have sprung up across the net in the last cou­ple of days, show­ing the heli­copters fly­ing over, per­haps chas­ing, Iron­hide on set and head­ing towards the set, the steel works beau­ti­fully lit up at night, sol­diers rid­ing three wheeled motor­cy­cles (trikes!), Michael Bay, explo­sions, men in mil­i­tary dress and large groups of extras run­ning from some unknown entity — all set in China.

Here’s a playlist of 15 videos at the scene, includ­ing a local news report:

Here are 76 from var­i­ous sources, listed below.

Images come from TLAMB, RLSLOG, AICN, TFW2005 (2) (3), Film School Rejects, Cin­ema Blend, The Morn­ing Call,

More at Robot­brainz (flickr), Squall42080 (pho­to­bucket), Aer­ial Pho­tos from Mcall

King Dark­ness over at Sideshow Col­lec­tors spot­ted Iron­hide and the 3 wheeled motor­cy­cles on their way to the Beth­le­hem, PA set:

Another of our vehic­u­lar friends has turned up on the streets, this time it is the ever recog­nis­able Opti­mus Prime. These were taken on the 405 Free­way in Los Ange­les. The bots are on the move — per­haps they are being col­lected together for the begin­ning of a Trans­form­ers 2 shoot?

Pic­tures thanks to SHH: