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

Machine­gun­death was on loca­tion at the Beth­le­hem Steel site to cap­ture both images and video of Day 2’s shoot­ing. Many thanks go out to him! You can find his set report here.

Videos

Prepa­ra­tion at the Steel Works site has begun, and the first images of the area have started to appear online.

It is thought that most of the shoot­ing will be on the west­ern side. A con­cept car not seen before shall be used dur­ing the shoot, and rumors sug­gest this could be a Trans­former, two Black­hawk heli­copters will also be in use. Addi­tion­ally, a car hauler with “2 Sat­urns and 5 chines styled cop cars” has been spot­ted on loca­tion. The Chi­nese sym­bols read only “Import / Entrance”, “Export / Exit”, “Dock­ing”, etc. — vehi­cle imports we can assume?

Pic­tures and infor­ma­tion come via TLAMB and TFW2005.