Trans­form­ers 3 pro­duc­tion returned to down­town Chicago and the Michi­gan Street Bridge. This time the destruc­tion sets and props went up a notch. Scenes included Sam and Carly run­ning to escape in Bum­ble­bee and more run­ning, this time across the bridge with some soldiers.

Videos

Seib­ertron
WGN TV

Image sets

All Spark
TFW2005
TForm­ers
SHH
Seib­ertron
TLive

A short break in the Chicago film­ing saw the crews head to Mil­wau­kee, Wis­con­sin to film scenes at the Mil­wau­kee Art Museum. Spot­ted on set were Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Hunt­ing­ton, along with new­comer Patrick Dempsey in an Aston Mar­tin. There’s also a 1972 yel­low Dat­sun, which breaks down.

Below is a set of videos from the shoot:

And Matt Schilder (flickr) has posted some shots of the Dat­sun, Shia and Rosie from the art museum:

And a fur­ther shot of the Dat­sun bro­ken down via TFW2005:

First up, some videos of Opti­mus Prime and the auto bots avoid­ing explo­sions and large piles of rub­ble at intersections:

Seib­ertron have posted 20 or so videos and a huge set of pic­tures from the day’s action, includ­ing close-ups of the auto­bots and “stun­ti­cons” (Nascar vehicles).

Image Gallery
Stun­ti­cons and Auto­bots
Stun­ti­cons in action
Destruc­tion on Chicago’s streets
Wacker drive

A col­lec­tion of videos from the wing-suit sky­dive, with some excel­lent angles on the action show­ing five para­chuters land­ing in East Shore Lake Park.

The first set pic­tures came from AICN, show­ing a crater next to an office build­ing. Then on July 10th we had our first real look at some Trans­form­ers 3 action — Prime with trailer, Bum­ble­bee, the Fer­rari, Iron­hide, Ratchet and weaponized Nascar vehicles.

Opti­mus Prime and Trailer

Weaponized Nascars, and the Autobots

Chicago Day 1 set videos

A playlist of 13 videos from the first day of shoot­ing. Includ­ing an over­head angle from zztopeu­rope depict­ing a chase scene involv­ing the Nascar vehi­cles, a Mer­cedes Benz and the Chevy Volt.

More on set images

The rea­sons for Megan Fox being shunned from the third movie are unknown, but it prob­a­bly revolves around a falling out with Michael Bay. For a while her replace­ment was rumored, before Nel­son con­firmed Rosie Huntington’s cast­ing on the offi­cial MB site, and much more recently, he char­ac­ter name — not Mikaela, instead, “Carly”, known to fans as Spike Witwicky’s wife in Gen­er­a­tion One Transformers.

Nel­son here…
I would like for all you S4TE fans to wel­come Rosie Hunt­ing­ton Whitely to the world of Trans­form­ers. As some of you might know, she’s the new female lead in Trans­form­ers 3. She’s worked with Michael before in his Victoria’s Secret “A Thou­sand Fan­tasies” ad.

Hunt­ing­ton was first spot­ted on set with Shia at the end of June, first reported by Just Jared. A video is also avail­able on MSN.

Then, on set again, Rosie was seen with Michael Bay and Shia in LA, this time by Com­ing Soon.

EDIT: Images removed at the request of Para­mount Pictures

In a post to the LS2 forums, mem­ber -=boM=- spoke about his expe­ri­ences as an extra at White Sands, New Mex­ico in Trans­form­ers 2. To prove he was there he has also pro­vided a large col­lec­tion of set images that show Side­swipe, Skids, Bum­ble­bee, Iron­hide, Opti­mus, Jolt, Ratchet, Shia and Megan Fox on set, tanks, sol­diers, build­ing ruins, a camel, anti air­craft mis­sile vehi­cles, etc. — I have included these after the break and they come via TForm­ers, the report comes via TLAMB.

The fol­low­ing report con­tains spoil­ers, be warned:

“Can’t wait…i’m in it as an extra. I am a Navy Seal doing a bat­tle scene against the Decep­ti­cons. I filmed out at White Sands and on Hol­lo­mans flight line. Filmed for 4 days and had a blast. Tons of pics on my Facebook.”

[…]

I had to chase a bunch of vil­lagers out of the area because the Decep­ti­cons were attack­ing, then had to pro­tect Opti­mus Prime’s body. There were a shit­load of us out there.

The food and cater­ing was awe­some. A lot of down­time. Just like a deployment.

I did an inter­view for the DVD. We will see if that is on it too. The asked me a bunch of ques­tions about the mil­i­tary. The auto­bots are behind me on top of a sand dune. I did a GM plug. They liked that.

Micheal Bay loves the mil­i­tary. I got to speak with him very briefly. He gets so angry on set at the actors but doesn’t dare yell or demean the mil­i­tary. It was a trip. He said some­thing to me like do you want a job as a DA (Direc­tors Assis­tant), I said hell yeah. He was get­ting pissed at his DA. His DA was like trust me you dont want this job.

I have two closeup shots if they do decide to put them in the movie. One was walk­ing with the cam­era on the tracks going along with me but at a slower pace. The cam­era was right on the side of my face fol­low­ing me but at a slower rate. There were two oth­ers behind me. The other close up was while I was defend­ing from a cor­ner of a build­ing on one knee. The boom cam­era went from the ground to over head of us all. I was up front in the scene. The cam­era came up to my face then began to ascend over the area. It was pretty cool.

Another scene was Opti­mus get­ting dropped off by a chi­nook. I had to run up to the area then stop as Opti­mus was get­ting dropped.

Another was with Josh and Tyrese when they argue with The Pres­i­dent on the flight­line. I am in the background.

As much time as I spent film­ing (9–10 hours a day for 4 days) I hope I am seen at least once. Hell I’ll be happy to be on teh DVD.

One of the images also reveals Megan Fox and pos­si­bly Josh Duhamel sit­ting next to a fallen man in a pool of blood, he’s not in mil­i­tary dress and in other images looks like Shia.
TLAMB enter­tain the idea that Revenge of ‘The Fallen’ may per­tain to the fallen Opti­mus Prime, Re: ‘pro­tect Opti­mus Prime’s body’, although they con­clude that this is unlikely, ‘Revenge’ is not very Opti­mus like.

Our first clips of this came ear­lier in the year from Philadelphia’s Chan­cel­lor Street (though it’s meant to be Paris), with footage of Sam’s par­ents run­ning down a nar­row street away from some invis­i­ble but deadly threat later to be CG’d in. This video pro­vides an excel­lent new angle of that scene, start­ing with Michael Bay and end­ing with Julie White and Kevin Dunn run­ning towards us: