Will Transformers 3's 3-D footage be as beautiful as Avatar's, or as ugly as Last Airbender's? Even though Michael Bay shot the film in 3-D, some sources claim the result wasn't usable, forcing him to use the dreaded 3-D-post-conversion process.
Unnamed sources told IESB that filming in 3-D, using state of the art cameras, didn't actually work out too well for Bay.
The 3-D looks like shit and we don't know if we will be able to use all of it the way it is... Avatar set the standard very high for 3-D films and even though some of the best people in the 3-D business were brought aboard for TF3 but with Michael's quick, aggressive style of shooting without any real past experience has caused hiccups.
The source added that Bay didn't plan to reshoot this footage, but instead some scenes would be handed over to a post-production house, to be treated with the same process that resulted in muddy, eye-blistering footage for Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender.
This story got at least a little bit of independent corroboration a while back. Talking to Moviefone a few days ago director of photography Vincent Pace admitted that Transformers 3 would be "doing both," filming parts of the film with 3D cameras and then transforming the rest of the footage to 3D via the post-conversion process.
However, Michael Bay now claims that none of this is true and posted the following on his official website:
Wow, I read these morons on the internet who think they are in the know. "We have have problems with our 3D????" Really? Come into my edit room and I will show you beautiful 3D. There has never been a live action show that has pushed the boundaries of 3D like Transformers 3. We shot the entire movie with 3D cameras. I actually loved shooting in 3D. I will give full details of my process and why I liked 3D in the next week right before the Transformers announcement piece comes out on Tron and Narnia.
Even aside from the fact that Bay is insulting and trying to discredit his own DP, we're not sure if we believe Bay. This director has been known to lie outright about his movies that are currently in production — heck, he freely admits that he posts lies to keep people off balance about his new productions. So we're taking this particular rant with a grain of salt, because we won't know until we see footage from the film in person. No amount of sepia tone sunsets can cover up the the ugly thumb print that is post conversion 3D footage.
But on the plus side, Bay's little memo seems to confirm many suspicions that the Transformers 3 trailer will definitely be attached to the Tron and Narnia screenings. So perhaps we'll be able to tell sooner rather than later.
[via Aceshowbiz]