Finding Filming Locations For Transformers Had The Crew On The 'Verge Of Tears'
Before "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" took the Hasbro franchise to New York City, it started out in sunny California for Michael Bay's "Transformers." The first film in the saga, released in 2007, was set in the fictional Mission City, which was supposedly not too far from the Hoover Dam but looked decidedly like Los Angeles. That's because the movie was filmed in California, with Bay apparently serious about keeping shooting locations in the U.S. despite the film's globetrotting plot.
In a "Transformers" DVD featurette titled "Battleground," Bay, key location manager Ilt Jones, and producer Ian Bryce all spoke about the difficulties production faced when it came to finding the right spots to shoot key sequences in the film, including the ones featuring major landmarks like the famous Griffith Observatory.
"Ilt, a new guy I worked with, I thought I was gonna give the guy a heart attack," Bay admitted. He said Jones told him the crew couldn't shoot at the observatory, and that "it hasn't been shot in five years." But Bay encouraged the location manager to keep pushing for permission to shoot. "I said, 'It's a big movie, you can do it, go to the mayor's office, you can do it.'"
Those big, famous location shots were no joke
Michael Bay also recalled Ilt Jones running into trouble getting the okay to shoot a sequence set at a bridge that would feature four helicopters. The filmmaker repeated his advice to go to the mayor's office, adding, "We're keeping this film down in California!" For Jones' part, the movie did end up with both of those shots, but at the time, he said the gig was far from easy. "Every day is a roller coaster for me," Jones shared on the "Transformers" featurette. He added, "I don't know if it's the same for every department but, you know, I find myself on the verge of tears one minute and then hysterical laughter the next."
Jones describes Bay as a filmmaker who "likes to go hard and fast, he has the shock and awe approach to scouting." The crew also gained access to Holloman Air Force Base and shot at the Hoover Dam — although they were apparently only allowed to do so during off hours. "We'd get certain hours early in the morning where we could be up on the top of the dam," Ian Bryce shared, "and then as soon as the crowds came around 10 o'clock we had to then go inside or down below."
In the film, the Hoover Dam is secretly the home of the AllSpark, a powerful alien cube that grants the Transformers their life force. Apparently, getting the Hoover Dam location took a bit of convincing too, because as Jones put it, another film shooting there before "Transformers" made a bad impression by "buzzing the dam." Since Bay's movies include a whole lot of explosions, the crew "had to do some remedial work" to confirm they wouldn't do any damage to the structure.
Sometimes high-stress shoots pay off
Michael Bay has a knack for shooting in L.A., as his pandemic-made 2022 film "Ambulance" demonstrated. Apparently, when it came to "Transformers," Bay was so eager to work with a local crew that he took a pay cut in order to keep production in America. "We structured the budget in order to keep it in the United States," Ian Bryce noted, but Bay was more specific. "I actually cut my fee so that I can shoot here with my crew that knows how to shoot fast and is good on the fly," the "Transformers" director admitted.
Ilt Jones may have found the location scouting for "Transformers" daunting at the time, but it was clearly an awesome bullet point on his résumé. In the years since, he's worked on massive movies like "Inception," "Kong: Skull Island," "Black Panther," "The Suicide Squad," and "Iron Man 3." Even as he recalled nearly crying while working on "Transformers," Jones noted that at some point, the stress of production fades and is replaced by memories of the high points.
"It's funny how the rose-tinted glasses effect applies," Jones noted, recalling that on some jobs you're relieved that they're over, "but as time goes by you sort of somehow mentally edit out the bad bits" and just remember the good stuff, like sitting in the sand dunes "in the beautiful evening lights." The not-so-peaceful parts are apparently pretty cool too. In an interview with The Location Guide in 2010, Jones said he'd by then become the go-to for a certain type of ambitious, action-heavy film: "Now I have three 'Transformers' movies under my belt, anyone with anything to blow up gives me a call."