Transforming the Origins of Optimus Prime: Christopher Batty on His Role in Transformers One

PH: Transformers One explores the untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron. How did you approach creating the visual language to capture the emotional complexity of their friendship and eventual rivalry?

Christopher Batty: When we first meet Orion Pax, D-16 and the rest of the miner bots, we see that they were born into a sort of caste system. The lower caste consisted of miner bots that couldn’t transform and the highest caste were the Primes. We created a style that contrasted those differences in status through camera movement, composition and lensing. Orion and D being lowly miners, were shot using a subtle handheld feel with casual compositions and blocking. We restricted the amount of lenses we used in our kit at the beginning of the movie to a slightly more vintage feel with shallower depth of field to reflect our heroes who have been told they have “limited options”.

For scenes featuring the Primes or the Hall of Primes, we used a more formal language in camera movement and composition. It's a smoother, more controlled movement as if they were shot with dollies and cranes with more symmetrical compositions. When our heroes see the surface of Cybertron for the first time, we changed our lens package to a more expansive set with a more modern feel and greater depth of field and clarity. The camera language evolves with our heroes, shifting from the casual handheld feel to more controlled, formal shots with heroic angles. Once they receive their cogs, we lower the camera to look up at them, highlighting their emerging heroism. They gradually earn the more controlled and formal camera language.

In the final confrontation between Orion and D, I added a series of closeup over the shoulder shots that frame their faces at opposing angles. As they tussle, each pushes the other to the edge of frame, and we get tighter with each cut to see both the physical strain and emotional strain in their faces. This marks the end of their friendship, and I wanted to show how they have now become opposing forces to each other while maintaining intimacy..

PH: With ILM’s Stagecraft motion capture technology, you could experiment with dynamic camera angles. How did this technology shape the cinematography and overall tone of the film?

Christopher Batty: ILM’s Stagecraft was an interesting and liberating laboratory. We primarily used it for the more expository scenes. We took full advantage of having motion capture artists performing the scene in front of us. I used a tracked virtual camera to respond in real-time to the character’s movements. This was an amazing tool that helped us create more organic blocking and camera coverage. Josh Cooley was also able to see in real-time how the characters' blocking and camera coverage expressed the storytelling of each scene. We had fun collaborating with the Stagecraft crew and motion artists, as we adjusted each scene throughout the day. Quicktimes of each take were sent to editorial where Lynn Hobson would have a cut ready of the scene by the next day. It was a great way to assess how a scene was working quickly, complete with natural movements and captured facial expressions.

We had monitors showing our Transformers characters with their scale differences on the sets provided by Jason Scheier and his Visual Development team. I loved having my cameras react to a live performance. The spontaneous movements by our motion capture artists, like a character suddenly standing in angry defiance or receding in fear, added a level of naturalness.

PH: You’ve worked on a wide range of projects from A Wrinkle in Time to Jurassic World. How did your experience in those films influence your work on Transformers One?

Christopher Batty: I feel privileged to have been able to work with great filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Ava Duvernay, Jon Favreau and Gore Verbinski. Each had unique talents to learn from, particularly in storytelling through camera work. The aggregate of them taught me when to be immersive and subjective, and when to be more objective and show off the spectacle of an action or event. I sometimes reflect on my experiences with them to answer questions like how much camera movement is too much or when is it okay to have the camera locked off.

In “Transformers One,” I am partnering with Josh and collaborating with our head of story, Bobby Rubio, as we develop the sequences. They brought their own set of past experiences and influences. My past experience in live-action helps me maintain a sensibility of what real cameras can do. I strive to maintain a more grounded sensibility to our cameras, nothing too flashy or showy that may distract from the action going on in the frame. You can still frame the action dynamically and let the Transformers do the fantastical action, not the camera.

PH: As someone who started in architecture, how has that background influenced your approach to animation and layout design, particularly for a sci-fi world like Cybertron?

Christopher Batty: I think it's an advantage to be able to talk to the production designer in their language. I spent a lot of time in architecture school learning not only how the function of a space informs its design,
but also how certain spaces can make you feel. Jason and I collaborated well and I was able to quickly understand his storytelling intent for each set or environment. I'd take that into account when my layout team set up the cameras. Many of the sets of Cybertron were on a grand scale, so it was important to understand how these spaces worked and from what angle they looked best. The Hall of Primes was one of the gorgeously grand sets, for example. It was a vast space but full of detail. I worked with Jason as well as drew upon my past architectural experience to find areas that both made our characters look small and insignificant, or big and powerful, depending on what was called for by the story. There's a series of shots in the Hall of Primes where D-16 is standing up in defiance after being captured. We were able to find a great lineup that made D-16 feel imposing within this expansive space while showcasing some of the wonderful details that Jason and his team had designed.

PH: What were some of the most rewarding or challenging moments while working with director Josh Cooley and production designer Jason Scheier to bring this story to life visually?

Christopher Batty: Developing the Iacon 5000 race was a fun challenge where we all worked closely together. The race path and obstacles were all developed in Art as we placed the shots in Layout. We did a lot of back and forth between the layout department and the art department. Jason and his team would give us 3D models of each race element that we put into our layout shots. Then Josh, Jason, and I would look at it together and discuss it. This process allowed for quick changes, deciding whether adjustments were needed from Jason’s team or if simple tweaks in the layout would suffice. This ensured we could properly inform ILM on the final models. The final obstacle with the spinning magnetic traps went through a few iterations until we settled upon the finished design. What was important to Josh was to emphasize that Orion and D-16 were working together, the reason they were so successful in the race. So layout and art worked in tandem to come up with what you see in the final film. It was truly action-informing design and design informing the action and shots.

One action sequence posed a bit of a challenge in reading the scale of the characters against the environment. The sequence features our heroes running down a steep hill as they learn to transform for the first time. The design of the hillscape includes these epicly huge alien trees. As we were developing these fast-cut action shots showing characters running deeper into the massive forest, we were worried that it may look a little too “Honey, I Shrunk the Transformers” with our heroes being dwarfed by the trees. We worked closely with Jason and his team as we were composing the shots. He strategically added smaller-scaled foliage along their path as my layout team and I dropped the cameras down to minimize the down angles on the characters. Jason added things like small shrubs and leaves on the ground to better set up the scale of our Transformers against the landscape.

The original pass of this escape sequence ended with this high-wide shot of the transformers in their vehicle form for the first time as the dust settles. Josh, Jason, Lynn Hobson the editor, and I were never happy with the shot. It did its job in establishing geography, but the Transformers still looked small against the environment. It just wasn’t a satisfying way to end this heroic beat. So I took the existing animation and dropped the camera down all the way on the ground so that we ended with a heroic upshot of Orion’s truck. Now we were in the action and with all the smaller foliage that Jason had added made our Transformers look heroic.