by genoneguy » Fri Feb 22, 2008 1:59 pm
Back in 2006 when I was still stationed at Edwards AirForce base in southern California, Michael Bay and his crew came to Edwards to film a few scenes for Transformers the movie. I first heard about the filming at our base when an e-mail came out regarding a casting call for AirForce members to be used as extras in the movie. Unfortunately for me, I was working swing shift and the e-mail came out earlier in the day. The casting call was held the very next morning, and I therefore missed out. But on the plus side, the filming took place over the course of the next week in the hanger beside my shop as well as on the flightline just outside of my shop. I watched as they did filming inside the cargo compartment of one of our C-17's that was parked in the hanger. I imagine the scene they were shooting that day was the scene where the Army and AirForce guys were flying back to the states with part of Scorponoks tail strapped down in the cargo compartment. They only had the two troop doors open so all I could really see inside of the airplane were these big lights on stands, etc. Over the course of the week, shooting was done with an AWACS on our flightline, as well as alot of shooting with C-17's. Alot of scenes were shot with AirForce guys dressed in Army uniforms running around on the flightline and falling down on the hard ramp. I remember one night I was walking around checking out all of the movie making gear, etc when I saw a guy sitting in a directors type chair holding what looked like a portable television. There were a bunch of other people surrounding him, both military and civilian alike. I walked up right behind the guy in the chair to see what everybody was watching. It turned out to be very raw computer images of tanks flying through the air. It was then that I realized who I was standing behind. I asked the lieutenant beside me if that was Michael Bay, and he said it was. I spent alot of time watching as they set off huge explosions up and down the flightline, so big I could feel the heat on my face. Now that I think about it, I think one of the scenes they filmed while I was watching was the end of the Blackout attack when all of those C-17's were destroyed, one of which was my old airplane. I also talked to alot of folks involved with making the movie, nobody big, but I did get to hang out with Michael Bay and I saw that guy who played the AirForce combat controller. I don't know his name but he was the guy who called in the A-10's and the AC-130 Spectre (my airplane) during the Scorponok desert attack. I also remember when I was in our hanger, a couple of the bigger movie making type guys came up to me and asked if it would be possible to use one of our F-16's that we had in the hanger at the time as a backdrop for actor interviews for the "extras" disk when the DVD was eventually released. I'm not a fighter guy, but I did some asking around with some of my fighter counterparts but they said no due to the simple fact that the F-16's had alot of open panels which exposed alot of "sensitive" components that we did not want filmed. There was quite a bit of security on the set, but if you were a military type, you could pretty much walk around and do what ever you wanted to do just as long as you stayed out of the shots when they were filming. There were alot of black SUV's, etc with emergency lights driving really fast up and down the flightline as well as the Autobots driving around. There is a scene in Transformers the movie where AirForce One is forced to make an emergency landing because Frenzy was trying to steal information in the belly of the aircraft. In the scene where Frenzy hides among the landing gear as he makes his way to Barricade, you can clearly see that AirForce One has a refueling boom on the back of the aircraft. The reason for this is because they used one of our KC-135's from our Speckled Trout squadron as AirForce One. I think the reason they used Speckled Trout was because it is painted in basically the same colors as the real AirForce One. I actually have a friend who is a crew chief on AirForce One and the real AirForce One is spotless. Trouts bird that was used as Air Force One in the movie clearly had alot of dirt and grime in the landing gear area, and I thought that showing Trouts refueling boom was pretty sloppy on Michael Bays part. Anyways, there were alot of other pretty cool things that I saw during that week, but I can't remember everything.
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