How Animation Cinematography Breathes Life into 'Transformers One'

Step into the world of animation cinematography with Christopher Batty, a creative known for his mastery in visual storytelling. With a career spanning several decades, Christopher has contributed to cinematic experiences such as A Wrinkle in Time, Jurassic World, and Aquaman.

His passion for filmmaking was ignited at the tender age of five after watching the original Star Wars, ultimately leading him from a background in architecture to the vibrant realm of animation visualization.

Christopher’s recent role as Head of Cinematography on Transformers One represents a pinnacle in his career, showcasing his exceptional ability to harmonize cutting-edge technology with deep narrative exploration.

In this exclusive Q&A, he shares insights into his creative journey, detailing the challenges and triumphs of bringing beloved characters like Optimus Prime and Megatron to life on the screen.

Join us as we delve into how Christopher balances innovation with the rich legacy of the Transformers franchise, introducing fresh cinematic techniques while staying true to the essence of the story. Learn about the rewarding camaraderie and creativity fostered within his team, and how these relationships enhance the filmmaking process.

Editor's note: the following interview is edited for length and clarity.

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No Film School: What initially drew you to the project of Transformers One?

Batty: I was wrapping up Tiger’s Apprentice for Paramount Animation when I was contacted by Debra, VP of Production. We had worked together previously on Rumble, and she arranged a Zoom meeting with Josh Cooley. Despite my initial nerves about making a good impression over Zoom, Josh was very welcoming and we quickly connected over shared tastes in movies, especially our appreciation for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Raiders of The Lost Ark.

I then met with Aaron Dem, the producer for Transformers One, who was keen on using advanced methods for the layout process. We discussed integrating motion capture with real-time playback, which led us to use the ILM motion capture system and HELIOS engine. This technology provided high fidelity while allowing flexibility for changes, which was crucial for our project.

Transformers One was a dream project for me. Josh’s pitch drew me in immediately. It felt epic, mythical and yet still very relatable. I loved the idea of telling the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron set solely on Cybertron, offering fresh cinematic opportunities distinct from previous live-action films.

Ultimately, what made the project special was the team. Working with Josh, Aaron, Jason Scheier, our talented production designer and the rest of the crew was a pleasure. Building creative relationships and a supportive crew made the experience rewarding and helped us all strive to make the movie the best it could be. Aaron was great about fostering that relationship by organizing crew events. We’d gather together for bowling, golfing or just sharing a meal. The crew wasn’t just great to work with professionally, they were fun to be around. The TF1 crew truly became a family.

NFS: How did your previous experiences prepare you for the role of Head of Layout and Head of Cinematography?

Batty: It was a fun challenge for me. This was the second film that I was Head of Cinematography. Prior to that, I had spent about 17 years in visual effects for live-action films as a previsualization supervisor, where my personal creative voice was limited. My job was to service the director and aid the Visual Effects Supervisor, but ultimately the Director of Photography decided how the movie would be shot.

Now as Head of Cinematography on an animated film, it was up to me to define the camera language. After spending so much time trying to interpret other people’s tastes and sensibilities, it was liberating but also daunting to now be the one making those decisions. But the fact is, you’re never alone. There are so many people around you that can influence and guide you. You don’t have to create in a vacuum. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, and there are many people around you who influence and guide you. I had many conversations with Josh Cooley about his vision for the world and how the story unfolded. My main job as cinematographer is to define the audience’s window into the director’s vision of the film.

Another thing I always draw upon is what I learned from working with Ava Duvernay on Wrinkle In Time. She approached doing a big action sequence in Selma after previously doing small indie dramas. She said it was always about character. Whether it's a complicated action sequence or as she would say, “people in rooms talking” filmmaking should be story and character first. I always try to remember that. It can be easy to get distracted by glitzy technology, cool looking effects or fancy shots. But all that will strike the audience as hollow if it's not in service of the story. So I look to see how the camera language can help support the story and define the characters.

NFS: What was the most rewarding part of working on the untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron?

Batty: The most rewarding part was the friendships I made while working on the film. Many of the people on the crew I didn’t know before starting, but we all came together as a tight crew. Getting to watch and enjoy what we all created together was fantastic, but being able to share that with a larger audience is a great reward. I hope everyone can enjoy watching this film as much as we enjoyed making it together. I mean….we got to go in everyday and play with robots…truly a childhood dream come true.

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NFS: How did you balance innovation with staying true to the Transformers legacy?

Batty: The balance between innovation and staying true to Transformers lore and history was always led by director Josh Cooley. The notion was to approach every design task by remaining honest to the characters journey and story. All the characters have been well defined throughout the years so we talked about ways to make sure they are relatable.

One innovative concept we introduced was "half or partial transformations." This idea, not seen much in other films, allows characters to partially transform. For instance, Elita can remain in bipedal form while her lower half transforms to deploy wheels, enabling her to "skate" for greater speed while still fighting or holding a rifle. We used this for comic effect when they are first learning to transform while being chased out of the Mouth of Unicron, and later, Elita uses it in battle around the High Guard Camp. This created a fun dynamic and fluidity of movement as she transitioned from bike mode to partial biped mode, "rollerblading" as she fights. We used a long shot, excellently composed and choreographed by my lead artist, Joshua Cordes to follow her movements uninterrupted and clearly show these transitions.

We had some fun back and forth with this shot as we worked with ILM animation supervisor Stephen King to develop the specifics of her transformation and fighting movements. Since Josh wanted us to not be limited and “go off the leash” this led to a few revisions to the final animation rig in order to achieve what we all wanted to see.

In the climax with Optimus and Megatron, we included several moments of partial transformations as they used every trick in their battle. We varied between longer camera takes and quick cuts, letting the characters’ actions dictate the style. Shorter shots and quick punch-ins highlighted dynamic transformations, like an arm turning into a gun that Megatron uses to punch, helping the audience feel immersed in the fight rather than detached.

NFS: How did working on Transformers One impact your perspective on cinematography?

Batty: One of the things I was continuously asked when I first started was how I was going to show the large scale of the Transformers in the movie. In the live action movies you can immediately tell the scale of the Transformers by having them next to people, cars, or other earthly objects that we all know. Now with the story solely on Cybertron we don’t have the typical scale cues to fall back on. There are no humans for them to tower over.

The other factor was that our heroes just aren’t that big, at least to start off with. They begin as the smallest bots in their world. They are lowly miner bots. So we designed our compositions to help show their progression in stature as they advanced through the story. We started by shooting Orion Pax and D16 either on their eye level or looking down on them. We also introduced a level of hand held camera so it felt more organic and less formal. Then the other Iaconians and Transformers towered over them, even breaking the frame sometimes to accentuate the height difference. We would then contrast this by shooting the Primes more heroically using lower angles to look up at them. We’d enhance this contrast by also shooting the Primes in more symmetrically formal compositions and steady cameras. We used our camera language to help reinforce the relationship between the characters.

For Orion Pax, D16, Bee, and Elita the camera language evolved with them. Starting from looking down on them to having them earn their heroic angles once they become able to transform. We saved the most heroic shots for when Orion becomes Optimus and D16 becomes Megatron.

NFS: What advice would you give to aspiring cinematographers interested in animation?

Batty: I’d advise watching a wide variety of movies and TV shows. Don’t lock yourself into one genre; inspiration can come from unexpected places. For example, I used Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice to illustrate the differences between formal and informal camera movements. The DP, Roman Osin, used controlled, steady shots for Mr. Darcy’s world and more organic, handheld shots for Elizabeth Bennet’s world. This contrast culminates when Darcy professes his love for Elizabeth, using handheld cameras to show his departure from his refined world. It shows that inspiration can come from unexpected sources, Jane Austen can indeed inform Transformers.

Additionally, stay updated on the latest technology and processes. Try to incorporate something new into each project. It can be daunting, but learning new techniques keeps your work current and can inspire you in unexpected ways. On Transformers One, we used app-based facial capture for some of the layout. This added facial performance for screenings and matched better with the full motion capture sequences from ILM. We used simplified facial shapes on layout rigs, allowing artists to video themselves lip-syncing to scratch audio tracks. We cut down the over 0250 shapes on the ILM mocap rigs to about 50. Our tech team wrote scripts to export the data onto our character rigs, adding depth to layout shots and making them easier to watch, especially for emotionally dependent scenes. The facial rigs could be capture-driven or hand-keyed depending on needs and time constraints.

It added a fun new element to be able to walk around and watch the layout artists acting into their phone as they mimed to the scratch dialogue.

NFS: What role does technology play in enhancing your work as a cinematographer?

Batty: From my first conversation with producer Aaron Dem, we discussed using the latest tools in motion capture, facial capture, and real-time rendering engines for our layout process. The layout department translates the movie into 3D animation, using drawn storyboards as a guide to place characters into sets and environments, defining the camera language of the film. This includes composition, action timing, and shot length, all using lower resolution models for flexibility.

Traditionally, layout could be crude with limited animation and facial expressions, making it harder to watch. Aaron and I aimed to avoid reverting to drawn storyboards for screenings. Storyboards maintain facial expressions and emotion but sacrifice the sense of movement. So we worked early on with ILM to develop a process using their motion capture stage and real-time render engine, HELIOS. Animation supervisor Rob Coleman and Visual Effects Supervisor Frazer Churchill tweaked ILM's facial capture system to fit our needs, allowing us to see real-time expressions.

On stage, motion capture artists performed characters in sync with pre-recorded dialogues while I used virtual camera rigs. We saw real-time playback of the Transformers characters with lighting and facial expressions, capturing multiple cameras per take. This system allowed us to complete layout for several sequences in a week, compared to the traditional several weeks per sequence. This accelerated our understanding of how sequences played out, particularly for dialogue and exposition. After the motion capture shoot, ILM sent us 3D scenes of the performances so I could add or edit camera angles as needed. We wrote scripts to integrate mocap data back onto our layout rigs, allowing for scene changes in our Paramount pipeline.

I had a talented team on layout artists and animators for plotting out the action sequences. We found it too limiting to try to use motion capture for fights or action. We wanted to keep the pushed sci-fi physics of these superhuman characters and not be bound by earthly physics. That being said there are a few moments when the motion capture artists, Nathan Camp and Brendan Byrd choreographed some physical altercations between D16 and Orion Pax that felt emotionally motivated for the scene and we used their performance in the layout and the animators used it as a template for their final shots.

Christopher Batty

NFS: How do you see the future of animation and cinematography evolving?

Batty: It's a very interesting time as the technology of streaming media is changing the economics of the industry. We are always looking for ways to incorporate the latest tech to help the artists achieve results not only faster but that produce a better end result. Advances we see in real time render engines, motion capture and animation tools allow us to see better quality shots much earlier in the process than even a few years ago. This can eliminate some of the guess work on judging how shots will eventually look or play out once finished. If a shot is dependent on a particular effect for instance, advances in real time renders now make those effects achievable earlier in the layout process to help us judge the timing or character reactions.

If changes are needed then we can more quickly implement them before the more expensive final animation and lighting process begins. Then of course there is the specter of Artificial Intelligence. I have played around with the still image generation programs and the results have vastly improved in the past couple of years, almost scarily so. Video generation is still not there yet, but it won’t be long until it’s being used for final content in films and streaming. As artists we need to make sure that the AI tools are there for the artists to use and not to replace them. If we don’t learn the tools then you risk being left behind.

But hopefully as with the advent of computers 40 years ago, it can help usher in a new era of possibility and creativity for our industry and beyond.