"The nominees' luncheon should be ending soon."
By the break table in the editing room, Mike Dawson glanced at the time and said to Anna Prinz, "I bet 100 dollars that Duke definitely won't get a Best Director nomination."
To old-school Hollywood figures like Mike Dawson, getting a Best Director nomination with a superhero film was simply impossible.
But Anna Prinz didn't see it that way. She put down her coffee and said, "Alright then, I'll bet 100 dollars that Duke definitely will be nominated for Best Director."
Draining the coffee in his cup, Duke swept a bored gaze across the two of them. "If you two have nothing better to do, go help out in the VFX studio."
Sitting next to Duke, Tina Fey laughed, "The results will be out any minute now."
As if in sync with Tina Fey, less than three minutes after she spoke, Nancy Josephson's call came through. However, when Tina Fey hung up the phone, an expression of disbelief appeared on her face, as if the Transformers had actually appeared on Earth.
"What happened?" Anna Prinz asked.
"Did we not get the Best Supporting Actor nomination?" Mike Dawson immediately jumped to conclusions.
Even Duke looked intrigued Tina Fey was heavily influenced by him and wouldn't react like this unless it was something truly unexpected.
"The nomination list is out," Tina Fey put away her expression and said directly, "The Dark Knight received nominations for Best Supporting Actor, Best Sound Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Makeup, Best Editing, Best Visual Effects, and…"
She paused for a moment and added, "And Best Director. A total of nine nominations."
"No Best Picture?" Mike Dawson followed up.
Tina Fey shook her head. "No nomination for Best Picture."
Duke and the others all wore the same stunned expression Tina Fey had earlier.
A film receiving a Best Director nomination but not a Best Picture nomination was rare in Oscar history, though not completely unprecedented.
Exchanging looks, Duke sighed, "The Academy really is a master at playing balance."
"Those people should be in politics..." Anna Prinz couldn't help shaking her head, "Not in charge of awarding films."
After all, Duke and the others were industry veterans. A bit of thought made the Academy's motives quite obvious. The Dark Knight had triggered an intense public reaction, and the discussions around it had already extended far beyond film, spilling into real-life societal discourse. Coupled with Duke's enormous influence, if they had completely ignored the film and given no acknowledgement, they'd surely face a backlash from both media and fans.
But discriminating against superhero films was also a tradition of the Academy. Those stubborn old men clearly didn't want to break tradition so easily.
Giving Duke a Best Director nomination while overlooking The Dark Knight for Best Picture served two purposes it could appease the media and fans while still preserving their traditions.
There was another layer to it: Duke's own status and influence were simply too big to ignore. This was also a way of giving him some recognition.
"A nomination is just a nomination." Duke reminded Tina Fey, "Inform Warner Bros. that our publicity should still focus on Heath Ledger. We must ensure he wins Best Supporting Actor."
If Heath Ledger were still alive, his chances of winning Best Supporting Actor would be much lower, but passing away often worked better than any PR campaign.
By the same logic, Duke was still alive and doing very well at that so there was no way the Academy would hand him Best Director for The Dark Knight.
With Tina Fey continuing to keep an eye on The Dark Knight's Oscar journey, Duke's attention returned to the post-production work on Transformers.
After completing the initial cut, Duke began fine-tuning the edit of the film without the visual effects. His goal was clear—to shorten the film to under two and a half hours and make the pacing tighter and more intense.
Strictly speaking, this was also a standard superhero film. But unlike the Spider-Man types, Duke would never let Transformers have a melodramatic romance between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. The hardship-driven bond between Sam and Mikaela would far outweigh their romantic angle. This emotional thread, like the pacing of the film, would keep the audience breathless from beginning to end.
This sharp, MTV-style rapid-fire editing was also famously known as the "Duke Rosenberg Format."
In fact, no matter who directed a live-action Transformers movie, the real stars would inevitably be the Transformers themselves.
Alien robotic lifeforms transforming into common mechanical devices to avoid human detection—cars, planes, morphing into towering robots with feet firmly planted on the ground—these transformation sequences were dreamlike.
But to make them believable required exceptionally high-quality visual effects. Duke demanded the best from ILM (Industrial Light & Magic), forcing the studio to revise the effects shots repeatedly.
He wanted the robots on screen to feel vividly alive whether they were soaring through the sky, tunneling under the sand, or barreling down the highway they had to look like they truly existed in the real world.
The robots were virtual, but their counterparts tanks and planes were real. That contrast had to be seamless.
According to Duke's specifications, ILM's VFX artists had the real and virtual elements composed together using digital techniques on a blue screen.
At the same time, collaboration with the military was crucial. The film featured numerous war scenes and marked the largest cooperation between the Pentagon and Hollywood in action movie history. The Department of Defense provided significant support, allowing the production team to save a large portion of the budget and funnel more money into post-production.
Excluding several months of preparation, the actual on-location shooting took only 75 days. Some scenes were even shot using IMAX 3D cameras.
The scale of Transformers' production could only be described as enormous.
Although filming was completed and post-production progressed smoothly, Duke did not relax in the slightest. For a movie of this magnitude, any negligence could result in extremely serious consequences.
To coordinate the work between departments during post-production, he set up a folder in the shared computer area named "Editing Samples," which all colleagues involved in the production could freely browse.
Duke was very clear that a film is the product of teamwork. Without hands-on experimentation, it would be impossible to achieve the ideal visual effect.
The editing of the film was entirely faithful to Duke's required style. In the fine-cut clips, there were countless action scenes, innumerable characters, witty lines, one visual effect after another, and of course, an endless series of lightning-fast shots—almost enough to take one's breath away.
To some extent, whether it was editing or visual effects production, everything had to be honed to perfection. Only then could Duke, through a highly coordinated team, transform the images in his mind into finished products.
The visual effects department used six video workstations and two massive storage devices, specifically to store all the footage and corresponding preview sketches. To ensure smooth communication between Industrial Light & Magic and Duke for daily work exchanges, a dedicated multimedia network was also built.
Transformers was truly massive in scale. Editor Mike Dawson had rich experience and skill, fully understanding Duke's vision, and was always able to weave the fast-paced combat scenes, incredibly complex effects, and perfectly timed bits of humor into a gripping story.
Apart from an initial cut that ran over six hours, Duke had tens of hours' worth of raw footage these were all backup shots for the film.
No matter how a film is shot, it is never just a copy-and-paste job. Especially since Duke made so many changes ever since he entered the industry, the number of shots captured in each shoot has always been ten to twenty times that of the final edit.
From the preparation phase to the end of filming, Duke had prepared an enormous amount of material. Once post-production began, it sometimes seemed like the crew's only task was to sift through and discard unused footage, because he would often be dissatisfied with the edit and axe them all.
Except for rest days, Duke came to the workspace daily, carefully pondering the images he wanted and then describing them to the others.
Sometimes, he preferred to first see what the editors had come up with let them create their version, and then he would study and review it for an hour or two. He didn't want a cobbled-together lifeless product he wanted sequences that flowed smoothly and naturally.
Under such circumstances, the film's action scenes underwent repeated editing. Duke often had to process 80 to 100 sequences a day, and every single one of them had to be treated with care they were all integral parts of the movie.
To complete the work efficiently, including Mike Dawson, Duke employed a total of six editors, with the other five working under Dawson's lead.
Large scale and fast pace were Transformers' most distinctive features, so a capable editing team was essential to keep coming up with useful new ideas.
Even so, many times the crew still found themselves at a loss. For a big-budget, large-scale production like this, handling all the completed footage with quality and quantity required seamless cooperation among multiple editors.
To find inspiration, Duke repeatedly watched the first few episodes of the 1984 animated series during his free time, but he didn't intend to be overly influenced by it after all, movies and animated series are fundamentally different works.
And among the editors, including Mike Dawson, there were no diehard Transformers fans. While this made it easier to cut certain scenes that hardcore fans might consider crucial, it also helped the editing be more accessible to the general public and prevented the film from being too fan-centric.
This film was on a truly grand scale. The content from the original animated series was simply not suitable for direct adaptation into a movie. Mike Dawson hadn't even seen the earlier Transformers animated series or the animated movie, because he believed they were of no help in making a "Duke Rosenberg-style movie."
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