Transformers One is a fascinating addition to the Transformers franchise. Told from a more grounded and character-driven perspective than most entries in the series, Transformers One explores the early lives of Optimus Prime and Megatron before they became their more iconic forms. A highlight of 2024’s animation output, the Josh Cooley directed film benefited from a host of technological advances that gave the filmmakers unique freedom during production.
This was especially true for Christopher Batty, who worked with Cooley to flesh out the world of Cybertron in ways that gave the robotic characters and metallic world a sense of naturalistic realism. During an interview with TVBrittanyF, Transformers One Cinematographer Christopher Batty reflected on the unique creative process behind the animated film, the excitement of using new technology to find more human performances, and the unexpected joys of bringing Cybertron to life.
TVBrittanyF: The concept of cinematography in an animated film is inherently tricky. How do you approach shooting a setting that is so inherently alien as Cybertron?
Christopher Batty: It was pretty challenging at the beginning. I remember the studio execs would come up to me and ask, ‘How are you going to show scale?’ Their biggest concern was showing how big the characters are. If you think of the Michael Bay movies, he did a great job at [showing their scale]. But it was a little bit easier. You had humans, cars, doorways, chairs, and everything alongside it to show that off. On Cybertron, it’s an alien world. It’s so big and epic. How do you show everything in its right scale? That was kind of the first thing that we all latched onto. It was me, our Director Josh Cooley, the Production Designer Jason Scheier… there was a lot of opportunity, but also a lot of challenges.
We just sort of approached it very character-based. As far as scale with the characters, the first thing to realize is that far as Orion Pax and D-16 are concerned, they’re not big. They’re among the smallest characters on Cybertron when we meet them. So then we kind of start showing that off by showing how big are they compared to the regular Transformers. We’d make the other guys break the frame, or we’d be shooting down on them all the time. We kind of came up with this language where I wanted to sort of shoot everything on their level, or shoot down on them at the beginning of the movie. That way, we could emphasize how much of a lower caste they are.
Then, gradually through the film when they get their cogs, we start shooting up at them. We start showing them more heroic. Once we kind of have those awesome shots at the end, where Pax is Optimus Prime and D-16 is Megatron, we start shooting up in a very heroic angle. Jason was really good. We worked hand in hand with it. He would add little details and things like panel cuts or leaves on the ground. Even tiny little alien world organic shrubbery and stuff like that, which could kind of make sure everything kind of felt like in the correct scale. This meant the characters didn’t get too lost or diminutive, or vice versa, too big. It was a cool world to shoot.
What kind of inspirations and influences did you bring to Transformers One that would surprise viewers?
I know Josh was really inspired by Art Deco. Jason really kind of took off on that, as far as the design. We then contrasted that going up to Cybertron, where you have all these natural things. It was a fun way to show the two different aspects of Cybertron. On the surface, it’s all these transforming mountains that become kind of a danger when they first get up there with the train sequence. But there’s all that sort of alien life that came from elsewhere. It’s all these meteorites that crashed onto the surface and then sort of blossomed out. It gave it that true sort of alien nature, something different for [the main characters] to experience.
That contrasts from the city that they know. They’re very closed off. The way we approached that with the camera is, in the beginning, we did show off the city with these epic wideshots. We truly saved the huge kind of David Lean-style shots until we got on top of the train. Then we could really show off and open up the world. Even in our lens choices, I had two different lens packages for the crew to use. So when we’re in Iacon, we used a little bit more of a vintage set. We were limited in scope. The number of prime lenses that we used, there were only four or five. We were kind of limited in that when we went to the comps and everything.
We made sure that the lenses felt a little bit more vintage, with the shallower depth of field… then when we open up and go onto the surface, I kind of changed our lens package to be a little bit more contemporary. We had more lenses to choose from, and more pristine options. The depth of field was a lot more wide open and clear. The comps were more clear. It kind of showed that contrast of revealing the truth. Once we get up to the surface, just being able to show off the landform, that was fun.
We found little other things. There’s one shot that I particularly liked and came up with, where they’re trudging through the wilderness. We kind of close up on a rock as they pass by, and you see them in reflection. That Cybertronian rock is like polished metal. That was the kind of fun opportunities we played with. Josh Cooley really liked that notion of showing things in reflection, in choice moments. Those kind of little moments could really show off the metallic nature of the world. It just super fun.
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Transformers One utilized new motion-capture technology to help really breathe life into the performances of the Transformers. What was it like working with that kind of technology, and what was the driving direction you relied on while designing those scenes?
A lot of that was sort of the impetus of Aaron Dem, our producer. Aaron was really curious about using new tech to aid in the layout process. Coming up with the cameras and the shots. I was sort of curious about it as well. He approached it in a way that was, I think, both creative but also a little bit economical too as a producer. Creatively, I liked it a lot because we used it primarily for the expository scenes.
In those scenes where they’re all kind of, I don’t want to just say ‘standing there,’ but the non-action scenes I liked because my cameras could respond to the real actors. We had motion capture artists, which we could mimic even while kind of doing this radio play in recording. We recorded audio and had thumbnail boards as a foundation. We knew what we needed to get. Then we would show up on the day, we would talk to [the cast and the crew] and work it out. We would get this really natural organic blocking.
The characters, they naturally wanted to move around. It felt a lot less contrived. That can be the case sometimes with animated movies. I had my virtual camera, so I could move around the stage and find the angles and kind of play with it and respond naturally to the blocking. Josh Cooley would work with [the actors] about their movements, and then we would get the mo-cap take that we really liked, and then we could go in and place the cameras accordingly. They had real-time facial capture, which was great in the layout process. We didn’t have to worry about hand-keying at all. We would naturally get these little inflections that would go to the final animators. It was nice, because it would be all kinds of spontaneous. You could get these littlle smirks or eye darts or winks. They would naturally come through, in ways you wouldn’t expect. We found that fun.
I think economically, Aaron liked it because we would go up to the ILM stage and could shoot five, six sequences in a week. We’d get a foundation. So instead of doing one scene and giving it to the artists for weeks, we could go up up, come back, and have a whole thing that our editor Lynn Hopson could use. Lynn could have a bunch of takes and dailies and start putting stuff together. They would send me the 3D data, and I would go back in and kind of tweak all the cameras.
I didn’t have to be too meticulous, because I knew I could go back in and clean it up. It was a lot of fun to be very collabratorative and to be somewhat spontaneous. We were pretty organized in that I knew what my shot list needed every day, but it allowed us to see opportunities and sort of play with it. It gave the film a little bit more life and relatability to it, which I think is really important to the film. It does have that spontaneous energy that you want from something that is so character-driven. I’m not bad-mouthing the other Transformers films, but they’re not necessarily character-driven in the way this one was. That’s something I do think really benefited the movie.
What would you say surprised you the most during your experience on Tranformers One?
I think at first, we were all excited to go in and really kind of work out all the cool action. That was a lot of fun, and had challenges, and we got to be very creative with all that. But I think some of the quieter scenes and more talkative scenes, I think I found them very enjoyable to shoot. Using the mo-cap stage, I think, helped become more engaged in all that sutff. It became a lot more rick to work with, to get to know these characters. Like when we meet B-127 for the first time, working out all those shots with those cameras and working with those kind of reveals, that was a lot of fun.
I think the scenes in the Hall of Primes with Sentinel, whether he’s confronting Alpha Trion or when he’s got D-16 and B-127 captured, I didn’t know I was going to be looking forward to those scenes as much as I was. I just found it fun and rewarding. A lot of that, I think, had to be because we started that foundation on the stage. It was very collaborative and fun. I think for a 3D artist, whether your animator or something else, it can be kind of solitary. You’re just at your workstation and doing the thing that you knew to be doing. You don’t get to be collaborative until you do the work and show it to somebody. But to be able to be a part of creating [Transformers One] actively with other people, it was very much more of a live-action kind of model. It all happens at once, and everybody’s doing their part as a shared one. I found that most rewarding.
Transformers One is now streaming on Paramount+
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