rHodas: 'Transformers' Stars Reveal Tricks Behind Filming Building-Escape Scene

Saturday, July 9, 2011

'Transformers' Stars Reveal Tricks Behind Filming Building-Escape Scene

'We all felt 12 again, sliding down the side of this building, shooting, screaming,' Tyrese Gibson tells MTV News.
By Kara Warner

Shia LaBeouf in "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"
Photo: Jaimie Trueblood

For those who've seen "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," there is so much going on in the film that one could spend the next 12 months breaking down all the dirty details. We've already tackled the nods to "Star Trek" and the "Transformers"-specific Easter eggs, so today we turn our attention to one of the film's most impressive action sequences: the part when evil Decepticon Shockwave sends his massive, spinning, snakelike destroyer after our protagonists, who become trapped in the upper stories of a tall building. The Transformer proceeds to cut the building in half, leaving our heroes no option but to jump out of the windows and slide down the outside of the building to safety.

MTV News had the scene's stars, Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Tyrese Gibson, explain how they managed to pull off that sequence.

"The building comes up on what I can only describe as a crane," Whiteley explained of the rig used to support and move the specific set piece. "It tilts to about a 40-degree angle. It's built to look like the outside of a skyscraper," she said. "Shia, myself, Tyrese, the Marines, we all set at the top, Mike [director Michael Bay] would scream 'Action!' and then we would slide down this thing," she recalled. "And then flower pots, chairs, paper and fake glass, tennis balls, every office supply you could possibly think of would get thrown down after us."

Despite the gravity of that particular scene, it turns out that the boys thought of the tilting skyscraper set piece more like a ride at a county fair.

"This thing had to be 150 to 200 feet in the air. It was like a huge slide," Gibson said. "We all felt 12 again, sliding down the side of this building, shooting, screaming, doing everything we had to do in those scenes.

"It was scary stuff," he added with a smile. "It was scary with the idea that we are about to be eaten, eaten alive."

"We shot that for three weeks or so," LaBeouf said. "You're basically pulling yourself on rope to get to the top of the thing. It's like a big slide, you know those slides they have at fairs where you get the little brown bag? Brown bag slides, sort of like that."

Huntington-Whiteley added that in the midst of all the fun had while sliding, she learned very quickly to pay attention to her landing and get out of the way when she reached the bottom of the set piece. "I'd always hit the bottom first. It took one time to realize if I didn't get out of the way really quick, I was going to get flattened by a 300-pound man coming quite quickly after me!"

Check out everything we've got on "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."

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