There was chaos last summer on the streets of Detroit, and also in Chicago, Utah, Texas and China. But it was manufactured chaos for the shooting of “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” which opens June 27.
Accompanying the actual filming was much amateur video of the shoots that was posted online, the New York Times reports. And many of those videos, along with shorts made by passers-by serve as both source and subject of an independent 25-minute film, “Transformers: The Premake,” that was unveiled online Tuesday on YouTube.
The "Premake" was made by filmmaker Kevin B. Lee, who calls it a "desktop documetary."
It's a critical examination of the making and marketing of a Hollywood blockbuster, and it pokes fun at some of the exuberance of the amateur videographers, including one in Detroit who goes by the name Detroit Raw.
The Detroit section in "Premake," which starts at 13:30 of the 25-minutes film, also draws attention to Michigan's tax credits.
Cara Buckley reports in the Times:
In assembling what Mr. Lee calls a “desktop documentary,” he also probed the political and economic forces that shaped the film. Footage from Detroit, for example, includes details of the tax subsidies awarded to Paramount to shoot there. “It was about poking inside and asking what brought this film together,” Mr. Lee said.
