Get ready to rumble, humans. Transformers are back. Mill+ transformed six of the biggest 3D billboards around the globe to support the release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, bringing to life full anamorphic versions of Optimus Prime and Optimus.
Working directly with Paramount, who gave Mill+ complete freedom to come up with the ideas, we took inspiration from the film’s shots and started working out different ways of crafting a story around the main protagonists and locations, pitching several ideas and narratives.
The incredible movie takes place in Peru, so we created a full CG environment based on Machu Picchu for Optimus Prime, and his partner in world saving, the new character Primal Beast, to flex our mechanical muscle.
Once the storytelling was locked, one of the biggest challenges was to tell the same story on different “stages” and perspectives for the anamorphic screens. Each screen has a different sweet spot from where the 3D effect becomes effective, and therefore, we couldn’t just reuse the same animations.
Transformers is a huge film, and so is the world of 3D billboards, so we built bespoke sizes for some of the world's most unique sites, including one in Seoul that is 80m wide. Other incredible sites include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Toronto and Tokyo. But to reach everywhere, we also created a one-size-fits-all master that can fit and work on any billboard worldwide, which will see them crashing onto 40 more locations.
Some screen sizes and resolutions were higher than 8K resolution, which meant producing all six billboards in parallel in only six weeks. A beast of a film. A beast of a project. Get ready for the rise of the beasts!
Mill+ loves beasts. Check out one of our other monster billboards for another sort of beast, a 3D dragon, for Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon.
Since its launch in August 2022, the NYC 3DBillboard has generated over 360,000 views on YouTube alone, plus an additional 273,000+ views on TikTok within 3 days. In addition to the intricate 3D Billboard in NYC, the team executed a bespoke 20-second story for a 3D Screen in Melbourne, Australia’s Bourke Street Mall, plus additional 2D screens that will launch in 36 countries around the globe.
The Mill congratulates MPC Film teams and its 1000 artists on their remarkable achievement in creating 896 stunning VFX shots for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
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