Time moved into December. With part of the scenes in the studio wrapped up, Duke moved the entire crew to Las Vegas. After all, Las Vegas was a bustling city, and the shooting schedule had been finalized after multiple negotiations between Tina Fey and the Las Vegas City Hall. Although the City Hall provided strong support, Duke didn’t have much time for shooting. The final scenes had only a one-week filming window. Fortunately, all the Transformers would be created with CGI in post-production, so there was no need to shoot their footage on-site. Even so, Duke remained fully focused. Before shooting each scene, he had to consider the added effects of the Transformers, so the filming speed wasn’t exactly fast—it simply kept moving steadily according to plan. But unexpected incidents always occurred during filming, and sometimes Duke would have a burst of inspiration and change the shooting plan on the spot. "Cut! Pause for half an hour!" The sound of the loudspeaker echoed across the set. After calling for a halt, Duke jumped down from the director’s camera mounted on the track, walked to the other side of the street, and climbed up some slightly higher steps to observe the entire set from above. This was the most famous Las Vegas Boulevard, but it had been temporarily closed. It now looked as if it had just suffered an alien invasion desolate and wrecked. The street was littered with scrapped cars and shattered asphalt chunks. Standing on the steps, looking at the M1A2 main battle tank in the distance, Duke thought for a moment, made up his mind, and decided to add more fight scenes between the Autobots and Decepticons. He gathered the heads of the departments—camera, pyrotechnics, special effects, props into the temporary set and also called over Andrew Garfield and Amber Heard, the lead male and female actors. He briefly explained a few things to Joss Whedon and John Schwartzman. "I want to add a more impactful sequence here." Then Duke turned to Andrew Garfield and beckoned his assistant. "Bring the AllSpark over!" The assistant immediately brought over the prop AllSpark and handed it to Duke. This was an impromptu addition, so there was no script. Duke pointed to a tall building in the distance and started detailing, "You’ll be holding the AllSpark and running toward the designated building." "Let’s do a practice run together." Duke took off his baseball cap and handed it to the assistant behind him. Then he took off his sunglasses and hung them in his jacket pocket. He ran a few steps ahead and said to Andrew Garfield beside him, "Then, an F-22 Raptor will descend from the sky." "Let’s run through it together." The two of them ran toward the car models set up by the props department. About twenty feet away, Duke stopped first. "Andrew, once you reach here," he turned to look at him and pointed to the three cars being set up on a catapult. "Starscream drops down, flips over those cars, and blocks your path. Then Ironhide and Ratchet charge in from behind and start a fierce shootout with Starscream. You take the chance to run past them." Having been in the crew for this long, Andrew Garfield was familiar with the film’s style and understood that Duke wanted to add more combat and explosion shots. "Also," Duke waved him over, and Andrew Garfield followed him to the pyrotechnics team. Duke pointed at some thumb-thick cords and said, "These are detonation cords. There’ll be a lot laid on the ground during the shoot. You have to run fast and not trip over them." This was a standard Hollywood explosive prop. Though the explosion looked intense, its actual power wasn’t high. Still, Andrew Garfield made a mental note. After all, even if it wouldn’t injure him, getting caught in it wouldn’t be pleasant either. Filming an explosion scene was not only costly but also extremely tedious. Just setting up the scene took nearly two hours. Fortunately, such scenes didn’t require much acting skill. Otherwise, if Duke shouted ’CUT,’ it would be a disaster for the crew. After checking the crew’s prep progress, Duke stood behind the camera on the track, holding a loudspeaker, and shouted toward the camera lens, "Andrew, ready?" Andrew Garfield took the AllSpark from the assistant and gave Duke a thumbs up. After taking two deep breaths, he looked ahead. Upon hearing Duke’s command, Andrew Garfield nimbly dodged two overturned sedans and charged toward the building in the distance, clutching the AllSpark—powerful enough to destroy humanity—tightly in his arms. He was fast. In just over ten seconds, he covered dozens of feet. Seeing his goal approaching, as he reached the vicinity of a Landae store, Andrew Garfield looked up at the sky. Though there was nothing there but air, he perfectly conveyed the expression of fear upon seeing Starscream and immediately halted. About twenty feet ahead, three sedans were flipped by the non-existent Starscream. Flames and thick smoke erupted. The three GM-provided cars were launched into the air by catapults, and glowing embers shot into the sky. Clutching the AllSpark with one hand and shielding his head with the other, Andrew Garfield turned back and shouted, "Ironhide! Ratchet!" After about three seconds, several locations in front and behind exploded simultaneously. The smoke and fire signaled that the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons had begun. According to the character’s setting, the male lead Sam was no longer the shy high schooler. At critical moments, he wasn’t lacking in courage. "Cover me! Cover me as I run through!" After saying that, he charged forward again, dodging a burning car on the roadside, gradually picking up speed, and agilely leaping over the detonation cords laid on the road. Andrew Garfield moved faster and faster. Wherever he ran, explosions of fire and smoke followed. With post-production effects added, it would look like Starscream was hot on his tail! Just over twenty feet to his left, another car was blasted into the air in an explosion. Shielding himself from the drifting smoke, Andrew Garfield performed a swift roll on the black mat laid on the road and took cover behind a small truck. He gasped for breath several times and poked his head out to look in the direction he came from. Of course, nothing could be seen of the two factions of robots that would be added later with CGI, but explosions and fire continued to erupt frequently. Vehicles were either launched into the air, flipped over, or crashing wildly, all seemingly proving the intensity of this battle that didn’t truly exist. Three cameras followed Andrew Garfield as he moved. A camera assistant carrying a Steadicam rushed out from a concealed filming spot to get the closest shot of him. The explosions finally subsided. Although it wasn’t perfect, it basically achieved the desired effect. Duke raised a megaphone and said, "Well done. This take is good!" Whether it was the props team or the pyrotechnics team, they had worked with Duke for over ten years. The tacit understanding between them was beyond doubt. A successful director doesn’t just represent himself. Behind him stands a large and equally successful team. "Duke, that was fantastic!" Taking advantage of the break in filming, Hasbro’s CEO Brian came over. "We’ve basically destroyed a street in Las Vegas." Though that statement was a bit exaggerated, the street closed off for filming indeed looked utterly devastated. Thɪs chapter is updated by 𝗇𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅•𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾•𝗇𝖾𝗍 Even though no pavement or buildings had been damaged, the destroyed cars and the prop "asphalt chunks" flung around by the explosions were scattered everywhere along the road. But there was no need to worry too much about this. The crew had already arranged for a specialized cleaning company, and people would soon enter the street to restore it to its original state. "Here, the U.S. military will assist in taking out a few Decepticons." This came from the Hasbro executive. Duke simply added a few words: "Since the Transformers are living beings, they can also die. They are not invincible." "I agree with your viewpoint." Standing behind the camera with arms crossed, Brian looked at the battered and ravaged street and said to Duke, "I think we reached that consensus a long time ago. The Transformers are powerful, but not invincible. Although I’m not a military expert, I do understand that any powerful entity has its limits." "Compared to these giant alien life forms, humans are indeed very weak." Duke stepped aside and pointed to the Bumblebee model still lying on the trailer not far away. "But when facing these mechanical beings, we’re not entirely powerless. Just like you said, they’re strong, but not invincible. Some human heavy weapons can also deal damage to them." "You can be the judge of that." Brian was well aware that Duke’s explanation was a sign of respect toward Hasbro, the original creators. According to their agreement, Hasbro had little say in the script and filming process. Even if Duke didn’t explain anything, Hasbro had no authority to interfere. But Duke understood how important smooth communication and cooperative synergy were to a film’s succes not just with Hasbro, but also with the U.S. military. The Pentagon had provided considerable support for the film’s production. If calculated at market rates, the value was in the tens of millions of dollars. And the collaboration between both parties wouldn’t be a one-time deal. Promoting the image of the U.S. military had to be appropriately considered. Although it wouldn’t go so far as in his past life, where the U.S. military, unable to find opponents on Earth, had to fight aliens, if humans were portrayed as too weak, they wouldn’t be well received by the audience. After all, it’s humans watching the movie, not Cybertronian machines. Duke was no James Cameron; he wasn’t going to come up with a plot where aliens wipe out humanity. While Duke was filming in Las Vegas, Anna Prinz was leading another crew to shoot at the Hoover Dam. There, scenes involving the male and female leads would be filmed, though more of the shots were for use as material in post-production. Given Anna Prinz’s capabilities, handling such filming would be no problem.