Umm, this actually means very little really. You can do this with a hell of a lot of other films. How long was Darth Vader actually in A New Hope for? How many minutes was Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Ring for? I bet you any money that the results aren’t as long as you would think. Even three minutes overall screen time in a film is a bloody long time, let alone five or six minutes. Actually, even a single minute is a long time in a film. It's about how it's spread. Five minutes spread over a two hour film is quite a hefty amount of time.

I don’t know whether your “experiment” had positive or negative intentions, but ultimately, you’ve actually made it quite clear that the Transformers, overall, are in the film for a pretty long time.

 

Also, are you counting when the TFs are "present" even if not in the shot? For example, when, say, Jetfire is talking to Sam while the shot is on Sam (with Jetfire not seen due to the shot being on Sam, but you clearly hear his voice). I think that should count for something.

 

most... out of the group he lists. Megatron, Starscream, Optimus and Bumblebee aren't included.

 

This.

ROTF had it's issues but it wasn't the worst film ever.

 

Cmon, give the OP a break.

This is actually pretty interesting - sorta like technical details. I'm curious to see how much the others got.

I did Bumblebee.

Bumblebee had 7 min. 24 sec. of screentime - over half was in vehicle mode. I didn't count the scenes where humans are inside of him. The number is right give or take a couple seconds.

Optimus Prime had 12 min. 22 sec. of screentime - including dead body shots, narration, and off-screen dialogue.

 

Sweet. Now I have a new reason to hate the Twins:

They stole more time than every other new Transformer! Those robotic bastards...

 

He clearly stated that he wanted to focus on the newer TF's in the movie rather than the established bots.

 

But at least it answered the question of how many minutes does it take for the Twins to get as annoying as Jar Jar Binks.

 

I'd be interested to know how many transformations we get to see on screen. I dont think there are many that we actually get to see, especially once the opening shanghai sequence is over - most transformations later in the movie are implied off camera (the twins coming back to reformat for example - or the constructicons on the transport ship when they go to revive megs).

 

Really? I mean really? You had time for this?

 

Very well put, my friend. Even I failed to consider this.

 

It doesn't take any longer than it does to just watch the movie...

 

you forgot ironhide and prime ..someone must have already mentioned it. but the scrn time probably is roughly the same as ratched, maybe less

 

Oh yeah, they definitely cheated quite a bit here.

There are new transformation sequences for Arcee, Sideswipe, Sideways, some of the Kitchenbots, Ravage's minibots, Scalpel, Jetfire, Megatron, and Devastator. I'm not even sure they mapped out full transformation sequences for the Twins, certainly not for the individual Constructicons.

This isn't surprising because this is the stuff that is really hard and expensive to do.

 

I have a list of the on-screen transformations that we get to see in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Now, I may have missed a few, but this is the gist of it. ~36 on-screen transformations.

>Shanghai Shootout
-Ironhide: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Demolishor: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Arcee (units): Vehicle-to-Robot(s)
-Sideways: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Sideways: Robot-to-Vehicle
-The Twins: Vehicle-to-Robot(s) (in background, hard to see)
-Sideswipe: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Optimus Prime: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Optimus Prime: Robot-to-Vehicle
-Optimus Prime: Vehicle-to-Robot
>Bumblebee’s Backyard Barbeque
-Kitchen-bots: Appliances-to-Robots
-Bumblebee: Vehicle-to-Robot
>Diego Garcia
-The Twins: Vehicles-to-Robots/Trans-scanning (difficult to fully see)
-Optimus Prime: Vehicle-to-Robot
>Reedman’s Theft
-Micro-cons: Ball-bearings-to-Robots-Reedman
>Nemesis Ship Sequence
-Megatron: Vehicle-to-Robot
>Chop-Shop Sequence
-Wheelie: RC Vehicle-to-Robot
>Alice at College Sequence
-Alice: Human-to-Pretender
>Sam’s Interrogation
-Scalpel, the Doctor: Microscope-to-Robot (Cut short)
-Megatron: Robot-to-Vehicle (hard to see/off screen)
>Forest Battle
-Optimus Prime: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Megatron: Vehicle-to-Robot (same shots as above)
-Grindor: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Starscream: Vehicle-to-Robot
>Post-Forest Battle
-Megatron and Starscream: Vehicles-to-Robots (sort of? When they first land on the building)
-Megatron: Vehicle-to-Robot (Empire State Building)
-Bumblebee: Robot-to-Vehicle
>Jetfire’s Exposition
-Wheelie: RC Vehicle-to-Robot
-Jetfire: Vehicle-to-Robot
>Final Battle Part 1
-Megatron: Vehicle-to-Robot (top of pyramid, hard to see)
-Devastator: Combining
-Starscream: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Rampage: Vehicle-to-Robot (cut short)
>Final Battle Part 2
-Jetfire: Vehicle-to-Robot
-Megatron: Robot-to-Vehicle
-Optimus Prime: Combining with Jetfire’s parts

And of course there's probably more that I didn't count because they were cut short or whatever. Plus there's all of the "implied" transformations such as the Constructicons on the ship, Wheelie continually switching back-and-forth, The Twins and Bumblebee switching back-and-forth in the final battle, Ironhide, Ratchet and Sideswipe switching modes off-screen in Egypt, etc.. Which, in the long-run, is understandable. High-quality visual effects in a movie like this cost A LOT. One can understand that Bay may want to save up for the bigger shots, and not only salvage his budget, but give the visual effects artists at ILM and DD a break from some more menial shots.

I also counted the transformations from the first movie, and the first movie beat out RotF by only a few transformations (~40 ish). The difference is, more than half of RotF's transformations were small and in the background, rather than being played up to camera (which as it's been stated, is very expensive and time-consuming). I know it's expensive for the visual effects and everything, but I'd still like to see more actual 'transforming' in the third movie. As long as they've got the "pure nerd fantasy shots" in the third movie, like Ironhide and Optimus' first on-screen transformation, or Reedman's or Devastator's. Those lengthy, close-up shots of all those mazing visual effects gears and bolts and joints moving and turning are just fantastic. Makes being a Transformers-fan worth it to me. I want to see more of those shots in the third one, and less "oh, well they must've transformed off-screen...multiple times..."-shots.

And regarding the character's screentime, as whoever pointed out, those few minutes--even if it's in a 2.5 hour movie--is a lot. Sure, the characters should've gotten more, especially (insert name of favourite film Transformer here), but we got what we got. It could've worse. I'm guessing that Ironhide probably gets ~2-2.5 minutes of screentime, and Megatron and Starscream get in the 4-6 minute range. Just a random guess though.

 

For the 100th time, the OP said he'd focus on supporting and new characters - characters who obviously didn't get too much screentime like Prime and Bumblebee.

I did Prime, and he got 12 min. 22 sec of screentime.

Ironhide had a grand total of 2 min. 56 sec. of screentime. Not as much as the first film, but as best as the Autobots besides Prime, Bumblebee, Jetfire, the Twins got.

Next time I'll do Megatron and Starscream. Without land-based vehicle modes, it'll be easier.

 

Sideswipe got 2 minutes and 15 seconds? Holy crap. I thought he had about 30 seconds...

 

Thanks TylerMirage for the list since it gives us not only who got transformations but a way to figure out how many robot to vehicle vs vehicle to robot transformations there were.

 

Nice job! now we can really get a feel for the robot screentime. The transformations info is pretty insightful too. I wish there were more transformations that weren't cutoff and more that were shown at a wider shot. I like the transformations in the first one because there were several times when you got a real good look at them transforming.

On another note,It would be interesting for someone to calculate the screentime for the human characters, including minor ones like sams parents, and compare their screentimes to that of the robots....

 

You know what's weird? Even though the actual Transformers have (supposedly) "so little" screen time, I still feel like the movies are about *them*.

I dunno... either that or I don't mind the human presence because I actually LIKE the humans in these movies? Or because I understand and accept how much money and work it takes to get the Transformers on screen?

Either way, I'm happy with both the Transformers and the humans in Revenge of the Fallen