Elmhurst University students gear up to create live-action “Transformers” and “Arcane”

Ryan Hill and Kala Guolee, students at Elmhurst University, are working toward the ambitious goal of recreating some of the most beloved films and television series into live-action.

For EU students who may have wondered about the “Transformers” and “Arcane” posters that have been pinned throughout campus, these two franchises are what Hill, the director of this project, has decided to pursue.

As an aspiring digital media major with a dream to one day work as a director for a major movie studio, Hill is hoping to film his own version of these franchises. He has taken inspiration from the original scripts and has given them his own personal touch so that these are renditions rather than exact copies.

The time and effort it takes to pursue a project like this comes from Hill’s admiration for the source material, as well as his wish to fill in the gaps he felt were missing.

“I chose ‘Transformers’ because that was something dear to my heart. I grew up watching ‘Transformers’ — the cartoons and then the movies themselves by Michael Bay,” said Hill. “One of the problems I had with Michael Bay’s direction was that some of the big characters had little screen time or either they’re killed off or we have no idea where they are.”

The “Transformers” project was one Hill had planned in the previous semester but was forced to postpone.

“We’re trying to revise,” Hill said. “The problem we had with ‘Transformers’ was that basically besides the flyers themselves, we were trying to get the word out and with the time that we had, we would’ve had to have the casting done in December to get to filming.”

With the massive amount of work the project needed, they had to get to filming fast. The issue was that they were not able to move onto that step without a big enough cast.

“There were little to no people who were interested in coming in and trying out for the roles,” Hill explained.

Hill has decided to try again, but with “Arcane,” a television spin-off of the game “League of Legends” which originally was released by Netflix. The original version of “Arcane” is one that was animated using a blend of both 2D and 3D models, a process that took six years to do.

Though it looked great in this format, Hill wants to tackle it with his own interpretation.

“For ‘Arcane,’ it looks really good in animation, but I wonder what it would look like in live-action,” Hill said.

As of now, he is working beside Guolee, his casting director, and another EU student named Sophie Greene, who is his assistant director, to complete their filming of “Arcane.” Hill stated that casting would be open for the next few weeks and conducted via Zoom.