Bay Talks Trilogy, TF4 Animation Begins

Transformers director Michael Bay sat down for an interview with the New York Times for his new movie Pain and Gain and he also discussed the Transformers trilogy. The Times article also implies that the CGI animating process for Transformers 4 has begun.

“As Mr. Bay watched ILM’s preliminary animation for his latest“Transformers” movie, blocky images of giant robots trading blows in the middle of a city, his visceral reactions, often with variations on the word “cool” — “That’s pretty cool”; “We can do something cooler”; “Maybe you could get a nice slice through his face” — seemed to signal approval.

On the first “Transformers,” Mr. Bay said, he was chided by Steven Spielberg for allowing actors to improvise too much.

“Steven said to me, ‘Michael, I would like you to shoot something that’s in the script,’ ” he recalled. “And I was like, ‘Steven, this is how I work.’ ” Even if 80 percent of what he shot was terrible, Mr. Bay said, “You’re going to get 20 percent that’s gold.”

There is also the baseline level of scorn that greets Mr. Bay’s new releases, delivered with a hostility usually reserved for corrupt politicians or industrial polluters. For a not-at-all-random sampling, consult Roger Ebert’s takedown of the 2009 “Transformers” sequel “Revenge of the Fallen,” which he called “a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.”

“Faust made a better deal” than Mr. Bay did, he added."

See the complete article here.