Michael Bay-sacktapnthatass

A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Michael Bay at the age of 24 started making music videos, in addition to his studies. Quickly hired by Propaganda Films after a music video for Donny Osmond, he worked for artists like Aerosmith, Tina Turner, Meat Loaf and Lionel Richie. At the same time, he tackles the direction of advertising spots and carries out campaigns for the Red Cross, Nike, Budweiser, Coca Cola or even Reebok. This status of "clipper" inspires his visual style to come: rapid editing, visible camera movements, aesthetic images (filters, color saturation, etc.).


In 1995 he exported his know-how to the cinema by directing Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in his first feature film, Bad boys, asupercharged buddy movie that re-energizes the genre. With nearly $ 160 million in revenue worldwide, this unexpected success perches Michael Bay in the upper echelons of profitable artists. It was also the starting point for a fruitful collaboration with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, from which a large number of lucrative films would be born.


Michael Bay embarks on the path of budgetary and pyrotechnic escalation, making action the very material of the film, and constantly inventing new ways of filming. The Rock, in 1996, as well as Armageddon two years later, redefined the limits of action movie. Taking the abandoned prison of Alcatraz as a backdrop or the threat of an asteroid doomed to crash on Earth as a pretext, Michael Bay takes the opportunity to dynamise the usual forms of staging, and in the process transforms Nicolas Cage and Ben Affleck into action cinema icons. Same principle for Pearl Harbor in 2001 which, against a background of historical reconstruction, reveals Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale.


After Bad boys 2 in 2003, for which the director finds the two accomplices of the first part, Michael Bay radically changes genre with The Island. Putting aside his collaboration with Jerry Bruckheimer, he also produces this sci-fi film with Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor. The relative success of the latter does not prevent the filmmaker from trying his luck again in the genre: with, Transformers, an adaptation of the cartoon, he turns a child's dream into reality. A box office triumph (more than $ 300 million in revenue in the United States), this blockbuster, which reveals Shia LaBeouf, has two sequels, Transformers Revenge, in 2009, and Transformers 3, in 2011. Two years later, he changes register with No Pain No Gain, a "small" film


At the same time, Michael Bay created two production companies: Bay Films , which remains one of the leading Hollywood companies in terms of profitability, as well as Platinum Dunes , launched in 2001 with Andrew Form and Brad Fuller, dedicated to financing young talents. on projects with lower budgets. It was with the latter that he produced the successful remakes of fantastic B-series, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Amityville and Hitcher. In 2013, he tried his hand at slasher movies and SF by producing American Nightmare and Project Almanac, playing on found footage and, again, on a reduced budget compared to those he uses for his productions.


Continuing to take advantage of the franchises, in 2013 Michael Bay produced the still very profitable fourth installment of Transformers: the age of extinction when he had initially planned to hand over to another filmmaker for this new opus. There he finds Mark Wahlberg who had already played in "No Pain no gain" and who therefore replaces Shia LeBeouf in the main role. After which, the director tackles a more modest project without a big star in the cast: 13 Hours, a true story where six security agents repelled the terrorist attack on the American army camp in Benghazi, in Libya.