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Michael Bay Relishes Blu-ray's Victories

PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:01 pm
by Ian
While this is nothing more than an "I told you so", its good to see at least one director speak out on the whole HD DVD vs. Blu-ray thing.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/news/h ... e_ID=12086

“Blu-ray’s better, and I told everyone,” Bay said at the Visual Effects Society’s sixth annual award show, where he presented the award for animated character in a motion picture. “I was very vocal about it. I knew HD [DVD] was not going to make it.”

With HD DVD being edged out of competition by sheer volume of product moving to Blu-ray, Bay is all but gloating.

“Am I thrilled? It really wasn’t my fight, but remember what I said in the press? I was kind of saying HD [DVD]’s going to lose,” he said. “No one believed me.”

PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:55 pm
by Wesociety
Michael Bay is a moron.

PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:57 pm
by Ian
Wesociety wrote:Michael Bay is a moron.


Yeah, but at least he's got the balls to make a stance on this stuff. You don't see Lucas or Spielberg out there, telling the studios to get the act together.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 12:48 pm
by Grain
I missed you more than Michael Bay missed the mark
When he made Pearl Harbor
I missed you more than that movie missed the point,
And that's an awful lot, girl, and
Now, now you've gone away... and all I'm trying to say, is
Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you
I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school (school school).
He was terrible in that film.
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part (part part).
He's way better than Ben Affleck.
And now, all I can think about is your smile, and that shitty movie, too.
Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you
Pearl Harbor sucked...
Just a little bit more than I miss you...


Team America

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:05 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Ian wrote:
Wesociety wrote:Michael Bay is a moron.


Yeah, but at least he's got the balls to make a stance on this stuff. You don't see Lucas or Spielberg out there, telling the studios to get the act together.


Umm.... Actually they have :o

Spielburg has made it known multiple times that he stands behind Blu-Ray. He was very specific about it around the time Paramount went HD DVD exclusive. That's why Spielburg's stuff is specifically *NOT* included on the HD DVD exclusivity agreement between HD DVD and Paramount/Dreamworks.

Lucas makes his stand a little differently. He just said that if the industry doesn't get their act together under a single standard quickly, he won't release Starwars in HiDef except as V.O.D. :evil:

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:07 pm
by Ian
Good points. They just haven't been as vocal about it.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:29 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Ian wrote:Good points. They just haven't been as vocal about it.


Yeah, Micheal Bay likes to make public posts on his website... he's pretty vocal about his opinions. I think he enjoys people paying attention to him :P

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:16 pm
by Ian
dolphinius_rex wrote: I think he enjoys people paying attention to him :P


not as much as he likes explosions

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 4:21 pm
by Wesociety
Ian wrote:
Wesociety wrote:Michael Bay is a moron.


Yeah, but at least he's got the balls to make a stance on this stuff. You don't see Lucas or Spielberg out there, telling the studios to get the act together.

As Dolph already pointed out, yes they have. They just don't have their own fan-boy forums dedicated to themselves and how great they are.

BTW, at the Blu-ray Disc Association press conference at CES, they were giving out these Blu-ray magazines. One of the articles was about major Hollywood directors backing Blu-ray. It had a collage picture of multiple directors, including Bay, Spielberg and others.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 9:00 am
by Ian
As long as we're talking about Bay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRmTanlo8wU

Awesome.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:24 am
by Jim
Bluray won because the movie studios switched and backed it. It had nothing to do with if it is a better format or not as Bay is claiming. If Warner went HD-DVD exclusive we may have seen the opposite outcome.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:39 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Jim wrote:Bluray won because the movie studios switched and backed it. It had nothing to do with if it is a better format or not as Bay is claiming. If Warner went HD-DVD exclusive we may have seen the opposite outcome.


Yes, the superior studio support from day 1 is deffinately a major reason for Blu-Ray winning... but it's not like the studio support was a random occurance. The BDA spent a lot of time and effort working with the various studio trying to find a balance between what they wanted, and what the consumer would want. Things like limited region coding, and optional additional copy protection methods went a long way with getting some of the pickier studios like Disney and Fox to sign on. Making the format easily available with the PS3 guarenteed them a majority of consumer adopters right off the bat. And keeping pricing in a realistic area based on the technology, rather then Sony deciding to go on a one company format rampage, guarenteed them significantly superior CE support.

Make no mistake about it, Blu-Ray *IS* a superior format. Not just in technical specifications (bit rate, maximum capacity, and potential in interactive versatility), but also in the fact that it had a sustainable business model from the very beginning. HD DVD's entire plan was to have a single company make players and sell them *WAY* below cost to spur faster then normal adoption, before the market was properly prepared for it.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 5:31 pm
by Grain
CGI Team Creates Realistic Oscar For Michael Bay

LOS ANGELES—A leading team of CGI experts hand-selected by blockbuster producer and director Michael Bay has pushed the limits of what can be accomplished with special effects and digital imaging by creating a computer- generated best-director Oscar for the 43-year-old filmmaker.
The $125 million project, funded entirely by Bay, has been called one of the most ambitious CGI undertakings to date, dwarfing even Bay's most ambitious efforts in his 2007 robot-action film, Transformers. A crew of nearly 200 technicians working for nine months on a 15,000-square-foot soundstage was required to realize the director's wildly imaginative fantasy world.
"Viewers are going to be blown away by how believable-looking we've been able to make Michael Bay accepting the highest award in film appear," said senior technical director Zsolt Krajcsik, who also worked with Bay on the 2003 film Bad Boys II. "The podium, the backdrop, the sense of creative achievement that hangs about him—it's all so vivid and detailed that you'd swear it was real."
Added Krajcsik, "When you see Michael thanking his talented cast and crew and raising the Oscar above his head, it's going to be hard to believe it never, ever happened."
In order to create the illusion of filmmaking achievement, Bay was first filmed in front of a green screen while being presented a "dummy" award, a green cylinder roughly the size and shape of an Oscar statuette. Technicians next analyzed a real Academy Award borrowed from Ben Affleck, whom Bay directed in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, in order to build a digital model. The team then took the raw motion-capture footage of Bay accepting the dummy award and painstakingly rotoscoped the digitally rendered Oscar into every frame.
The CGI team also took great care to make the scenery match flawlessly with the new digital footage. Not only did technicians create a 3-D computer model of the Kodak Theatre, where the 2008 Academy Awards will be held, but they also engineered a startlingly lifelike audience. The computer-generated crowd was designed using advanced artificial intelligence software, which allowed the digital actors to behave as individuals and respond to each other and their surroundings as if Michael Bay were actually standing before them, being honored by his peers and the Academy. Using this program, thousands of meticulously detailed figures seemed to laugh, applaud, and cry at appropriate moments in Bay's 15-minute-long acceptance speech.
The same technology, which features a sophisticated cloth-simulation application, was used to create Bay's digital tuxedo.
"There is no way this would have been possible five years ago," Krajcsik said, later admitting that CGI technology is still decades away from making an Academy Award win for Rush Hour 3 director Brett Ratner look plausible.
While the production is a testament to recent technological advances in the field of CGI, the human aspect of the project also proved extremely challenging. As part of his intense preparation for the role of an acclaimed director, Bay said he interviewed several Academy Award winners, including Steven Spielberg and Marisa Tomei.
"This was a world that was completely foreign to me," said Bay, who spent months practicing the choreographed motions of holding the statue aloft and kissing it. "I tried to get a sense of what it would actually be like to hold an Oscar for the first time, and not just the emotions involved, but the actual heft and tactile feel of accepting the award."
Meryl Streep, who commanded a $5 million salary for her role as the presenter of the Oscar, said the production was the biggest challenge of her career.
"To put yourself in that mental place, in a world where something like this would be possible, it's just indescribable," Streep said. "Standing in front of that greenscreen and trying to make it look as though I actually believed what I was doing was the most difficult thing I've ever attempted as an actor."
The completed production will debut on ABC during the Academy Awards in a seamlessly integrated advertising block Bay purchased that directly precedes the presentation for best director, and has already garnered considerable buzz for its purportedly mind-boggling visual effects.
"We'll just have to wait and see if it lives up to the hype," Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert said. "However, if the special effects team has succeeded in making Michael Bay getting anything above a People's Choice Award seem even remotely convincing, then this has Oscar written all over it."