Michael Bay Press Conference Transcript

Superherohype.com has posted a transcript of press conference Michael Bay held at the Four Seasons Hotel in LA on June 16.

The highlights:
- As far as how made the movie, he indicated was inspired by Steven Spielberg but "I make my own movie."
- "I quickly became probably one of the bigger Transformer fans in the world, and I tried to make this movie for non-Transformer fans, okay, and I wanted it to be a little bit more, if you could say, adult, so I'm sure I'm going to get flack for – you made an edgy movie on a toy, how is that going to affect kids?"
- "I love working with actors, I love giving actors freedom, I love improvising with actors...but when I'm doing action scenes I'm going to be your worst nightmare basketball coach, that's to get the energy, the adrenalin going."
- Apparently there is an Armageddon (another Bay film) joke in the film and a masturbation joke at some point with the parents.
- Bay received death threats and protests outside his old office from upset Transfans about some of his changes.
- "I'm a huge Transformer fan now, I can officially say I've probably thought more about robots on earth than anyone in the past year and a half. Yeah, I actually think that because I wasn't a fan I think makes it more accessible to other people, does that make sense? Megatron was a gun, and I'm like, "I don't get that..."
- Settled on lips because facial studies determined that need to movement to convey emotion and "we tried it solid, it just didn't look right."
- No script for TF II, Bay is not locked in for Transformers II and doesn't know yet if will direct "Prince of Persia."
- The film was completed last week (around June 11ish) so I guess days before the first screenings started.
- Bay liked the hook of the film being about a boy and his first car in suburbia versus just an extended toy comercial.
- "The underlying theme to me is really no sacrifice, no victory"
- Producer Ian Bryce recommended Shia to Bay for Spike. Steven Spielberg fan of Shia (probably helped in Indy 4 casting).
- Did two days of blue screen work but "I just hate it. It's just I like doing things real"
- Bay shoots real fast with his own crew. To keep his crew he gave up 30% of his fee to avoid shooting in Canada or Australia (where tax breaks etc make it cheaper, same reason lots and lots of TV shows are done in Canada).
- The deal with GM saved 3 million in costs for the cars.
- Was going to have more robots but Spielberg recommended scale back so "should make it like 5 against 5 or 5 against 6." (Yeah I have to reluctantly agree, more characters have, the more others get shorted, see Spider-Man 3 as an example)

The full transcript is here.