On this pageTap to expand
We all know Michael Bay as the hyper-active director of full-on action, and huge budget, flicks like Transformers, Armageddon and The Rock. But it wasn’t always like that.
Like everyone, he had to start somewhere.
Bay often traces his interest in action films back to an incident during his childhood. As a boy, he attached some firecrackers to a toy train and filmed the ensuing fiery disaster with his mother’s 8mm camera. The fire department was called and he was grounded.
That is still the most Michael Bay origin story I have ever heard. Not because of the explosion. Because he filmed it. The fire department is the review. The grounding is the notes session. The 8mm camera is the career.
From Storyboards To School
Bay got his start in the film industry interning with George Lucas when he was fifteen, filing the storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark, which he thought was going to be terrible. His opinion changed after seeing it in the theater and he was so impressed by the experience that he decided to become a film director.
I love that detail for the opposite reason people usually tell it. He did not intern as a boy genius who “got” Spielberg immediately. He filed boards, judged the movie, then got proved wrong in a cinema. That is a useful humiliation. Storyboards are not the film. The film is the film. If you are figuring out how to become a director, sit with that: the paperwork of a sequence can look silly until the sequence moves.
He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1986, majoring in both English and Film. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and a favorite student of film historian Jeanine Basinger.
For his graduate work, he attended ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena where he also studied film.
Basinger is not a trivia button. If you have never read her, she is one of those teachers who makes you look at Hollywood as a system of images, not a mood. Bay’s later reputation is noise and nickel-plated chaos. The training underneath is boards, shots, and a historian who cares about how pictures are built. Those two facts can live in the same person. They did.
ArtCenter is a design school, which matters. Bay’s path is boards and pictures, not only scripts: a kid who blew up a train, a Lucas intern who misread Raiders, an English-and-film graduate, then commercials.
Propaganda, Coca-Cola, And The Clio
Michael Bay began working at Propaganda Films, directing commercials and music videos, two weeks after finishing his post-graduate degree. His 90-second World War II-inspired Coca-Cola advertisement was picked up by Capitol Records.
His first national commercial for the Red Cross won a Clio Award in 1992. He directed Goodby, Silverstein & Partners Got Milk? advertisement campaign for the California Milk Processors Board in 1993.
This is the chapter people skip because it is not a feature. It is the actual film school.
A commercial has to land in thirty or ninety seconds. There is no second act where you explain your childhood. You need a camera plan, a pace, a joke or a gut-punch, and a client who will kill the take if the product disappears. Propaganda Films in that era was a factory for directors who could do that on Tuesday and a music video on Thursday. Bay walked in two weeks after graduating. That speed is part of the lesson. He did not wait for a feature committee to knight him.
The Coca-Cola spot being picked up by Capitol Records is a crossover detail: the commercial was already cinema-adjacent, long enough and styled enough to live as a piece of filmed entertainment. The Red Cross Clio in 1992 is the craft stamp. Got Milk? in 1993 is the cultural one. You can dislike the later features and still admit this run is a director learning to control tone, faces, and cutting while someone else pays for the crew.
Music videos were the other gym. Forbes has the Meat Loaf version of that story. Videos give you music as a spine, which is a gift and a trap. The gift: the rhythm is already there. The trap: you can hide weak blocking inside the song. Bay’s later features still feel like they were cut to a beat that started in this period. Whether you find that exhilarating or exhausting is a taste question. The training is not a rumour.
Bad Boys, Bruckheimer, Simpson
Bay’s success in music videos gained the attention of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, who selected him to direct his first feature-length film, Bad Boys. The film was shot in Miami in 1994 and starred Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
The action film proved to be a break-out role for Smith, who was segueing from television to films at that time. Shooting in Miami was a good experience for Bay who would later own a home in the city and spend a great deal of time there.
The film was completed for $19 million and grossed a remarkable $141 million at the box office in the summer of 1995. Bay’s success led to a strong partnership and friendship with Jerry Bruckheimer.
Those are the figures already on this page. I am not tacking on later grosses. Bad Boys is the hinge: commercial-and-video director gets a feature because producers who live on pace recognised the pace.
Simpson and Bruckheimer hired someone who could make an image feel expensive in the cut, not only in the budget. $19 million is not a garage feature, and it is not Transformers. It is a first film with a director who had already made thousands of decisions in spots where every second was bought.
He’s now known for his Bayhem style of action moviemaking. If you want him in a wider director map, the 20 directors pile is the other door.
Commercials As Film School
I used to treat commercials as the thing you do instead of “real” directing. That was a dumb, romantic idea, and Bay’s start is one of the reasons I dropped it.
A good spot teaches boards before vibes, pace as a choice, and how to make a location work in a wide and a close-up. The Red Cross and Got Milk? are client work. You still have to point the camera. A filmmaker career that cannot survive a client will have a hard time surviving a studio.
You do not need Propaganda Films to steal this. Treat the next brand film or local commercial as a shot-listed piece of direction, not as footage you will “make nice in the edit.”
What A Working Videographer Can Actually Copy
Do not copy the explosion budget. You will hurt yourself, and you will not get Bruckheimer on the phone.
Copy the prep.
Boards, even ugly ones. Bay’s first industry job was touching someone else’s storyboards. Draw the sequence. Stick figures are allowed. If you cannot board a car arriving, two people arguing, a product on a table, you are hoping. Hope is not a shot list.
Rehearse the camera path. Commercial directors obsess over where the camera enters and exits. On a run-and-gun job, walk the move once without rolling. The 8mm train was a stunt. The professional version is knowing when the stunt happens in the frame.
Cut to a beat, then throw the beat away if a face needs to land. Videos taught Bay rhythm. Watch a Got Milk? spot and count how long faces are allowed to exist. Then count the same thing on your last corporate piece.
Ground the spectacle. If you light a fuse, know who is in the building. Safety is how you get to shoot Friday.
Use whatever your Miami is. Bad Boys is a location picture as much as a star picture. Pick the place that already has contrast. Do not spend a small budget faking a city you are not in.
The start is copyable: touch some boards, take the commercial that will make you finish. The feature, if it comes, comes because you already directed.
Ready to learn about more Film History & Film Movements?
Fascinated by how films work? These articles will level up your knowledge.
Incendies: Context, Themes, and Style
No Fear, No Die: Symbolism and Interpretation
Frances Ha: The Meaning Behind the Moments
Lola: A Guide to Its Meaning and Impact
A Bay of Blood: Visual Style, Ideas, and Impact
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia: A Modern Appreciation
Demon Seed: A Guide to Watching It Like a Critic
Lone Wolf and Cub: The Final Conflict: A Modern Appreciation
Ex Machina: What Makes It a Classic
New comments are not currently accepted.
Comments