Michael Bay - What is Bayhem?

There are filmmakers we love and then there's Michael Bay. Even if you dislike him (as I do), Bay has something valuable to teach us about visual perception. This is an exploration of "Bayhem" — his style of camera movement, composition and editing that creates something overblown, dynamic and distinct.

For educational purposes only.

For further reading/viewing, I recommend
Letterboxd user sydney's review of Bad Boys 2: http://bit.ly/1iZe7SX
Michael Bay watches West Side Story: http://nyti.ms/Vg7ErY
Werner Herzog Talks About Wrestlemania & Anna Nicole Smith: http://bit.ly/VfQ9Iu

Music:
The Sound Defects - Take Out
Leonard Bernstein - West Side Story Overture
Radiohead - I Might Be Wrong

Hi. My name is Tony
and this is Every Frame a Painting.

And I know exactly what you're thinking:
Why am I talking about this guy?

— Oh my god, you're Michael Bay!

— Oh my god, I am Michael Bay.
Because I don't like his films

and yet I think it's crucial
to study them.

Why?

— ...and Paul, I think you have started
to watch WrestleMania on television...

— Well, I...

— Because you must not avert your eyes:
this is what is coming at us.

this is what what television,
what a collective

anonymous body of majority wants
to see on television.

Like WrestleMania, like Anna Nicole Smith,

like Jackass, Michael Bay has created
something.

— Spectacle!

It's what people want. The Romans new it,
Louis Quatorze knew it, Wolfowitz knows it.

— One, two, three...

Boom! Bayhem!!

We may find it crass and vulgar,
but if we're going to make better movies,

we have to understand
the images that are coming at us.

— Hey, hey!!

So let's talk about Bayhem.
Is it a unique use of film form?

If you want to understand Michael Bay, one of
the best ways is to watch his copycats.

Consider this shot from
'Battleship', which tries

to do that circular camera
move he's famous for.

Doesn't work here.
Why?

It's actually really simple. First,
there's no background, except for blue sky.

Without a background, we don't get parallax,
so the shot doesn't feel like it's moving.

See the difference?

On top of that, the lens is wrong. Bay frequently
shoots these shots with a telephoto lens,

which compresses the space.
This makes the background whizz by.

Third, the actor's just staring
and turning his head,

but the key to the Bay version
is that the actors move vertically.

Like here.

And here.

And last, the low angle is there to give us the
scale and slow motion is there to sell it.

So what we have here in the Bay's shot
is multiple types of movement, integrated:

movement of the camera,
movement of the background,

movement of the actors,
expansion of time.

Then they stand still and look
off-screen, creating stillness.

Even though you're looking at a stationary
point in the frame, this shot feels huge.

— Shit just got real.

Breakdown any Michael Bay's shot
and that is basically what you will see:

layers of depth, parallax, movement,
character and environment

to give this sense of epicness.

None of these techniques
is particularly unique.

In fact, most cinematographers
will naturally create depth in their images

and parallax, whenever the camera moves.

And the Hero Shot is everywhere.

What makes Bay unique is how many layers
and how complex the movement is.

That doesn't make his shots
better, it just makes

them more complicated
than the competition.

That's why his frames seem to have
a lot of stuff going on.

Lots of dust, dirt, smoke
or explosions between the layers.

Also, lamp-posts.

Lots of lamp-posts.

If you go back to the first Bad Boys, you
can watch this from the opening credits.

Here, the car moves one way,
the plane another,

the lamp-posts are in frame for scale
and the camera is on a telephoto lens.

Later in the film, you can see
the same compositional techinique.

And when the explosions happen...

Once you see this, it's much easier
to deconstruct his imagery

and to see its limits.

For instance, Bay doesn't distinguish
between when to do a shot

and when not to do it. He'll
use the same camera movement,

whether the charachter's
saying something important...

— You have any money here in the States?

... or total gibberish...

— What did I say?!
Did you hear what I said?

I heard what I said
'cause I was standing there when I said it.

Every shot is designed for maximum visual
impact, regardless of whether it fits.

But the Bay style also leads
to some fascinating visual ideas.

How can you make something feel big?

Well, you put lots of things
of varying size in the same shot

and then you move the camera to emphasize.

This is something "Jurassic Park" also
did very well.

— Ah!
— It's... It's a dinosaur.

Just as important is off-screen space.

Notice here, this actor isn't looking
at the planes we see in the background.

That means there's even
more planes we can't see.

So while the shot feels huge,
it implies even more scale.

How does a filmmaker come up
with images like this?

In the case of Michael Bay, let's look
at one of his favorite films.

"When you're a Jet,
you're a Jet all the way

From your first cigarette
to your last dying day"

There's a great New York Times interview
where he watches "West Side Story"

and talks about how
this is a great shot

and this is a great cut.

He can't articulate why they're great,
other than "they're dynamic".

But I think that's it:
when you put shots from West Side Story

back to back with his work,
you can feel the similarities.

I think Bay's goal is to create
what he thinks are good shots

and connect them with
what he thinks are good cuts.

If Howard Hawks defined a good movie
as three good scenes and no bad ones,

Michael Bay seems to
think a good film

is three thousand dynamic shots
and no static ones.

Apart from West Side Story, Bay's biggest
influence is actually other blockbusters.

He frequently borrows the same basic
vocabularies and other sequence.

So something like this...

... becomes this.

You'll notice the tight shots
of the character become tighter.

And the wide shots become wider.

Everything gets more layers of motion,
but the basic vocabulary's the same.

- I got him!
- Great, kid! Don't get cocky.

And it's not just other people
he borrows from.

Bay cannibalizes himself just as much.

So this...

... becomes this.

You'll notice every motion
in the original shot.

For instance, the camera
turning counter-clockwise,

while the bomb turns clockwise —

it's just cranked up in this version.

— Autobots, I'm in pursuit.

So what is Bayhem?

It's the use of movement, composition
and fast editing

to create a sense of epic scale.

Each individual shot feels huge, but also
implies bigger things outside the frame.

It stacks multiple layers of movement shot
either on a very long lens or a very wide one.

It shows you a lot for just a moment
and then takes it away.

You feel the overall motion,
but no grasp of anything concrete.

And yet, it requires a lot of people
and integration to do this.

But it's basically a variation on the
existing vocabulary of the action scene.

Individual shots are a little dirtier, a little
shakier, more complex, few more layers.

Then you cut it together faster
than the brain can register,

but not faster than the eye can move.

It's not revolutionary,
just the past with a bit of stank on it.

If you want to see a more
etxreme version of similiar ideas,

you can look at late-era Tony Scott.

And if you wanna see a less cluttered
version, you can look at animation.

Someone like Glen Keane.

This is way more legible than what Bay does,
but the basic idea is the same:

character, environment,
many layers, one epic sweep.

The world feels huge.

One of my favorite adaptations of the
Michael Bay style is actually shrinking it down.

Ironically, Bayhem - which seems to have
developed from a kid blowing up his train set -

is actually kind of charming when it's tiny.

Instead of blowing up the world,
how about a small English town?

— Swan!

But in the end, I think the popularity of
this style is hugely important.

Whether we like it or not,
the interesting thing here

is that we are really
visually sophisticated

and totally visually illiterate.

We can process visual information
at a speed that wasn't common before,

but thinking through what an image means...

— This is not necessary!

... not so much.

And as Wernor Herzog put it:

— You do not avert your eyes.
That's what's coming at us.

This might sound a little weird, but
the person who loses the most here

is actually Michael Bay.
He is a slave to his own eye.

He has a need to make
every image dynamic, even

when it runs contrary to
the theme of his movie.

— Some people just don't know a good thing
when it's staring them in the face.

— It really is the simple things in life...

Yeah, the little things,
like a big house,

a dock, a view of the water
and a speed boat.

What happens when two great storytellers
tackle this exact same theme?

— Heck, Norm, you know,
we're doing pretty good.

— I love you, Margie.

— I love you, Norm.

— Two more months.

— Two more months...