Michael Bay disputes Variety's 3D story

Michael Bay complained on his blog this week about my Tuesday story on the 3D conversion work in “Transformers 3.” He also called me this morning to voice his displeasure directly.

I stand by my story.

On his blog, Bay says I got the number wrong for what percent of the movie was converted. Over the phone, he told me conversion companies try to claim a shot as “converted” (and put it on their reel) when they only did the background and the CG robots in the foreground were rendered in stereo. His point being, I guess, that the conversion companies must be feeding me exaggerated numbers.

The percentage of conversion in the movie cited in the article, 47-52%, came from his team and was confirmed by both Bay and his stereographer, Corey Turner, in recorded, on-the-record interviews. Neither Bay, Turner nor Paramount have asked for a correction.

He complains on his blog that the story was skewed, emphasizing that he and Paramount lied about the movie being shot in 3D.

On the other hand, I got a complaint from a 3D pro that I hadn’t said enough about that:  “In the weeks leading up to the release of ‘Transformers,’ Bay made a point of selling his film by saying it was ‘shot in 3D’ and yet he knew that significantly less than half of his film was ‘shot’ footage. Why was he saying it was ‘shot in 3D?’ To imply that it was not ‘converted’ and was thus superior to conversion. This was a lie, pure and simple.”

So I guess you can’t please everybody.

I also got an email from a 3D pro who worked with Bay on “TF3”: “I have been waiting for some time for somebody to write this article — before TF3 came out, there was a lot of controversy in stereo circles about the fact that TF3 was only half-shot in native stereo; but since the movie has come out I believe that yours is the first article to address the actual results. ... Thanks for the good article, and thanks for taking the time to do it right.”

-- David Cohen