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DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 14 POST JANUARY 2016 udiences flock to Michael Bay movies. His credits include the Transformers franchise, as well as Bad Boys, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and The Island, which have collectively taken in more than $5 billion at box offices worldwide. That said, his newest film is quite the departure from the big-budget, VFX-heavy films he's so well known for. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi — set for release by Paramount Pictures on January 15 th — is based on the true story that took place on September 11, 2012, when the United States embas- sy in Libya was overtaken by Islamic radicals, who killed four US nationals, in- cluding ambassador Christopher Stevens. The subject is something Bay is very passionate about. He was one of the first to use real members of the military when he directed The Rock (1996), and today has many friends in the armed services. When Post caught up with the direc- tor right before Christmas, he had just put the finishing touches on 13 Hours — what some are calling "the most accu- rate" war film ever made. Here, Michael Bay talks exclusively to Post about the filmmaking process, his home studio and his continued passion for storytelling. Where is 13 Hours at this point? "I literally just finished the movie a cou- ple of minutes ago. Literally! The post supervisor was asking, 'Are we done? Are we done?'" You have set-ups in both Miami and Santa Monica? "I am here in Miami, where my edit room connects me to my Santa Monica edit room. You should see [it]. It's a pretty phenomenal deal. I don't want to go off subject, but it's like a 'mission control.' It links to ILM. I can do color timing. It links to London, New York, LA, with a special Dolby TV. I've got my Avid, which is run through Santa Monica. I've got Cisco Systems. There are 14 monitors connected to Santa Monica. It's pretty neat. I can work here and get a lot of work done. You are by yourself here. I have a residence in Miami, but there is a big screening room where it's kind of my edit/office room." 13 Hours is not what audiences are necessarily used to seeing from you. Did you approach this film differently, with a specific aim for accuracy? "Stylistically, yes, that's exactly what I set out to. I tried to. The camera work was decidedly not precious. It was not to take itself too seriously. It was very raw. You feel like you are right behind these men, like you are really in the battle. It's like 'the art of sloppy.' I gravitate to beautiful imagery and there is a lot of beautiful imagery, but it's got a sloppiness to it that was put into it. It's kind of funny, the thought that we put into 'sloppier.'" Do you have a preferred acquisition format? "I was a very, very long and steadfast film proponent. I thought I would never switch away from film, but when the labs and Kodak start to shut their facilities down, you go: 'I'd better not be the last one on the ship here. I'd better learn digital.' But I go back and forth regularly. I mix the mediums. You really can, and it can be pretty imperceptible. I do special curves on my digital work, a special for- mula, I guess, that gives it more of a film kind of thing. "For this picture, (DP) Dion Beebe wanted to go digital because it's more 'run & gun.' I needed small units and small cameras, and we had a lot of night work. It would have been too costly to do this [on] film. There's a lot of what I call 'night blue.' It's right when the sun goes down. You have that window of 45 minutes of that cobalt-blue sky. We were down in the Mediterranean, shooting in Malta. You really have to shoot fast. You really have to be organized. You think sunsets are MICHAEL BAY: 13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI A RECOUNTING THE HEROISM THAT TOOK PLACE ONE NIGHT IN 2012 BY MARC LOFTUS Director Michael Bay: 13 Hours was shot in Malta and Morocco over 50 days.