ksk79:
@Over 9000 Thank you for your instructional posts.
You're most welcome!
Actually, since I'm being helpful, I'll go one step further.
Transformers (I hated it, by the way, but that's neither here nor there), is about... what?
Michael Bay wasn't interested in making a big budget advertisement for toys, so the writers said to him, "It's fundamentally about a boy and his car" (paraphrased).
I remember reading an interview with the writers and they said that, when they started, they didn't have any clue what kind of story to come up with... but knew that at some point, they wanted the bad robot car to chase the yellow hero car and then they both turned into giant robots and started fighting.
THIS IS THE START.
No, it's absolutely not the film's beginning, but it's the initial thought around which all others are formed. The writers had to decide how they'd go from the title to that moment, what happens afterwards and, ultimately, how it all ends.
A lot of writers would advise not starting your outline at the beginning, but first of all, creating the ending! This is because having a satisfying ending is a very, very difficult thing to come up with.
One MUST also remember that stories need a human element. People watching 3 hours of pointless shoot-outs get bored, but if you know it's because the spy is trying to keep his family safe, it's engaging.
So Transformers was pitched to Michael Bay by its human element: a teenager buys a car, loves his car, finds freedom, meets a girl... oh, wait, hang on, his car is a giant robot in disguise from another planet? And that planet's at war? WTF? And the evil enemy robots are now on Earth, trying to kill both him and his car/robot buddy before they can find the good guys' leader who crashed somewhere in America?
These are the stakes. They have to build up and keep building. The teenager gets a car - a lot of people can relate to that! He meets a girl he could so easily fall in love with; again: relatable. Now we throw in stuff that no-one would care about were it not already for those human elements: war on another world, giant robots - let's be honest: had it not all involved the kid's car, who would care?
I hope this helps.