‘Transformers One’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Hi, my name is Josh Cooley. I am the director of “Transformers One.” “We need to hurry.” “I still think we have better odds fighting than outrunning them.” “Wait, we have cogs! We can transform now.” “That’s right.” This scene is about halfway in the middle of the movie when we see that our four characters who weren’t able to transform before get these transformation cogs. And so this is our first chance to be able to transform in their entire life. I’m thinking about the actual toy of a Transformer. I had all the toys growing up. Most of the time, they were just kind of sitting around on the ground half transformed because they were actually pretty hard to do. And so I thought it would be fun to actually see our characters struggle kind of with the same way that I struggled with the toy, which is not fully knowing how to do it. It’s actually a moment to have some relief, some comedy relief in here. But there’s still danger. They’re still being chased. They’re still being attacked. So one of the things that was important was to not forget that. And so you can hear the sound and the blasters from the weapons that are being shot at them. Everything is telling us that this is a very serious scene. But what’s happening to them is actually funny. And I think part of the comedy that plays well is because we’re not poking fun at it or trying to wink at the audience. This is a real danger that they’re in.