Film Treatment/Script Project

Please fill out the handout to keep track of important dates, times, actors needed, and other notes you will need for your film projects.

Today, please work on completing your treatment. What's a treatment? Look below for help.

What is a Film Treatment?
A pitch is used to convince a film company to produce your film. The pitch is usually a one page summary of the main action, characters, and setting of the film. Essentially it deals with the idea.

The film treatment is usually a 2-5 page document that tells the whole story focusing on the highlights. It is more detailed than a pitch. It can include a scene by scene breakdown of a script. It is used BEFORE writing the real script so the author can plan his/her project.

How To Write a Treatment
The treatment should read like a short story and be written in the present tense. It should present the entire story including the ending, and use some key scenes and dialogue from the screenplay it is based on.

What Should Be in the Treatment?

1. A Working title
2. The writer's name
3. Introduction to key characters
4. Who, what, when, why and where.
5. Act 1 in one to three paragraphs. Set the scene, dramatize the main conflicts.
6. Act 2 in two to six paragraphs. Should dramatize how the conflicts introduced in Act 1 lead to a crisis.
7. Act 3 in one to three paragraphs. Dramatize the final conflict and resolution.

The Three Act Structure
Basic screenplay structure for a full length film usually has three acts.

In The Poetics, Aristotle suggested that all stories should have a beginning, middle, and an end. Well, duh. You know that. But really. You need to remember this advice.

Breaking the plot of a story into three parts, gives us a 3-part or act structure. The word "act" means "the action of carrying something out. For our purposes think act one (beginning), act two (middle), and act three (end) of your short film.

Act 1, called the Set-up, The situation and characters and conflict are introduced. This classically is 30 minutes long. For a short film it can be only a few minutes or 1 minute.

Act 2, called The Conflict, often an hour long, is where the conflict begins and expands until it reaches a crisis.

Act 3, called The Resolution, the conflict rises to one more crisis (the last one called the climax) and then is resolved.

How To Write The Treatment
Find A Title

The first contact a prospective producer has with a script is the title. Pick a title that gives a clear idea of what genre the screenplay is written in. Blood House is probably not a romantic comedy. Americans like one or two word titles: Psycho, Saw, Year One, Rocky, Pan's Labyrinth, Animal House, Tangled, Avatar, etc.

After a title, start a logline: a brief one sentence summary of the movie. For example: And Then Came Love is a character-driven romantic comedy about a high-powered Manhattan single mom who opens Pandora's box when she seeks out the anonymous sperm donor father of her young son.

Your treatment should include a synopsis.
Treatment sample #1
Treatment sample #2

Done with your treatment? Carry on to begin your film script. What's a film script and how do I format it? Look here for help.

Film scripts are a strange format. Please refer to the script format here.

Here are some sample scripts. Choose a few and read a little of each script. Pay close attention to where the dialogue goes on the page, how the shots are indicated, and other curious formatting.

After you are familiar how to format a script, please take your treatment that you selected and begin writing a script.

If one of your teammates is sitting around idle (not doing anything), have him/her work on titles or end credits. No time like the present.

HOMEWORK: Work on your film projects. If you don't have an idea yet, consider the handout I gave you. Complete your treatment (if you haven't done so in class) for next class. This weekend, feel free to begin shooting your film if you can.