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 of your story. It is essentially a summary of what the story is from beginning to end.
The film treatment is usually a much longer piece (usually up to 50 pages or more) but, for us, a 1-3 page document that tells the whole story of a film idea focusing on the highlights or important scenes. It is usually 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.
In fact, if you write a good treatment, you can copy and paste a lot of what you write by prose into the script itself. This can make the description (action) portion of your film script easier to write.
How To Write a Treatment
The treatment should
read like a short story and be
written in the present tense (like all scripts). It should present the entire story including the ending, and can use some key scenes and dialogue from the screenplay it is based on. Instead of using quotes, handle dialogue like a play script (but without the weird indentations!)
Ex.
TEACHER: Get it?
STUDENT: Yes.
What Should Be in the Treatment?
1. A Working title
2. The writer's name
3. Introduction to key characters
4. Answers to 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 five 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. Your first act could only be a paragraph or two (and no longer than 1 page of text).
Act 2, called The Conflict, often an hour long, is where the conflict begins and expands until it reaches a crisis. This will be your second page, for example. Or your 3-5 paragraphs.
Act 3, called The Resolution, the conflict rises to one more crisis (the last one called the climax) and then is resolved. This will be your last page or your last paragraph.
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. Here are some samples to help you get the idea...
Treatment sample #1
Treatment sample #2
