In this post I am going to talk about film treatments. A film treatment is a piece of work typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline and it may include details of directional style that an outline leaves out. Treatments read like a short story but are told in the present tense and describe events as they happen.
Now I am going to embed the opening of I am Legend so you can compare it to the treatment above. See if you can find any similarities or differences between the treatment and the actual film.
A film treatment should;
- Have a clear title at the start stating the name of the film.
- Includes important dialogue only.
- When a new character is introduced it needs to be in capital letters, so we can clearly see where the character enters the plot.
- For short films a treatment is generally laid out as a short story. However, longer films can be up to 60 pages long.
- Some include little directions which show how the scene will be portrayed or shown in the film.
Below I will embed our own treatment for our own media product. The opening of our thriller "Never Look Back".
Treatment
My next post will be the script (research and product).
