Treatments

**Generic Skinhead** · February 14th, 2005, 03:44 PM

Hey guys,

At the moment I'm trying to get as much money out of my college as possible for my next project. Theres three of us competing for 3 grand. We will all get some, but the most deserving project gets the most.

I have a *good* script, but I need to write a treatment for tomorrow. Any guidance or examples? I find them really annoying.

Cheers

**untamed_aggression** · February 14th, 2005, 08:55 PM

I thought a treatment was 4 pages, maximum? At least that's what Warner Bros told Kevin Smith after he turned in an 85 page treatment for Superman Lives...

I do treatments by writing each scene in a brief sentence, then fleshing it out as necessary. Few of mine end up more than a page, although I guess that doesn't matter for a short film.

**jb_617** · February 15th, 2005, 04:13 AM

Man, I hate treatments too. The best way I've found of doing it is just to sit down and write line by line each action that's going to happen and the reason why. I guess if it's a short film that you're pitching then it shouldn't run to more than about a side or a side-and-a-half of A4.

Sorry if that's a bit vague or not very helpful, but god I hate treatments. I try to avoid them at all costs.

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At all costs

**miker** · February 15th, 2005, 04:54 AM

uh, shouldn't the treatment come before the script?

just watch The Player and be inspired.

25 words or less - oh, that's pitching though

synopsis - 1 page

treatment - 25 pages or up, which can include dialogue and business from the (*cough* to be written) script

premise - hmmm, maybe a paragraph or two.

personally i'm getting bogged down at the presspack stage. writing for the hounds, gotta tread carefully ...

here's cameron's treatment for aliens, large swathes of dialogue have yet to be filled in.

are you sure you've not been asked for a premise and a synopsis?

**jb_617** · February 15th, 2005, 09:19 AM

To be honest, there's so many conflicting ideas and ways of doing a treatment that I guess that there will never be agreement. Some companies/individuals want a detailed 25 pager and some just want 4. Some people will put in dialogue and some will not.

To be honest, and I stress this is just my opinion, I think treatments are a waste of time. If you are a professional writer who will only work on paid jobs (i.e. not spec scripts) then I guess they are useful for going to get development money. I guess this is what GenericSkinhead is sort of doing with his Uni.

But if you've already written the script then why bother? Treatments are really only useful if you work in the studio system and have to deal with people who will not, or don't have time to read your script. They can also be good if you are the kind of writer who outlines everything first.

But for me and I guess a large portion of the indi scene, waste of time.

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Damn studio hacks wanna turn down my sript?

[ February 15, 2005 05:20 AM: Message edited by: jb. ]

**assyrix** · February 16th, 2005, 09:06 AM

I have submitted various proposals to TV stations and they all insist on treatments. For a comedy series with six episodes a treatment would contain a paragraph for each expisode (100 words max) and no more than one page in total.

Treatments are usually a good idea - they force you to think your story through.

[ February 16, 2005 05:07 AM: Message edited by: assyrix ]

**Generic Skinhead** · February 16th, 2005, 12:11 PM

Thanks to everyone who replied. I melded together a few how to write a thesis things and came up with something.

At the start of the day, we all had 500 quid next to our projects. I'm the only one who left with more than that, so whoever says treatments are useless...LIARS!

Although in fairness, i reckon they only skimmed it.

1000 euro. Half of what I was expecting at the start of the year, but hey.

Time for a generic beer of some kind. [img]graemlins/beer.gif[/img]

[ February 16, 2005 08:11 AM: Message edited by: Generic Skinhead ]