old forums message detail

This all depends on whether you, the director, wishes to either:

1) Write a treatment for your own personal use, as a means to hopefully expand it later on into a proper screenplay...

or,

2) If you are a writing a treatment as a selling document to a prospective producer, as a soundbyte to showcase the script you eventually want to get funding for to direct.

For 1), if you are a director writing your own treatment for your own benefit, it is basically the action or description of the movie written without the dialogue. It's written in the present tense, and simply describes:

* What happens
* And what happens next in the plot

Because you are the only one reading it, it can be as long as you like -- whatever helps you to flesh out your idea. Most treatments are on average 40-50 pages long. James Cameron, however, writes monstrous, detailed 100 page long treatments, which he nicknames "Scriptments." The length depends on the individual.

2) If you, the director, wishes to pitch a treatment to a producer, the same rules as above apply, but because someone other than yourself is going to be evaluating it, the presentation of your treatment is of utmost importance. Here, several rules apply:

A) The studio may request a page limit on your treatment, given that they may recieve hundreds of other treatments a day.

B) Obviously, because you are trying to sell them your idea, you will need to be much more sharper and vigilant when writing your treatment, as far as spelling, grammar and structuring goes, than if you are just writing it for yourself. You must hook them visually into your story, and force them to imagine your written words as visual images and sound leaping off the page. You must do this by removing all cliches of writing that are common to the novel format. Remember, you are not telling a story with the treatment, but *showing* a story that you hope will become a moving, visible picture.

Here's a good example of a passage from a director's treatment:

Hiding in the bushes, Tom sends a false message in code to Emily that Roy and Freddo are captured and Franklin is dead.

Here's a bad example:

While hiding in the bushes, Tom decides to send a false message in code to Emily that Roy and Freddo are captured and Franklin is dead. Tom thinks that Emily will fall for it.

Because the latter example is written in a different tense, Tom appears to dillydally when going about his business -- we are not sure what he is really doing, because we are not being shown or given the facts directly, like the first version. There's also too much telling of the subplot -- we don't need to know that Tom plans to set up a trap for Emily. He obviously is, since we're aware he's sending a false message.

In response to:
Did you ever find what a director script treatment is like? I am running into the same problem as you and i want to know how i to write one. Can you send me an example?

In response to:
What is a director script treatment and How should I write it?