What Is A Film Treatment

Hi friends, did you ever heard about this term called film treatment ever..? now a days every director claims that my movie doesn't have anything new when you look at the script but i have given a different treatment to it. You might have come across this very particular word treatment lot many times, but do you know the meaning of this term..? And do you know the purpose of this term..? well i will explain in detail about the stages you have to go through while you script..but before that i have explained you what is a logline and how to write a log line effectively in my earlier posts..if you have not gone through them please have a look at them and come back to read this post.Okay now lets focus on the subject.

 Treatment

A film treatment is nothing but complete exploration of your story with details but not a completely formatted script. A film treatment can be in any form like synopsis,beat outline or a story outline where each and every style have different approach and need.  

Purpose Of A Film Treatment

 The main purpose of a film treatment is nothing but:

1. Creating a story outline at a glance.
2. Showing your intent about your script as a writer.
3. Convey your movie tone throughout from the beginning to the end.
4. Important dialogues and key points in your script
5. Conveying your theme of your script
6. Writing some descriptions about your characters.
7. Much needed thing is when you don't have a final draft script ready with you,then you can able to present your treatment for having a quick glance about your script. At this stage itself most of the experts will decide weather this synopsis can be made into a script or not.

Types Of Film Treatments

There are two types of film treatments available namely:

• Original draft treatment
•  Presentation treatment 

Original Draft Treatment

This is the very first version of your script where a detailed explanation of everything like your characterizations,locations,tone and theme of your film are explained without any limitations. And it can vary from 40-80 pages on average.And the more elaborated forms of Original draft treatment are beat outline and scriptment.

Beat Outline

Okay guys don't get panic after listening to this very word called treatment and elements of it. As i told you in my earlier post how to start a script from a blank page i have told you to write all your ideas which you get into your mind after after that filter them. But this is not a necessary step for everyone..if you are confident about what you are writing and comfortable with your story line you can directly write scene heading and you can start writing briefly about the actions and dialogues etc, but this is done just for the purpose of creating the skeleton of your story. Not many details are mentioned..just important scene headings,dialogues are mentioned. This is only done for the purpose of having a quick look at the story, for finding important twists and turns and to follow the flow of the story. This is called beat outline. Many writers say that this is the very complicated part of a script since it need correct planning and mapping of your story in mind to bring a skeleton look to your story.

Synopsis

Many of you might be aware of what what a synopsis is..synopsis is nothing but summarizing your complete story in a paragraph are long paragraphs without any heading or dialogues...Dialogues are not mentioned specially but they are part and parcel of the flow of the story. There is nothing much to tell about this very word synopsis many of you might have experienced when you first start your script. This synopsis just looks like a short story without much focus on the plot.

Inter Mixing Synopsis with beat Outline

Sometime according to our comfort level these synopsis is inter linked with beat outline and there's nothing wrong in that. You can number the scenes for your convenience, scene heeding with a detailed action and dialogues are part and parcel of this kind of  story structuring. Many writers will stress on establishing the tone and genre of the film while writing this kind of treatment.

 Presentation Treatment

This is more edited version of the original draft where you will eliminate long descriptions and details about the characters and dialogues are limited so that it may be presented in-case if you doesn't have a fully formatted script with you. This may only last for 7-8 pages maximum and it should have the things like tone of your film,theme characters and main plot twists and turns etc.,
So this is all about film treatment and various stages of scripting. And by the way there are different ways of writing a film treatment(Presentation Treatment) i will explain you with examples in my next post but please let me know your views about this post.

Downloadable Links For Types Of Treatments For Various Films

Godzilla Movie Outline Treatment: Download
Spider man Scriptment : Download 
Terminator Treatment:  Download