What is a film treatment for a documentary?
Your film treatment is a narrative summary of your documentary films story and characters. It is written in a similar way to a script and has a high level of detail, description and strong visual and emotive energy. The purpose of your film treatment is for the reader to be intrigued, interested and excited about your film.
What should be included in a film treatment?
It should communicate all of the essential scenes, themes, and tone of the project to entice or pitch to buyers and producers into reading, developing, or even purchasing your idea. Film treatments are also referred to as story treatments, script treatments, and movie treatments.
How do you write a film treatment for a thesis?
Usually, you’ll want to summarize your topic in one to two pages. This is when you begin to really make a case for your film and its relevance. Something to keep in mind is that a treatment is creative. Don’t write it like you would an essay in high school. Write in a captivating and entertaining manner.
What is a well-written documentary treatment?
Well-written documentary treatments give these people a reason to get involved. You can add more sections based on who you plan to share the treatment with. For example, include a distribution plan if you’re presenting to investors. Use your documentary treatment as a tool to help manage the production process as the story evolves.
What is included in a documentary treatment?
What is a documentary treatment? Documentary treatments are between two and ten pages and help you summarize the essentials of your project: the budget, the topic, who's involved, where filming takes place, and more. It's meant to give investors, collaborators, and others a window into your perspective.
What are the 5 elements of a documentary?
Elements of a Documentary FilmSubjects. The subject is what your documentary is about. ... Purpose. The purpose is what the filmmaker is trying to say about the subjects of their film. ... Form. The form is the formative process of the film. ... Production method and technique. ... Audience experience.
What are the contents of a documentary?
It is a genre of movie making that uses video & film scenes, photographs and/or sound of real people and real events which when edited together creates a particular story, viewpoint, message or experience.
What are documentary techniques?
Top documentary filmmaking techniques.The voice-over. The use of historical or recorded live video footage with a voice-over narration is a time-tested technique for documentary filmmaking. ... The participant or observer interview. ... The use of poetic expression. ... The montage.
How do you structure a documentary series?
Ken Burns's 7 Tips for Structuring a DocumentaryEmbrace the laws of storytelling. ... Keep rearranging structure until it works. ... Hook your audience immediately. ... Introduce large stories through small details. ... Use chronology as a compass. ... Boil the pot. ... Send them home safe.
What is the aim of a documentary?
“Documentary films tell important, often unknown stories and bring awareness to a wider audience, and are some of the best resources for information, inspiration and entertainment. They have also become core elements and prompters of social issue campaigns.”
What are the 6 types of documentaries?
In 1991, American film critic and theoretician Bill Nichols proposed that there were six different modes of documentary—poetic, expository, reflexive, observational, performative, and participatory—each containing its own specific characteristics.
What are the 3 types of documentaries?
In this VOD we examine 3 different types of documentaries: Observational, Expository and Participatory. You will see examples of films that have used each of the 3 types of genre successfully.
What is documentary example?
A documentary is defined as a film or television program that is educational and tells a true story. An example of a documentary is the An Inconvenient Truth, a movie about global warming.
How do you make a documentary presentation?
Key Steps to Making Documentaries:Tell a story you care about. Start with a subject that excites you. ... Research. Learn everything you can about your documentary subject. ... Make a Plan. Create an outline. ... Create a Shot List. ... Start Shooting. ... Write a Script. ... Begin Editing. ... Check Legal and Copyright Issues.More items...
What is a documentary lesson plan?
The idea is to familiarize students with concepts related to documentaries and to introduce them to a different set of observation tools that they might not typically use when they watch films.
What makes a successful documentary?
A good documentary shows people from a different perspective than they're used to seeing in the media. It opens people's minds and hearts to the struggles of other people in the world. It makes people question the way things are and the way they should be.
Essential terms to know
When you start reading about documentary treatments, you’ll see a lot of similar terms. Namely: documentary proposal, documentary synopsis and documentary logline. While there’s a lot of overlap between these terms, it’s good to know the differences.
Why you need a documentary treatment
Your documentary treatment is a written document that describes your entire documentary project. As a filmmaker, it’ll help you get all your ideas on the page, working through potential themes and story angles. So it’s an essential part of the development process.
How long should a documentary treatment be?
While there are strict rules for how long a spec script should be, documentary treatments can vary quite a lot. Your treatment needs to be short enough to be snappy and engaging, but long enough to cover all the plot points and sell the story.
What to include in a documentary treatment
When formatting your documentary treatment, you should write it in the same way that you would write a present-tense short story. It needs to include the key plot points and give a flavour of the tone you’re shooting for, but it shouldn’t be overly stylised—like a novel, for example.
Tips for writing a documentary treatment
Naturally, every documentary treatment is different. But there are a few golden rules that’ll ensure your treatment’s up to industry standards.
Get feedback
Once you’ve got a first draft of your documentary film treatment together, it’s time to show it to some people. Hold off on sending it to funders or interviewees until you’ve had a friend or collaborator cast an eye over it, though. They’ll probably have useful feedback that’ll make your treatment even better.
Why use a documentary treatment?
Use your documentary treatment as a tool to help manage the production process as the story evolves. With documentary treatments, you can: Without a treatment, it’s harder to plan as your documentary progresses. A documentary outline explains the story you’re telling, but it’s only a starting point.
Why do we need treatment for documentary?
Treatments also help you plan your documentary as it moves from idea to reality.
What is a logline in a documentary?
What’s in a documentary treatment: There are four main parts every treatment must include: The logline is two to three sentences that introduce the documentary. It needs to grab the reader’s attention, like an advertising tag line does. The logline can play up a mystery, be controversial, or share factual information.
What is a documentary outline?
A documentary outline explains the story you’re telling, but it’s only a starting point. A treatment lets you determine which scenes you’ll need to shoot, set goals for each interview, create a compelling story, highlight how the documentary caters to audience interests, and much more.
What is the early stage of a documentary?
Early stage. During the early days of your documentary, you’re focused on development, pre-production, and production tasks. Most of your time is spent discussing and planning the direction of the project. Use transcription to track these conversations.
When filming wraps, but before post-production, do you have to revisit some of the conversations you had with
When filming wraps, but before post-production, you might have to revisit some of the conversations you had with subjects early in the process. For example, if the direction of your documentary changes, you might have more questions for an expert you interviewed.
Do feature films change?
A feature film takes shape based on a script. Actors occasionally improvise scenes and add in extra dialogue, but for the most part, films don’t change once they’re in production. Documentaries, on the other hand, are filmed in real-time and are more likely to evolve over time. For example, the 2007 documentary My Kid Could Paint That started out ...
Writing a Documentary Treatment
1. Documentary & Non-Fiction Writing Dr. Evan Kropp University of Georgia TELE 3110 – Fall 2014 Note: The primary textbook for this course is Writing for Visual Media by Anthony Friedmann
Editor's Notes
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Why is film treatment important?
One of the main functions of a film treatment for a writer is to help identify major problems in their story. Because a movie treatment should be concise yet cover the entirety of a story , it is great at revealing major flaws in a narrative.
What are the elements of a treatment?
What are the key elements of a treatment? 1 Title 2 Name and contact information 3 Logline 4 Key characters 5 Summary of the story 6 Conveys themes and tone
Why do we write treatment?
Reasons to write a film treatment. As a writer, there are various reasons why you might want to write a film treatment. The first reason would be to create a detailed summary of a film or television show that serves as a shareable plan for the screenwriter’s unwritten screenplay. This is great to gauge the interest in an idea before dedicating time ...
Why is it important to write a treatment?
Writing a treatment is a great way to get your ideas and story down on paper and have something physical to present. It is also effective at gauging your interest in the story and whether or not it has the potential to become a full screenplay.
Can you skip a movie treatment?
If you do fall under the category of writers who choose to skip writing a film treatment, be open to the idea of writing one if you hit any roadblocks when writing your full script. Like Dr. Ken Atchity says, movie treatments can be more than just a marketing and pitching device. They can also serve as a diagnostic tool for your story.
Do you have to write a treatment for every movie?
Firstly, don’t think that you have to write a film script treatment for every project. If you find yourself in a situation where someone asks you for a movie treatment, you plan to send out a treatment, or you as the writer need a treatment for the sake of perspective, then by all means write a film treatment.
What is a film treatment?
Film Treatment: Everything You Need To Know. A film treatment is a written document that describes the story that your screenplay will tell. Most film treatments follow a narrative format and include key information about the characters and the plot while guiding the reader through the story arc and the acts of the film.
What are the elements of a film treatment?
Be sure to include these parts in your treatment: Title: The confirmed or working title. Format and Genre: The film type and category. Logline: A one- or two-sentence summary. Plot Summary: A rundown of your story.
What is a scriptment in a movie?
A scriptment is a combination of a film treatment and a screenplay. It uses the main elements of a film treatment to tell the story, and it also includes select screenplay components like scene headings and dialog. Although a scriptment has more detail than a film treatment, it’s much shorter than a screenplay.
What is the difference between a spec script and a film treatment?
A film treatment summarizes the concept and the main elements of the screenplay. A spec script tends to be much longer and more detailed than a film treatment . A spec script is generally in screenplay format rather ...
How to make a movie a movie?
1. Decide on a Title. Begin your film treatment by stating the title of the screenplay. Your title can refer to the setting or the characters or it can be more abstract. Either way, make sure your screenplay has an original title that doesn’t copy the name of an existing movie. 2.
How many pages are in a film treatment?
Some simpler film treatments are just a page long. Others are more complex and span dozens of pages. For a typical movie, film treatments are about five to 10 pages. That’s long enough to convey the right information without overwhelming the reader.
Why do we need to write a treatment for a movie?
Working out a complex idea: Writing a film treatment allows you to structure the story and find issues with the plot. It can also help with world-building and developing compelling characters. Marketing a screenplay: Before deciding to produce or invest in a movie, studio executives often read film treatments.
What Is A Film Treatment?
- Your film treatment is a narrative summary of your documentary films story and characters. It is written in a similar way to a script and has a high level of detail, description and strong visual and emotive energy. The purpose of your film treatment is for the reader to be intrigued, interested and excited about your film. To feel that this is a f...
What Is Included in The Treatment?
- To write your film treatment you will need to visually create, consider and arrange your films potential main scenes, characters, story structure, themes and other key aspects. Remember, you are sharing and describing the story of your film and the integral elements that will be within it. You will want to depict specific scenes and play them out in detail (including all sensory aspect…
When to Write It?
- Writing a strong treatment for your film project is an important step in the initial phase of making it. Once you’ve had your idea and done your research, writing a treatment is the next step to complete. Writing a treatment can be hard at first, but once you start to let the story and your imagination develop and awaken, you will have clairty and conviction in your project like never b…
What Else Should I Know?
- In terms of length, your film treatment can be anywhere from 4 to 10 pages. In terms of content, ensure that what you are presenting is realistic and factual. You want to create and describe an enticing story, but you must also remember that it is your intention to actually make it in real-life! Ensure you write your film treatment with conviction and assertive language. This is not the plac…