Writing a Treatment

As we mentioned in our first Production Log entry, Tom and I recently met to plan out our short film scene by scene. The plans I drew up from our conversation are shown below. They are organised scene by scene, and are intentionally rough; there is no division of different aspects, such as sound, narrative, dialogue and shots, there are merely bullet points for everything of importance. This is all that is needed for the time being, but the animatic we intend to make will reveal how all of these things function both individually, on different levels, and as one.

This morning, I began transforming these notes into a film treatment. As the Wikipedia article states, a treatment is the step between basic ideas for scene and the first screenplay, and seeing as I am going to be writing the script, I think it will be a useful step to take. The treatment will also be useful for Tom, because he is going to be taking photographs of the locations we want to use, and also researching the editing techniques we can use to achieve what we desire. For both of these processes, the treatment will serve as a useful reference.

I have literally just completed and uploaded the treatment, and here it is:

Treatment for a Short Film

It doesn't contain information on absolutely everything that will be included in the actual film, such a shot types and post-production effects, but it does describe all of the live action that we want to show on screen, and it does give a detailed description of the film's narrative. Although treatments are consistently written in the present tense, I felt that it was necessary to break this rule by writing in past tense for Scene 2, as this scene is set before all of the other events of the film, and I needed to indicate this in the treatment.