Film treatment

A film treatment (or simply treatment) is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline (or one-page ), and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. Treatments read like a short story, but are told in the present tense and describe events as they happen.

The original draft treatment is created during the writing process, and is generally long and detailed. It consists of full-scene outlines put together. Usually there are between thirty and eighty standard letter size or A4 pages (Courier New 12 point), with an average of about forty pages. For example, The Terminator is forty-eight pages.

More elaborate forms of the draft treatment are the step outline and the scriptment.

The presentation treatment is created as presentation material. Generally the scene card descriptions are written out in order, and only have the essential and important story events that make up the scenes. It is the full story in its simplest form, moving from the concept, to the theme, to the character, to the detailed synopsis of about four to eight pages of master scenes.

Presentation treatments are used to show how the production notes have been incorporated into the screenplay for the director and production executives to look over, or to leave behind as a presentation note after a sales pitch.

The presentation treatment is the appropriate treatment to submit if a script submission requires one. They are usually three to thirty pages in length, with an average of seven to twelve pages.

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