The Treatment & More on Storyboards

The Treatment

Now it is time to get your story and characters together with an idea for a setting, and write a treatment. This is a detailed outline of your idea. It is not the same as a treatment for a factual programme. It tells the story, showing clearly the structure of events. It will definitely show the beginning, middle and end of the story. This is the basic three-act structure. It is amazing how many people don’t follow it, then wonder why nobody takes up their screen play.

Some movie producers think a story treatment should be just one sentence. It is not a bad exercise to see if you can put your story idea into one exciting sentence. Try it first with a film you know. The story of Star Wars in one sentence –not easy.  Now try to write down the story of your film in a just a few lines. Does the premiss of that story excite you? If not, try another angle.

Treatment checklist

Your treatment should answer these fundamental questions:

1. Have you created a distinctive main protagonist who is a rounded, believable character?
2. What is his or her goal?
3. Who is stopping him or her achieving this goal?
4. What is at stake and why?
5. Where does the film take place?

Above all the treatment must show the structure of the film – what happens when and why. A well-structured film is often a good film.

Storyboard

The important part of a storyboard is the story. It is a way of telling your video story visually, rather like a cartoon strip. Essentially a storyboard tells the story of your video in small hand-drawn pictures. The great thing is you do not have to be a good artist. Pin men drawings are fine.

The importance of a storyboard is to see how all the shots fit together to tell your story before you go out and shoot the video. This is like having a visual script.

A storyboard should show the:

• Position of people in each shot – who is on the left and who on the right of the frame. The girl is on the left and the boy on the right as you are looking through the viewfinder of the camera, and as you see on the screen. This is known as camera left and camera right.

• Shot size. This is the size of the person in the shot. It tells you how much of the person is showing in a shot. This picture shows the head and shoulders and is called a Medium Close Up. It is the most popular shot size on television.

There are traditional shot sizes such as Close Up, Medium Close Up, Medium Shot and Long shot – see attached chart.

Draw on the storyboard any important background buildings or locations which may be essential for the scene. This image of palm trees and a swimming pool are essential for this scene from a travel documentary.

It could be a haunted church cemetery if it is a spooky horror story and you need a suitable background.

Make sure you include in the storyboard drawings of important things that happen. If a character is sitting at a desk and an assassin comes into the room threatening to kill him unless he hands over important documents then you need a close up of the desk drawer open with a gun inside.

You will need this shot in the film. The next frame of the storyboard after the close up of the gun might be the assassin collapsing mortally wounded onto the floor. This keeps up the pace of the story.

So the storyboard is showing the main shots in the video and how they go together to make up the story.