PLANNING: FILM TREATMENT

A treatment will normally contain:

• A Title that is dynamic and engaging 

• The Top line: An elegant sentence that sums up the action

• The Big Question: What is the cliffhanger? What is the enigma that it will unfold?

• The Synopsis: One or two paragraphs outlining the plot

• Characters: Brief introduction: Adam, 35, a dreamy design engineer... Lucy, 25, a disenchanted doctor... Mart, 18, an idealistic student

Next:

• After writing the treatment, you create a storyboard 

• And then a shortlist

Initial ideas:
Our production team brainstormed ideas about the plot, the soundtrack, our favourite films/ scenes from films, ideas for locations and characters.
- Shortage of food or water, people only have limited amounts of what they can use 
- Suspicious neighbour - looking through window (thriller)
- Pill that makes you super smart 
- Scientist/engineer discovers something that business want, they threaten him 
- Genetic engineering (changing/ mixing DNA) - dangerous 

- Time travel 
- Location ideas: woods, pond, school
- People: Dog, parents, tortoise 

The Plot:

An energy crisis has caused the world to fall into darkness, however a young man finds the key to helping to provide clean, green energy to the world, but finds himself betrayed by his rich friend who takes the glory for himself.

Structure:

Scene 1: EXT – Night, Opens with a man walking, we follow at ground level, his face concealed. However, we do see he is nervous and agitated about something. He turns, we feel the tension, suddenly from behind a man lunges at him, again we cannot see their faces, but we see the struggle. The grunts continue for a while until a gunshot is heard before cutting to black

Scene 2: INT – Night, A match is lit and placed upon a candle; we pan over different newspapers whilst a V.O states the worlds current situation before it is cut off. We begin to focus on the man’s work, seeing he is struggling, shot of a bin full of his equations. Suddenly he jumps up, he has found the solution after a long time, we see on his face realisation, he needs money. Close up to calculations, knock cuts to scene 3.

Scene 3: INT – Night, We cut to a bird’s eye view of the man’s calculations, V.O of the man shouting and saying ‘he took everything from me’, ‘this was my work’ and so on. We zoom slowly into the sheets of equations, whilst lights from either side off screen flash slowly different colours, red, green, blue, over and over. Sometimes money would be thrown over across the sheets, concealing the equations. We then see the fist of the scientist reach down onto the table. Cut to black.

Scene 4: EXT – Night, We cut back to the first scene, this time there is no struggle, we then slowly see a man flop to the floor, before the titles are brought up. Who is the dead man? Did the scientist get revenge? Or was it the man who simply got rid of opposition?

Title of film is shown

Locations:

1st scene: dark outside tunnel at school

2nd scene: science lab at school or office room

3rd scene: living room in house

4th scene: dark room with table

5th scene: dark outside tunnel at school

 Props:

- Candles

- Newspaper 

- Calculations of the solution 

- Coloured lights