What is a Film Treatment?

A treatment is a full exploration of a story:

• characters

• plot

• setting

• theme

What does it accomplish?

• Attempts to convey filmgoing experience

• Clarifies writer's intent

• Encompasses the entire story, beginning to end.

Role in industry

• Treatment form does not have one standard format

• Traditionally written in several ways

• Sectional

• Divide treatment into sections such as concept, characterization, theme, tone and story

• Prose format

• Told as a story without embellishment

• Reading experience tracks emotions and feelings of film

• Outline

• Contains major beats and scenes

• Similar to chapter headings in a novel

• Treatment considered an informal document

• Not required

• Utilized occasionally

Hamilton Treatment Challenge

• Original Idea

• not a remake

• not based on license

• genre entertainment

• aims for an 18-34 year old male audience

• sci-fi

• fantasy

• horror

• transportive action-adventure

• budget not a consideration

• 3 to 5 pages in length

• Written in Sectional, Prose or Outline format

• Tell the entire story, from beginning to end