Writing a Treatment

For our treatment for the pairs project, James and I will be using the template provided on Blackboard.

I have also been researching what other film makers think about when writing treatments.

Here is a link to an article by Marilyn Horowitz

Taken from the website:  

About Marilyn Horowitz

Marilyn Horowitz, the president of ArtMar Productions and creator of The Horowitz System®, a revolutionary visual writing system, is an award-winning New York University professor, a producer, a screenwriter, and a New York-based writing coach who works with bestselling novelists, produced screenwriters, and award-winning filmmakers. She is the author of five books, including How to Write a Screenplay in 10 Weeks and The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting.


I find this paragraph from the article particularly interesting and useful.  It explains what is expected from a treatment:

 There is controversy about the length a treatment can be. Some say up to 60 pages, but the point of the treatment is to communicate your story as quickly as possible, so brevity without sacrificing juice is the key here.

There seem to be three opinions about what a treatment is.

One opinion is that it is a one page written pitch. The second, which I agree with, is that it is a two to five page document that tells the whole story focusing on the highlights. The third opinion is that a treatment is a lengthy document that is a scene by scene breakdown of a script. I consider this an outline, and a waste of time as a marketing document, though it can be an important step in the creation process In my experience, the two to five page version works best, and an example is included in this article.