Spend an hour staring at a blank paper and then discover your ideas are soup and your coffee’s cold. gone there. directors treatment template are strange animals. They are all at once, heartfelt love letters to your vision and commercial pitches. Why do individuals so often sound robotic or bored in them? Let’s flip everything around.
Begin with a hook. Nobody finds starting phrases that drone on to interesting. Imagine yourself selling a music video. Lead from a photograph. As our protagonist runs from phantom ghosts, neon lights bounce off rain-soaked streets. That is paint applied to a canvas. People are suddenly looking at this.
Structure is then king, but let it not control you. The three bones of most treatments are intro, imagery, execution. Why not, though, include a personal anecdote? Share why you find this news troubling. Alternatively reflections on a color palette you dream of after overindulging in pizza. Being honest disarm those who are skeptical. If someone is reading your template, they want guts, not recycled marketing language taken from a 2016 ad campaign.
Slideshows: a gift and a curse at once. Good ones strengthen your pitch. Bad ones do it. Combine your visual references. Use more than just movie stills. Get pictures from unusual run-throughs, grab graphics, even text from an old science book. Sin brazenly. Directors gather shiny objects; they are magpies. Accept the disorder; it is from which beauty arises.
Keep your wording clean and crisp. “We open close to her eyes. “Cut to a city where danger seems to be humming all around.” Let pretension drop right at the door. Erase it if you would shudder to utter it in a bar. Conversational gold is what is Should your characters speak, let them. For taste, mix a few quotes.
There are some templates with a “why me?” section. Most people either skip it or fool their way through. But create a narrative. More especially, what makes you ready? Perhaps your grandmother worked as a circus acrobat, and you naturally see danger. Make them laugh; make them remember you.
Pay attention to the small details. Reference lists, shot lists, mood, sites. Still, sprinkle odd details. Talk about how the humid heat will cause inadvertent beauty by fogging the camera lens over. Producers want to know if you have considered the little tragedies as much as the major events.
Finish with heart. Not Oscar presentations, but a last phrase that hangs. “This story keeps me up at night; I hope it’s also going to give you goosebumps.” That is exactly what I mean. Direct, forceful, sticky.
Basically, not for chains but for sanity, templates exist. If necessary, rip apart the regulations. People remember a filmmaker who seems alive. That’s what stands out. Drink your coffee (hot) and type as though nobody else is evaluating. Someone could say yes just now.