notes v.01

Treatment evolves into a breakdown, or if you must a shot list but I avoid the term shot list because to focused on development of a list of shots might suggest one can skip over the story design and treatments are an essential part of the process.

working in Celtx

The screenplay is usually the initial stage of a film’s development and it becomes a filmmaker’s choice to build a document which is rigidly structured or loosely framed. I teach to structure as it allows control during pre-production. The planning process consumes a small portion of the budget however if given sufficient time there will be payoffs at the production stage.

The non-fiction filmmaker quickly finds scripting tedious as a tool in designing a production they see as primarily b-roll. Treatments allow you a level of production control equal to Singleton’s production breakdown model. As with a script breakdown you start with coding which is done by marking up the treatment.

location scout plot

In writing the treatment there should be well defined scenes that all selection of locations. Locations need to be scouted their floor plan sketch on your location survey so that you have shot angles, action lines and camera placement plotted. This serves as the basis for your breakdown and the starting point for organizing ‘coverage’ for you production.

Now for Schommer’s Three Rules of coverage. Rule #1 every set-up needs a second angle. Rule #2 every angle gets a minimum of four shots … Establish, Med. Shot, Close-up, Close-up. Eight shots over two angles of coverage gives your editor lots of places to cut on action, any action. Oh, rule #3 don’t break the rules.

treatment marked up – scene 13

Line your treatment to break it into scenes or locations, make use of the survey work or make this drive that process either way you plot out the location. It might help to break down some of the very basic shot angles at this time as well. My treatments tend too have the scene broken out as a paragraph so the line and scenes are very simple to accomplish. Initial sketch up in pencil and then do some location survey work to make sure you have organized it properly then come back and fine tune your camera setups.

A set-up? While location will effect how you plan basically a set up is just the camera placement, which will establishing the axis on which you’ll shoot. Filmmakers don’t think of a camera as covering 360 degrees from an original point but rather an “angle of view” defined by lens, iris and subject. A set-up on the survey is dependent on action or is defined by the action characters take across or along the axis. Pulling a single shot from a single set up after all the work of finding and lighting a good angle is a monumental waste of time. If it helps think about shooting master scene and second angle is insert material.

Pull scene numbers from the treatment and then label camera placements on your location plot. Next create a list of the shots needed and rules dictate along the axis of that setup.

Each shot is tagged by scene and shot number which can be tracked throughout the production. This “shot list” ties the treatment to the production plan and offers a level of confidence that if all these shots are captured you’ll have coverage. Then move to the second angle, create a new set of numbers and repeat. If your setting lights add that plot information to your survey as well.

location plot w/setup for scene 13

Non-fiction film doesn’t always lend itself to running a scene multiple takes, so you need to look for repititative action in your subject. Find setups that will cover the repeated action while allowing you two angles. It’s matter of covering the action in detail from one setup and then doing getting second angle on the points of repitition from the second angle. This requires detailed knowledge of the process being filmed. A third angle will offer another edit point for continuity issues and often is an establishing shot bringing subject into or out of a scene without close-ups. So yes you can break the rules with a stand-alone angle if this gives better coverage for complext subject action.

… next is a discussion on scheduling using this breakdown as a list of shots in viewing order and the locations survey / plots it’s a simple enough process to design how you’ll approach this shoot. js

I teach video production and every class outline contains a list of outcomes sitting there like a menu stating that on completion of this class you will know X.  Outcomes, in this context are an academic concept, an assumption made that a graduate will be expected to demonstrate competency in most if not all of the outcomes provided the instructional design was sound.   I’m not going to belabor the point, it’s academic and I don’t want this discussion to devolved into a debate on the value of film school. It is only a starting point in a series on the value of  per-production aimed at people not always focused on outcomes.

With nearly every class there are numerous production exercises involving working with different camera packages,  acquiring. transferring and then manipulating media.  In my classes the process is more important than the product, particularly at this stage in the course work. While there are video projects to complete I’m not as interested in the video as I am in the paperwork developed to manage the production. This often comes as a surprise to students and they don’t completely understand the reasoning behind doing something they have discounted as busy work and unrelated to the job of movie making.  This is precisely why I’m so interested in it.

I’ll over simplify this for the sake of getting started on this essay by saying,  if you can’t put it down on paper you’ll never get a chance to capture it on video. Ninety percent of professional work is getting produced with someone else’s money and to get at the money you’ll have to convince someone your project is not just viable but a fit for the client. It’s still too expensive to use video as the main “pitching” tool so we rely on text.

Over the course of a couple of posts I’ll layout stages to the production planning process. Steps that need to be completed for a project to be successful. OK there are exceptions to the rule and rules are made to be broken, but there needs to be foundation and understanding of the rules before exceptions are made or rules are broken so think of this as that foundation.

Treatments are where we start.  For this discussion treatment are the written image of an idea … “what is going to be seen and the essence of what is going to be heard”. The greatest failing in treatments is when the writer sets out to tell what they are going to do rather than what is going to be seen.  When it works a treatment presents all it’s readers with the same basic image of the project … the story is laid out as visual elements.

Scope of the work and complexity of the project are going to show through in a treatment plus the writer/producer can layout the story in images and begin the process of designing the elements that will need to be captured.  This is not a script there are no individual shots laid on the page, and you should stay away from techno-jargon.  Rather tell the story in broad strokes, in master shots with only the detail that is necessary to bring that picture to life. It might help to start with an outline that sets down the beats of the story and then describe the images that illustrate these beats.