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Writing A Documentary Treatment
Writing A Documentary Treatment
Writing a
Documentary Treatment
SHANNON WALSH
SCHOOL OF CREAT IVE MEDIA, CIT Y UNIVERSIT Y HONG KONG
What is a Treatment?
• A written expression of your visuals;
• It conveys the ‘mood’ of projects;
• Always go for STORY over CHARACTER when writing treatment
• Use free-flow writing to write down all the things you like about your
subject before writing
• Should read like a short story, as though we can ‘see’ what is
happening while reading
• Doesn’t have to be exactly what you’ll end up with, but it is an exercise
in IMAGINING what you will get, based on your research and
knowledge
• Only write a treatment once you have done most of your research.
Why write a treatment?
• Describe a project so that people involved
share an understanding of interpretation and
approach.
• Spell Check! And get help with English if you need to!
Example I: “Eternity”
Ruth Ridley is the strong and feisty daughter of the preacher
John Ridley. She sits in the studio before a beautiful, stylised
landscape of a sea at sunset. She explains the influence her
father had on Arthur Stace, who was later to become known
as ‘Mr Eternity ’.A photograph of John Ridley appears. It was
Ridley ’s sermon,’ Echoes of Eternity ’,which supposedly
converted Stace to Christianity in the 1930s. It was after this
sermon that Stace took a piece of chalk from his pocket and
wrote, in beautiful copperplate script on the sidewalks of
Sydney, the one word that would influence many for the next
four decades: ‘Eternity ’.
In heat as high as 40C, she wraps her face and arms carefully to avoid the harshness of the sand and
sun. Yang works side by side with her husband here in this barren terrain, trying to hold back the
creeping desert.
Growing desertification in China is largely agreed to be a man-made crisis provoked by human pressures
on the ecosystem. The creeping desert is engulfing cities, and spawning deadly dust storms that are
reaching further and further east.
Here at the Baijitan National Reserve in Ningxia they have devised a simple but innovative technology to
attempt to hold back the desert. Workers dig square rivets into the sand with straw nets, encouraging
precious rain water to accumulate on the land where they then plant matured seedlings.
As Yang looks out across the land, as far as the eye can see stretches of dunes are marked by these
flimsy looking straw nets. Straw holding back dust. Such basic elements. An image of the futility,
perseverance and optimism of our battle with the non-human world.
Yang is a hard working woman in her early 40s. Her face is red from the everyday exposure to the sun,
and her teeth marked by the familiar stains of heavy tea drinking, but her light brown eyes shimmer with
a fierce inner beauty and determination. She is part of the ethnic Hui minority, and a devout muslim. Like
all of the Hui women on the dunes, she works with a colourful scarf wrapped around her head, swirls of
purple and pink set off against the white sands.
A government slogan emblazoned on a red flag whips in the wind above her head: “Stop Desert, Build
Economic Prosperity”. This slogan is as true as day for Yang.
Tag Line:
Summary:
“The story of the monumental life and tragic death of
legendary Brazilian motor-racing Champion, Ayrton
Senna. Spanning the decade from his arrival in Formula
One in the mid 80's, the film follows Senna's struggles
both on track against his nemesis, French World
Champion Alain Prost, and off it, against the politics
which infest the sport. Sublime, spiritual yet, on occasion,
ruthless - Senna conquers and transcends Formula One
to become a global superstar. Privately, he is humble,
almost shy, and fiercely patriotic, donating millions to his
native Brasil and contemplating a life beyond motor-
racing. Yet he is struck down in his prime on the blackest
weekend in the history of the sport, watched live on
television by 300 million people. Years on he is revered
in Formula One as the greatest motor racing driver of all
time - and in Brasil as a Saint.”
Summary: