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How long a treatment?

September 10, 2003 QandA, Treatments

I am currently writing my first feature length screenplay and have been asked to send in a treatment to a production company. What is the standard form for a treatment (how many pages, etc)? I have trawled the Internet to no avail.

–DOC

There is no standard. Ask the production company what they mean by a treatment, and they’ll probably tell you what they’re looking for in terms of pages. They may even send a sample.

For example, my assistant Dana is currently writing a treatment for a production company. The treatment will end up being 15-20 pages, single spaced. To me, that’s at the long end of a treatment, but that’s what the company wanted.

A treatment of any length generally describes all of the major scenes or sequences in the movie in prose form, but doesn’t get into specific dialogue. From a treatment, a reader should be able to get a good sense of the movie’s plot, but not necessarily its special flavor. A treatment is never a substitute for a screenplay.

Related Posts

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