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.