The gentle art of the Treatment and Synopsis
One of the core skills of any screenwriter director or producer is the ability to write an effective Synopsis, Treatment and Outline for a movie project. For the production itself these documents serve no purpose but for securing funding, investment, interest and suppourt for a project they are essential as pure pragmatism.
They are remarkably difficult documents to produce with a specific need for maximum punch in the most efficient manner. There is also much confusion over how a Treatment or Synopsis should actually be laid out to achieve this efficiency.
Karel Seger is an experienced story anaylist and script consultant who runs
OzzywoodFilms. Attached to the Ozzywood Films site is an associated blog called
The Story Department which examines a broad range concepts around story and narrative development that should be a regular port of call for any filmmaker.
To aid the process of writing Treatments and Synopsis Karel also supplies from his Ozzywood site a f
antastic document from the Australian film Commision (pdf) on how to better assemble and distill a treatment from your screenplay. Its a great resource that will be particularly useful for students of filmaking and media production.
Posted at 12:00AM Dec 02, 2007
by Mike Jones in general |
