Hello, my fellow artists! I am recapping my weekly experiences of the writing course I’m taking at the Sundance Collab. These recaps are a cool insight into the creative process and personal journey of building something from scratch. In this case, a feature film treatment.
Recap: Week 8. The moment has finally arrived! The whole goal of this course was to take an idea for a feature film and create a fully-realized treatment for it. This was the week to start transitioning into this final phase! Wow! I expanded from an idea to an action summary to a beat sheet to an expanded beat sheet to an outline, and now, to the beginning of a treatment. This has been an amazing and crazy ride. Seeing my story expand over the last 8 weeks is a wonderful feeling and accomplishment. I’m so proud of myself. One more week to go! Keep reading below 🙂
A treatment is where you now infuse emotions into your scenes. If you remember from last week, an outline is an expanded breakdown of what is happening from one scene to the next. Now, in terms of a treatment, “what do the characters feel when these things are happening? The treatment is an emotional short story. From scene to scene, what is this scene about? And then fill it out emotionally.” Our goal in this course is to create a treatment that is 10 to 15 pages long. And the purpose and power of a treatment is that it is the source material for our eventual screenplay. The treatment will guide us in the actual writing of our feature film screenplay. It takes the guesswork out of our writing. Keep reading below 🙂
Armed with my course advisor’s notes from last week and the answers I came up with, I meticulously went through as many scenes as possible and asked myself, “what is this scene about?” and “what is this character(s) feeling?” “When and how will Luke’s assets and liabilities that I created in week two show up in these scenes?” “Is the theme of my movie, which I discovered in week one, present within this treatment? When does the theme come up and how often does it come up?” “Is Luke’s emotional drive clearly coming through in my scenes?” Some scenes were easier than others in terms of discovering what they were about and my ability to fill them out emotionally. However, I know that if I keep going back to those other scenes and ask the next question, the answers will present themselves. Or, I’ll realize that those scenes don’t work. In which case, I can get rid of them (and I’ve already gotten rid of a few scenes that didn’t fit within my story.) I made it to the beginning of act two and realized I was going to need more time to continue tackling the rest of my scenes LOL. LOL. LOL. Keep reading below 🙂
With one more week to go, I have a feeling that we will be able to continue tackling our treatment. See you all next week for the FINAL recap of my Sundance Collab writing course experience!
Chasing The George 