Treatment

What this is about

Treatments do their work in the pitch phase. A writer uses one to sell a story to producers, an agency uses one to describe a campaign idea, and broadcasters often request one before commissioning a script. Because it reads like the film feels, weak ideas expose themselves early: if the treatment is boring on page two, the film will be too. In practice most treatments run a few pages, skip most dialogue and stay with what is seen and heard.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Present tense, concrete images, almost no dialogue: a treatment shows the film, it does not discuss it.
• Not the same as a director's treatment, which answers an existing script or briefing with a visual approach.
• Length is negotiated: a TV exposé, a feature treatment and an ad treatment serve different readers.

With TillyGen

TillyGen reads a treatment as part of the briefing and proposes scenes and shots you can refine from there.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.