Film Treatment research

In this post I will be telling you some information about Film Treatments, here are some questions that I will be answering on the subject.
What is a treatment?
A treatment is the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay which will be used for mainly television program, radio play ECT. It is generally longer and more detailed than a script inculding more detail on the location and what the plot is. 'When you write a treatment it must be written like a short story only written in the present tence and describing the event that actually happen.' example from Wikipedia.


What is the purpose of a treatment?
The purpose of a treatment  is to allow your audience to smell, taste and experience your environment as if its actually happening in the mind (picturing the film) the more detailed the better the film, before creating it of course.


A film treatment (or treatment for short) is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline (or one-page synopsis), and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. They read like a short story, except told in the present tense and describing events as they happen. There are two types: the original draft treatment, created during the writing process, and the presentation treatment, created as presentation material. (Wikipedia)

Conventions of Thriller's

I have posted this because I wnat you to know about what conventions are in a thriller.

 Props- mostly masses of weapons from knives to machines gun, even futuristic weapons such as lasers.

Location- very dark and out of the way places such as alleyways. But there are some un-suspecting locations such as fancy hotels, restaurants and parties even cities. Some are even set in the country side in the middle of know where.

Lighting- Very dark locations with a lot of shadows and fires, sometimes lightening and half lit locations to make the killer look more sinister.

Mise-en-scene- Police chases, fires/explosions, the media such as the press, big crowds of people at the scene of the murder or incident and lots of violence.

Characters- Police, good guy, bad guy, detectives, damsel in distress, criminals, stalkers, terrorists, mentally disabled people, prisoners, assassins, and murderers.

Costume- mainly ripped clothes, blood; most likely men are wearing suits and attractive women in dresses.

Music/sound- High pitched violin screeching, very short silences, footsteps, tension building music, loud drums, doors creaking and slamming and creaky floors etc.

Dialogue- Lots of shouting, evil laughs, cackling, scared whispers and arguments.

Shot type- close ups, lots of establishing shots, panning, shot reverse sho, very fast editing and slow motion effects which are added after filming.

Together in our group we discussed how we can use common conventions of thrillers to create a short opening scene to a thriller film. We listed some conventions that we could use, develop and challenge.H ere are the lists we made;

Conventions to use;

High pitched violin screeching.

Dark locations

Smart dress

Violence

Detective (in this case a new school teacher)

Attractive woman

Footsteps

Close up shots

Conventions to Develop;

Using a mix of faster and slower editing to create tension rather than fast editing

Reducing the amount of shot-reverse-shot and have speech. Using short sounds such as loud noise, shouting, crowds etc. Including adding more silence to un-nerve audience.

Conventions to Challenge;

'Bad Guy' (we will be School Children to create a sense of insecurity in the audience.)

Busy city (we will be a School instead.)

Teachers, (normally innocent) will be in control of 'brainwashed' children

School bell (normally good at end of lessons) will be the action to cause Children's trance

(Including no weapons)