in this video I'm going to run through the 10 key pages I like to include in my documentary treatment I'll show you how I Source photos for the treatment and how I put all these elements together so let's get into it so what is a treatment essentially it's a written pitch for your documentary it outlines the story the visual style and communicates why you're the best person to make this documentary so I've created my own treatment template this is basically to help me save loads of time every time I put together a treatment for a new project and I'm currently developing a few TV series projects which I'm using this template for and it's so useful because you just literally go straight into it and you're like okay answer this question write this put photos here and I thought this might be helpful to you as well so if you just click the link in the description below you'll be able to access this template so let's get into it the first page is the title page this is when you have to decide what you're going to call your documentary for example with my short film about free diving I decided to call it one breath as the documentary focuses on a world record attempt that's done on one breath alone this instantly gives a visual representation of the film when an audience hears the title and the log line that's the brief summary of a film is a life without gravity so I'm going to type that in now one BR typ it one breath a life without gravity and then I'll say treatment by Sebastian suberg also don't feel you have to stick to the title that you pick when you start the Journey of making a documentary you can always change it later down the track once you're in the editing stages of the documentary but it's helpful to have a working title from the outset now once you've decided on your title and put it in your treatment you can choose a title photo something that represents the film The there are lots of great websites where we can get images such as film grab which I've linked below you might also have some images that you've taken yourself or your subject might have images you can use so I'm just going to add a title image here and put that like that great that looks looking good okay so now that I've got my title and title image it's now time to get onto the story synopsis on page two of the treatment this is where you write down a summary of what your documentary is going to be about out and the essence of your story so your synopsis should be written in the present tense third person and it should clearly explain what the main character or characters want and what they're doing to try and get what they want without revealing any spoilers if you don't know yet because the story is still unfolding focus on what you do know and what you're hoping the story will be about when you write your synopsis here are a few things to think about first the opening your first sentence should Engage The Reader with an interesting introduction to your main character or your subject so for example with my free diving documentary my first sentence could be something like free divers Christina and Yia love nothing more than exploring the ocean together and so on so let's put that all together here next you want to think about the length this will depend on how long your documentary is it could be a couple of sentences or a couple of paragraphs but keep it to one page Max then we want to think about narration style your synopsis should suggest how the story is told for example does a presenter take the audience on a journey or is it more of a fly on thewall kind of experience where you're just seeing what's happening and what's unfolding without actually telling the audience then you want to think about characters introduce each main character with something unique whether it's a physical feature or something about their personality it really helps if the reader knows exactly who each character is what they want and why they want that certain thing and finally the ending the ending should be even more exciting than the opening it should tie all the loose ends together and leave the reader wanting to watch the film so as I've got my synopsis already done uh because I finished the film now I'm going to copy and paste that and put it here okay so next is finding an image so I'm going to use something that I feel really sums up the synopsis and the style of the film and this beautiful image of usia free diving with dolphins I feel is a perfect one CU it's that beauty of the underwater world that's just absolutely magical to be under the surface of the ocean is to enter a different [Music] realm we have done the tit tit page synopsis and we're now on to history or context however you want to describe it but I'm going to call it history this is where you want to discuss the backdrop of your story when it is set and what has come before it that has led to this moment this will help give your idea credibility because it shows where it comes from and why it is important for today's audiences for example with one breath I would talk about the history of free diving and how it developed into a spot as I've done research into this previously and I've written a little bit about the history of free diving I can just copy and paste that in now and copy and paste boom now let's add a photo I think that one works nicely great okay so we're now on to page four which is all about the story arc on this page you'll be showing how you plan to tell your documentary story and how you plan to structure it here you can use the 3A structure and I've linked a Blog below if you'd like to learn a little bit more about that I like to show the 3A structure visually with diagrams and then Summarize each Act below something like this so act one is where you set up the story act two is where it gets really hard for your protagonist and act three is where you pull everything together as the story develops the real life story you'll learn more about the different characters and their situation so don't feel you're stuck with this story arc when you create it it's more of a fluid story arc so you start at a certain point and as things develop and change you develop and change the treatment you develop and change the story arc so what I'm going to do now is add the key points from my 3x structure that I made for one breath so I'll do that now and this is just a summary it's not the full 3x structure it's just to give a kind of rough idea of what the story is about and in this stage when it's so early on this is going to completely change but it gives you something to work with and build on so we're now on to page five which is characters here you'll be showing what character or characters you are going to focus on you don't need to include every character that you're planning to interview for your documentary just the main character or characters here you want to tell us a little bit about each character and why they are important to the story my trainer is aab who's my husband we have an interesting relationship so when we're on land we are husband and wife and when we're in the water we are trainer and student now we're on to number six which is locations so with this page you need to work out where you will be filming or where you at least hope to be filming the documentary and whether this will be one location or in multiple locations for example with one breath I was filming in IA but I also used lots of archive footage that the couple had filmed around the world in places like Hawaii Thailand and Mexico so I'll add this to the treatment now and I'm also going to add a map of IA here perfect cool it's looking really nice we're now on to page seven which is where we're going to be talking about film making approach this is where you can talk about your film making Style and how you going to tell the story in your own unique voice and this is where you want to ask yourself what narration style and visual storytelling techniques that you're going to be using to tell your story so for one breath I'm going to say that this is an interview Le documentary and that I won't be showing the subjects being interviewed I'll just have their voice in the background with b-roll to visualize what they're talking about this was to make the documentary feel more cinematic and to give it an almost dreamlike feel when the characters are underwater so I'm going to do that now I'll add that great it's looking really good okay we're now on to number eight which is team this is where you talk about yourself and your team your team's past achievements and why your team are the best people to tell the story and make this film so here I'm going to add myself the composer Lynden Holland and the sound designer David Sendel and I've already got a bio of them so I'm going to add that now bam cool now we're on number nine which is budget so this is where you put a summary an overview of your budget for your documentary so any potential investors know how much it's going to cost to make your documentary and it will help them to decide whether or not that it's worth investing in Your Vision if you're interested in me putting together a video on how to create a budget just let me know in the comments below and I'll add it to my list of videos to make so here you want to just put an estimate of what it will cost for pre-production production post-production and what everything will cost in total and this just helps to give an overview of everything and then later down the track you can do a more in-depth budget but at this stage you just want to put in a basic kind of basic Figures it's important though not to just guess like actually base it on facts and figures so I put together a budget for this and know how much the film approximately cost so I'm just going to add that now looking good now we're on to page number 10 which is distribution this is where you talk about where you're planning to show the film once it's done and what your aim for the film is for example are you planning on submitting it to a prestigious festival or will you be releasing it straight away online on sites like Vimeo or Amazon or will you be trying to get it onto a streaming platform like Netflix for one breath I wanted to get the film into festivals and then release the film online on Vimeo and YouTube so I'll write that down now cool and then we add an image Bam Bam awesome looking good and then we have our thank you page these 10 elements aren't hard and fast rules they're more like guidelines from my experience of putting together a treatment remember to download the free template below and if you have any questions just put them in the comment section I always love hearing from you guys and I'll see you in the next video catch you later