How to Develop Your Story Idea Into a Treatment transcript

ever since the release of ballistic a massive portion of my time has gone to developing and pitching feature film ideas and over the last three years i've learned a ton about breaking the story piecing it together in an engaging and coherent way to others to see your vision and how to present that vision so today i want to talk a little bit about that what i've learned and what is working for me since often on the show i like to bring to all of you what i'm currently tackling at the moment or what i've learned most recently now specifically i want to talk about building a treatment which to begin with means breaking a story depending on what it is you're doing this could mean that you are doing it alone in hopes to get it in front of someone or you're working with a production company or creative executive specifically for me i've done a lot of both when it's not working directly with a production company or producer to develop an idea i have built things out just to take to my managers to get their gauge on where we could take it or what shape it's in and what i need to do next but before i had managers it was an entirely solo thing just building my ideas out now some of you might say why do that why not just write the feature well there are two different answers for that depending on the concept for some concepts i know it's one that i don't want to be the writer on i just want to be the director or maybe i want a writing partner on it then for the rest that i do intend to write my process leans towards treatments first i like to spend time crafting the story theme and characters before i ever start scripting for me doing this makes the actual scripting a lot more coherent less daunting and is massively helpful in making sure my story is tight connected and filled with intention setups and payoffs of course this isn't how everyone works and that's totally fine many incredible writers that i adore just dive right in not knowing where they're going but that process just doesn't work for me so for me phase one is the concept these little devils are magical little fairies that pop in sometimes unannounced sometimes while trying to crack some other idea there's really no magic bullet for coming up with a great concept that i know of for me it's just time and curiosity be curious about the world people and so on watch things think hey what if should be something you say a lot but after you have that thing that what if that excites you a concept that feels like a good track to put your train on it's time to start building the train this is the setting the passengers the event and so on for me i immediately go to character who is this happening to and why does it have to be them in this story then where does this happen why there if i don't already have my theme it's in this area that i'll start discovering that it usually reveals itself as i'm building things out like this then i'm able to go back and align everything to strongly follow that thematic north star and that's another reason i like to build out things like this before scripting and i tend to build all of this inside of millinote we've shown this on the show before and we're partnering again with them on this episode but it really is an excellent app for this kind of work and the biggest plus is that there is a free version you can get started on right now and it's very much a digital creative wall like a virtual cork board to slap all of your ideas images and anything else that you need i really like keeping things structured and to have the ability to move ideas around and this is really great for that as well you can create boards in here and keep drilling down to stay clean and structured you also have the columns where you can drop in notes and move those around you can throw in images to help develop visually and links to populate with a preview and there's a mobile app so you can drop your ideas in at any time and the biggest advantage is reducing the amount of apps that i use on a normal basis so now instead of five apps i'm mostly just in this one again you can get a free account and start using it now there is a paid account like i have that gives you more but the free one is a great place to get started so definitely check that out in the notes below but let's get back to developing this thing so now i'm focusing on character and theme and as i dial that in the inevitable ending starts to take shape for me maybe not the specific events but what needs to happen does our character face redemption punishment release or something else this for me is always landed on from theme so now once i have that i'll start working on my beginning middle and end these are the three main mile markers that will light the path for all the rest in between so with these columns for the beginning middle and end built here i'll start figuring out where my character is at the beginning where they are in the middle and why and finally how they've changed in the end again another broad stroke but you can see how my personal process starts from this 35 000 foot view then i work my way down to street level and once again i'll emphasize that this isn't what works for everyone but i do find seeing other people's process immensely helpful in refining my own but as i continue to dial in i'll move to another two big mile markers what shifts us from act 1 to act 2 and what is our shift from act 2 to act 3. from the work that we've done before with the character and theme we can use those elements to point the way to those moments as well and as you can see i'm slowly building out the structure of my story and i've talked about this before structure is often a dirty word for a lot of people which is something i completely disagree with structure for me is the cadence of film language we've talked about structure before so i won't go too deep here but i see story in sort of 6x 1a 1b 2a 2b 3a and 3b and like i've said before you find structure in 99 of films often seeing structure points at extremely close to a specific point in the script they should land based on length you even find this in more original and out there films like annihilation which we can look at as an example through the lens of a six-ax structure this is a 108-minute film so we're consider it a 108-page script since we're looking at this final polished version of the film so our act 1a should last for around 10 or so minutes and in that span of time we meet our lead lena get a sense of her current normal we get introduced to theme and some foreshadowing we get a sense of her grief and loss but then her husband she thought was dead comes back and now we get our catalyst moment which shifts us from act 1a to 1b and in act 1b our character should move from their current normal to an unfamiliar place be it emotionally literally or both given its length this should happen around the 12 minute mark and right after her husband starts spitting up blood lena is rushing him to a hospital in an ambulance that gets stopped by black suvs right at the 11 minute and 39 second mark we cut to a title card area x a new and unfamiliar location which shifts our story in a whole new direction then our break into act 2a should happen at 25 minutes it comes a little late here at 28 minutes when they enter the shimmer and in act 2a we get our fun and games a lot of stuff you see in the trailers and here in annihilation we get our gator sequence they find the compound the pool scene the video camera discovery leading up to the midpoint which shifts us to act 2b and that midpoint is a moment that raises the stakes it's a moment of no return and often a moment that reveals something or sees a character die again given the length this should happen around 54 minutes here and in exactly 55 minutes and 27 seconds the bear shows up for the first time and kills shepard raising the stakes and killing one of the characters then right before our shift into act 3 we should have our dark knight of the soul moment for this film it should come around 75 through 83 minutes and right at the 82 minute mark lena finds that josie is gone and we get this line of dialogue one by one all gone except you then of course we move into our finale and final image but you can see how even in films like this there is a road map to follow this doesn't lessen the film i personally think annihilation is a brilliant film but definitely check out our episode about structure where i dive into that a lot more including looking at structure points from christopher nolan films and the ring but what is so useful about thinking in those terms is again the mile markers it gives you to help you break your story and don't get me wrong once i'm actually in the scripting phase i don't give structure another thought but to wrangle this massive behemoth it's useful to have goal posts to aim at again at least for me but once i have all of that with all the important points built out with their whys making sure everything is working together from the plotting to the characters and theme i start actually writing a treatment usually a 12 through 18 page document that spells out the story with all those important beats that we've discovered all laid out in order the idea is to give the reader a complete sense of the story from start to finish with a massive emphasis on character who are these characters and why do they change then for an actual pitch i'm a big fan of having a visual deck to go along with it i'll start by collecting main images and fitting them in with how i'm breaking the story in millinote then i'll build out from there and with all pitch meetings being on zoom right now i'll use keynote on my ipad and run a slide while i deliver the story and these images are built out from other films i'll do a lot of photoshop work to make sure that it's in the color palette that i want for the tone of the film but also to do a lot of comp work to get these images to fit the story i'm telling often comping several films together to make the one i need like this moment from hush where i comp a ton of wounds onto john gallagher jr for me this has been invaluable for conveying the exact movie i want to make without visuals people are bringing their own internal flair and it might not be the movie you're wanting to make on top of that i found that it helps you find the film as well you're finding all the things this story is and is not through this process and as you can tell i'm a huge fan of iteration and this is one more step in that process that lets you iterate find ideas you wouldn't have without this sort of trial and error and searching for inspiration for a verbal pitch i will say that most often you hear people tell you that it should be between 15 and 20 minutes but my most recent pitch was 26 minutes long and it went great my takeaway is that what matters most is that you're delivering a compelling story with interesting characters that keep the person on the other end of the call captivated but also they did suggest the 20 through minute pitch most often everyone tells me it's good to keep concise so eyes don't glaze over but that's a sort of overview of that process for me it's definitely evolving and does also include a ripped reel but we'll talk about rip reels another day and again definitely check out millinote i've been using it for well over a year now and it really is awesome so give that a go especially since you can get started for free and until next time don't forget to write shoot edit repeat [Music] you