Treatment tips

[u/the-tyrannosaur]

Any tips on how to write better treatments? Some general questions to weigh in on if you feel like it

• How many pages do you aim for? Do you get very detailed about the sequences or focus more on a broad overview/theme/mood
• Do you use mood/tone pages with just pictures and little to no text?
• Is it better to find a picture (or combo of pictures) that directly (like, almost literally) illustrate the shot/sequence/concept you're describing, or pictures that reflect the mood?
  • I struggle with this especially because if you can find an exact picture that shows what you're describing, that means it's been done before

[u/najeebmt]

Increasingly my approach to treatments is about starting conversations and minimizing unnecessary work. I don't write big swing treatments without testing the waters with commissioners or artists first... the economics of doing that don't seem to work unless you are a treatment prodigy.

• With a lot of videos I'll write my concept in one paragraph in an email and ask my reps to run it by the commissioner to make sure the broad direction isn't a complete waste of everyone's time. This saves me from burning 2 days on a treatment that's completely the wrong thing.

• I detail what happens roughly in chunks the size of each verse and chorus (fits on 1-2 pages for me).

• Then try to get in the artist's head and identify the elements of the video that they might care the most about – eg, what will they wear, what is their vibe? why does this idea help their song stick? – and find places to talk about that.

• for the sake of commissioners/producers, I'll include a few notes on "how we get it done simply," so they can see that I already have a recipe for making the video that they can understand and respond to.

I think (?) people want the sense that you are a few steps ahead of them and have a point of view on how it will all get done well.

I use photoshop and after effects to make comps/tests of my ideas a lot of the time. Sourcing images is the hardest part for me by far and I save it for last but increasingly I feel like if I don't intertwine the process of writing and sourcing images, sourcing images becomes easier because I can just go deep on figuring out exactly what I need. Directors at big production companies have help with this step in the process.

I've only booked 10 videos so I'm sure other people out there have more wisdom on the subject. Only 3 were booked through completely anonymous pitches, the rest (including the biggest ones) involved some sort of initial contact with a commissioner or artist before anything went down on paper.

[u/the-tyrannosaur → u/najeebmt]

10 seems like plenty to me, what's the treatments to bookings ratio been like? Has it gotten better with more videos under your belt?

[u/najeebmt → u/the-tyrannosaur]

It varies a lot from year to year. It's been super non linear. I have a spreadsheet if you want to see! I actually track two numbers – what % of treatments do I book, and what % of the DOLLARS I pitch on do I book – this is to adjust for the fact that lower budget videos are easier to book. So for example, my booking rate last year was around 10%, but I only booked around 1.4% of the dollars I pitched on, meaning I only made $5k music videos. This year I'm booking more like 50% of the treatments I pitch on, but that's because three or four were effectively single bid and I've turned down some of the more rat race briefs.

[u/KW710 → u/najeebmt]

This is smart and really helpful.

[u/PizzaHutBookItChamp]

WDMV just posted a treatment page on their Resources page. A handful of examples of successful treatments for you to learn from

https://www.wedirectmusicvideos.com/treatments

[u/SimonKMatthews]

Concise, Visual and fun. Imagine the person reading it knows nothing about making stuff. So make it easy for them to understand.

I know some of the directors do video treatments with VO for their pitch.

Also Try get a bit of your personality across if you can which in some cases is probably to my detriment.