The treatment and presentations

The director's treatment decides every department, the casting and the storyboard. The second section designs, checks and sends every client presentation, from the concept pages to the final film page.

Writing the treatment

This section is the director's treatment, which decides every department, the casting, the face motion tests and the storyboard. It is written plainly enough for the client to see the film, and exactly enough for every later stage to carry it out. Before AI, a crew decided the details after the treatment. That crew no longer exists, so the treatment decides them. The pages it is shown on are designed in Client presentations.

• The order of work: Words first, then faces, then pictures.

• The brief restated, first: The treatment opens by telling the client what they asked for, in their own words.

• "My vision", decided: The vision is written as "I", in the present tense, with every decision already made.

• World rules and the planned break: A few rules every department obeys, and the one moment a rule breaks.

• The scene paragraphs and voiceover: The heart of the treatment: one long paragraph per scene, with its voiceover beneath.

• Each department written twice: Every department exists twice: a plain page for the client, and an exact sheet for every later stage.

• The department sheets: What each sheet fixes, and what its client page shows.

• The camera sheet: The camera sheet gives the film one camera personality, decides who is filming each scene, and plans where the camera presses and releases.

• The light and colour sheet: The light sheet names every source and the film's palette, and ends with one line on texture.

• The sound sheet: Decide why the film sounds the way it does before anything is generated.

• Editing and transitions: How the film is cut, how every version is born, and which joins are allowed.

• The feasibility pass: Find every moment the models may not deliver, and solve it before the client sees the treatment.

• Casting the faces: Three to five faces per role, one of them a bold reading, chosen on six points.

• Face motion tests: A face can win as a still and lose in motion.

• Drawn characters: For drawn, anime and 3D films, design options and the stylised motion check take the place of casting.

• Storyboard images: Every image in a treatment shows the vision.

Client presentations

This section shows how to design, check and send every page the client sees, from the concept pages to the final film page. The client sees six documents: the Detailed Brief, the concept presentation, the treatment with its storyboard, the anchors presentation, the rough-cut page and the final film page (see The stages and gates → What the client sees, and what stays internal). Each is a web page, read on its link, with a PDF of the same version as the record.

• The deck expresses the film: A deck that could belong to any brand is a template.

• Type, colour and the phone: Use measurements that are known to work, colour a phone's dark mode can't change, and a phone layout of its own.

• Films, words and nothing internal: Films that play on any phone, words a non-specialist reads in 3 s, and nothing from the workshop on the page.

• Page types and storyboard pages: A small set of layouts that work, adapted to each film.

• The concept pages: The client compares the concepts on two pages: first as pictures, then as differences.

• The anchors presentation, in its twelve sections: One presentation of every approved anchor, sent before any production video.

• The rhythm check and the pre-send check: Look at the whole deck as one strip before you send it, then answer ten questions.

• A new link per send: Each send is frozen on its own link, so every note can be matched to exactly what the client saw.