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The Master Guide / 04 The treatment and presentations · Writing the treatment

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

The camera law [proven], for the film or for each of its worlds, names:

  • observer or participant;

  • what triggers a move;

  • the support and its feel;

  • the speed register;

  • the lens range by distance, as fields of view;

  • what this camera never does.

A generic law adds nothing: write it from this treatment's decisions. How it goes into every prompt: Camera and lens → The camera law in every prompt.

The lens family (decided): where the whole film has one, anamorphic or spherical, name it here by its visible result, its flare and its bokeh shape, never by a lens or camera brand. The location plates then carry it, with no heavy blur (see Photoreal anchors (Nano Banana Pro) → Location plates), and every prompt carries it in the look line (see Light and look → The capture in the look line).

The capture, per scene [proven], is one of:

  • a crewed cinema camera;

  • a documentary operator, written as behaviour: observing, outside the circle, following the actor, more than shake;

  • a character's phone, native rather than over-polished, with the phone never visible [official guidance];

  • a fixed device;

  • a period device, only where the concept asks.

The capture sets blur, exposure, focus, framing habit, grain or noise and room sound, and never leaks into another capture. How it is written into prompts: Light and look → The capture in the look line.

The camera arc, per scene [proven], in one line: where the camera presses in and where it releases. The release is a moving wide or a named locked wide.

The rest of the camera sheet

  • Aspect ratios: each one generated natively (21:9, 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4, 9:16). Any other ratio is a planned crop with its safe area.

  • Lens feel as a field-of-view range and depth of field, chosen from the relationship (intimacy, immersion, neutral, observing, struggling to find), with no very wide lens within about a metre of a hero or beauty face unless the treatment wants the distortion [proven] (see Camera and lens → Distance from the relationship, then the lens).

  • Framing rules, height rules, support feel and screen direction; how the camera treats the product.

  • One designed, dosed move per key moment, with where it starts and lands, different shot to shot (see Camera and lens → The camera dose). A locked or breathing frame only as a named exception, with life kept inside it; comedy held in a wide is one.

  • Every speaking shot moves gently through its line (decided). During the words the camera breathes or pushes very slowly, written large enough to show; bigger moves come before or after the line (see Speaking shots and lip sync → The camera during speech).

  • Per scene: the sequence of shot sizes and the key moves.

On the client page: one frame per scene with one plain line on what the camera does and why. The values stay in the sheet. One plain camera-path drawing is allowed on this page only.

Sources

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