The Master Guide / 04 The treatment and presentations · Writing the treatment
The feasibility pass
Find every moment the models may not deliver, and solve it before the client sees the treatment.
Find every moment the models may not deliver, and solve it before the client sees the treatment.
List every risky moment against the known Seedance failures (see Video with Seedance → The failure table):
hand-to-product contact;
small or dense text in frame;
more than three acting characters, or two look-alikes;
more than three or four visual beats in one continuous shot;
mirrors;
the product multiplying, or its label rotating;
fast action, long moves, crowds;
lip-synced lines, especially Arabic;
exact product behaviour;
a change of light inside a shot.
Give each one a solution that keeps the vision:
one continuous shot, or real cuts between angles that are plainly different;
a planned join with a fallback cut;
another angle that keeps the meaning;
a shorter beat;
exact text moved into graphics;
a dedicated product shot;
a built label moment.
File the list as your risk pass; the plan turns it into methods (see Planning, budgets and takes → One continuous shot or real cuts). A moment that can't be made without changing the idea is decided before the treatment is shown. Never simplify it quietly.
The client standard for the treatment
Judge the whole treatment against this table before it is shown. Solid is your minimum. A decided rule sits in the Solid column, so missing it fails the work however good the rest is (see The quality bar → Per-stage gates and the four jury lenses).
What is judged | Fails | Solid | Award-level |
Point of view | It repeats the concept back, or hedges | A clear, decided vision in your own voice | It makes the idea bigger and more specific than the client imagined, with nothing in the core changed |
Seeing the film | The scenes can't be pictured, or the frames contradict the words, add undecided things, look AI-made or are promised as final shots | Every scene has frames and a paragraph that agree, in one photographed look, at the film's ratio | Frames and paragraphs feel like watching the film, and any frame could be the poster |
Every department decided | Departments missing, or written only as adjectives | All present, with clear choices | Every choice is a tagged value a model could carry out, and the plain page and the sheet say the same |
One world | The departments pull apart, and the frames look like different films | Consistent, and serving the idea | Every craft choice makes the idea stronger and none is ornament. The departments obey a few stated rules, and the one break lands on the story's turn |
Faithful | A core element or the concept changed | It matches the concept and the brief | Every decision traces back, and every addition is clearly craft, not a new idea |
Made for motion | Static or impossible moments | Moments today's models can make | Each scene designed for stunning, dynamic motion, with the risky moments solved behind the scenes |
Presentation and language | Text-heavy pages, images that don't feel like one film, promises that a shot will look "exactly like" something, or errors in the brand's details | Image-led pages, plain English, correct details | Every page passes a 3-second glance, with not one name or spelling wrong |
Sources
Built from the Seedance failure table in this guide.