The Master Guide / 04 The treatment and presentations · Writing the treatment
World rules and the planned break
A few rules every department obeys, and the one moment a rule breaks.
A few rules every department obeys, and the one moment a rule breaks.
Write 3–5 rules the film's world obeys [proven] for the practice; the written form [best available, not yet validated]. Each rule names a department, a visible result and the idea it serves: "the camera stays at dining-chair height, because the table is the battlefield". Then name the one scene where a rule breaks, tied to the story's turn.
A rule that serves nothing is cut.
No rule touches the brief's core elements.
On the client page, the rules sit inside the vision as plain sentences, without the word "rule".
The camera sheet, the lighting and colour sheet, the editing sheet and the casting and performance sheet each name the rule they serve in their first field (Writing the treatment → Each department written twice).
A rule that holds the camera still for the whole film is a film-wide named lock, made only as a deliberate decision. Otherwise write it as a moving grammar: "the camera only moves sideways until scene 3".
Why: the 2026 Film Craft Grand Prix, Coinbase's Your Way Out, built its world from a few hard rules: flat, shadowless light, low-resolution printed sets, one high angle held for most of the film. Then the camera broke its own rule at the exact moment the story turned. Lope Serrano, whose No Project Without Drama took a 2026 Gold, says images should obey an internal logic, and that limits help you find form faster.