Film treatment
first draft of a screenplay
A film treatment (or simply treatment) is a piece of prose typically created during the development stage between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture or television program, or a script for a radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline (or one-page synopsis), and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. Treatments read like a short story, but are told in the present tense and describe events as they happen. A treatment may also be created in the process of adapting a novel, play, or other pre-existing work into a screenplay.
Original draft treatment
The original draft treatment is created during the writing process and is generally long and detailed. It consists of full-scene outlines put together. Usually there are between 30 and 80 standard letter size or A4 pages (Courier New 12 point), with an average of about 40 pages. For example, the draft treatment of The Terminator is 48 pages long.
More elaborate forms of the draft treatment are the step outline and the scriptment.
Presentation treatment
The presentation treatment is created as presentation material.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Film treatment” as first draft of a screenplay. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2345947. The Library of Congress control number is sh97000622. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Film treatment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.