Planning- Treatment

Write a treatment - blog

A treatment is an outline of your film idea, what you will do and who it is for. It doesn’t need to be long, but write in sentences and include the following:

• Brief description of documentary idea - what is it about?
• Length of the film (5 minutes)
• Outline of style and techniques you plan to use
• Intended target audience
• Try to include some production detail; describe who, what, where, when you plan to film

My documentary is going to be about the difference between analogue photography and digital photography and the views/opinions of photographers and whether they feel that photography has less recognition these days because everyone seems to be able to pick up a phone and take ‘good’ photos without understanding how much work goes into the technical side of things. I feel that it seems like there is much more versatility in the digital photography industry but is that really the case?

My initial basic research on Instagram shows that there does not seem to be many verified photographers. However, studying at a college has opened my mind to the fact that photography is not just about clicking on your phone it makes you wonder and realise how much work goes into developing photos in terms of analogue and digital to make the picture look nice. Also the fact that you have to wait to develop the photographs in the dark room or even digitally on photoshop you need to work on the picture and make sure the quality is good. I really think this documantary is going to showcase that and open other people’s minds the way it did for me.

In order to do this I am intending to interview the manager of Snappy Snaps which is an analogue photography company, an A’ level photography teacher and students who still use analogue to  develop their pictures and also do the same with a digital photography company to see the difference and their opinions on….. I will be interviewing them at the companies , so will be on location. I am planning to get them to show us around and show is how analogue and digital cameras work. I will probably ask to see the dark room. However, this all depends if they will allow me to film.

The length of this documentary will be 5 minutes.

The style of my documentary is going to be observational, participatory and  expository. The reason for this is because I feel like it will be more interesting to the viewer to have all these different styles and push myself to show myself that I know where to use the right techniques that I have learnt and how. I will be aiming to use a variety of techniques such as close ups and the use of 2 cameras so that I have another camera angle to cut to - also the audience will be able to see the interviewee’s face when reacting to questions. I will also use a voice over. When the person being interviewed is explaining the technical side of what they do, I will show them actually working and have their voice as the voiceover. I would also have a title at the beginning of the documentary - but I haven’t planned what my documentary will be called yet. When interviewing, I will show the question on a black screen and then cut to them explaining their view and their opinion. Additionally, I am intending to use a location icon at the corner of the screen telling the audience where the filming takes place or where we are. This is a feature that I will include for the observational part of my documentary. I will include music in the background in the observational sections. It will be dimmed down when the voiceover comes on. I will need to do some research about what type of music fits this particular type of documentary and also ensure that the music doesn’t have copyright. I also intend to place facts about digital and analogue photography so that it is informative and to remind the audience that in my opinion photography is important and needs more recognition.

The intended target audience for my documentary will be photographers, students of photography or people who are interested in photography. Because I intend to interview students who are aspiring to be photographers in the younger generation - perhaps this will be my target audience and would appeal to young people more and because I am young I could relate to their thoughts and opinions.