How To Write A Video Treatment? This is How Others Do It For Me!
As a director, you want to be in a steady production flow. This means that you’ll have to be on the hunt for new job opportunities all the time, which involves creating treatments - (digital) marketing documents that help you sell your story ideas, concept, or filmmaker vision.
Creating these documents while you’re in the middle of another film production can be daunting and time-consuming. So if you want to scale your business, maximize your time, and create more headspace, it can be an option to outsource the creation of your video treatments, or at least a part of it.
I will reveal some options to help you do that in this article!
Table of contents:
Outsourcing video treatments is taboo.
Working as a filmmaker can be a very time-consuming job. It involves spending lots of time in pre-production, followed by working 12-18 hour days on a film set and even longer days in post-production trying to meet the deadline.
If you want to get your hands on new projects via the traditional route, you must create video treatments in between doing all those things.
Getting other folks on board
With all this pressure involved, it isn't uncommon for directors and production companies to get other people on board with the video treatment creation process, allowing them to focus on other things while staying in a steady production flow.
I know video production companies working on commercials, short films, and music videos that use ghostwriters and designers to help their directors build their video treatments and increase the chances of winning future pitches.
They do this because if their directors get more work, the video production companies get more work, and everybody makes more money.
Outsourcing is taboo.
Although outsourcing work happens more often than you might think, many filmmakers will not acknowledge that they work with ghostwriters, designers, video treatment freelancers, or specialized video treatment creation companies to do the work for them. Some platforms to find these people are Fiverr and Upwork. A simple ‘ghost treatment writer’ Google search will also get you a long way.
Some consider outsourcing cheating, but I disagree. There is this misconception that you aren't presenting your own work if you outsource the creation of your director treatments.
But you need to realize that a video treatment writer, designer, ghostwriter, or whatever person you are outsourcing your work to will never start before they chat with you to discuss your vision for the project.
They will ask you what kind of visual style you prefer, what are ideas you are set on, the type of wording you like to use, and what kind of visual references you might have for them to construct a compelling document.
Especially in the world of commercials, the ad agency’s creatives know that directors and production companies outsource the creation of their video treatments, so they will very much appreciate it if they can sense that your document represents your unique personality instead of reading the same words used by the same ghostwriters.
You need to direct them.
Just like you would guide your crew on a film set, you need to direct the people you outsource the work to and guide them during the creation of the final product to ensure your brand, visual style, and visual taste shine through.
Like working with the same cinematographer for years, things will become more easygoing, and you won't need the same number of conversations to align on something after a while.
In the end, filmmaking is a collaborative process. In the same way, as you will use a film crew to create a film project and walk away with most of the credits work you didn't necessarily do yourself, I believe you can pull the same trick with creating a video treatment.
Start by doing everything yourself
It seems very tempting to outsource the creation of every director's treatment from the beginning. Still, I advise starting your director treatment journey by learning to do everything from scratch to the finish line yourself first.
Understanding the video treatment workload
That’s because when you know how to do it yourself, you’ll better understand what you can ask from the people you’ll hire to do the work for you.
You’ll better understand how much work it involves to create a director’s treatment, where to get your preferred visual references from, and what pillars a pitch-winning video treatment needs to have.
But I guess the most important reason to start doing everything yourself first is that you are not entirely dependent on others to do the work for you.
Suppose the company or person you’re regularly outsourcing is unavailable because they are working on other stuff. In that case, you can always focus on your capabilities to construct a compelling document.
Make outsourcing your video treatments a luxury feature
If you develop your own video treatment skills first and start outsourcing when work pressure becomes too much, outsourcing becomes more of a luxury feature instead of an expensive necessity.
Outsourcing the creation of a video treatment
Outsourcing the work to other creatives to do the video treatment creation for you can be done in several different ways.
Either you build a team around you with independent designers, writers, and storyboard artists, or you contact particular video treatment / ghostwriting companies to do all the work for you.
how to work with ghostwriters
Personally, I enjoy creating director treatments, so I have never worked with a video treatment company before. I have never worked with an independent designer for my director treatments, but I have worked with ghostwriters while doing all the design stuff.
This is because others are simply better and faster at writing than me. For some, it’s their sole job to write daily, while my talents lie more in expressing my vision via visuals instead of words.
The ghostwriters I have collaborated with so far are screenplay writers for (short) movies and TV dramas, so they know how to write compelling stories.
One way of working with a ghostwriter is to pay them a flat fee, but I approached it differently and proposed a deal.
Proposing a ghostwriting deal
I asked the price for their services and offered to pay double that amount if we would win the pitch.
On the other end, I would pay nothing if we lost the pitch. As it became our best interest to win the job, the quality of the video treatment rose exponentially.
Not everybody is open to something like that, but it’s definitely worth a try, and you’ll benefit from such a collaboration in the long run!
approach outsourcing video treatments as an investment
As you’ll probably understand, outsourcing the creation of a video treatment isn’t cheap.
You’ll have to approach it as an investment in time and money. But if outsourcing means you will get the jobs you’re pitching for, it will pay back for itself instantly!
