How-to: treatment design

What are directors' treatments?

I started creating directors' treatments three years ago and since then I have created more than 200 of them. I would like to talk today about this narrow field and a new creative sphere to start in.

When for example, Mercedes announces a pitch for filming an advertisement, the production company should offer several potential directors to shoot the video. The director must convince the client that he is the ideal person for this task. To do this, he has to create a static or an animated presentation in which he explains to the client how he sees the future commercial, what ideas he has about the script, what actors he would like to work with and what music he would like to hear in the video. Such directors' slide decks are called treatments. Of course, due to the lack of time and sometimes skills, the directors do not make such treatments by themselves. They hire treatment designers.

This profession is pretty comlpicated because of the time frames and deadlines that are stated by the client and the director. It requires a lot of effort, physical strength (because sometimes one has to work at nights) and finally — belief in the project. When you fully dive into the process and you enjoy what you are designing, it is becoming more and more easy for you, your workflow becomes calm, and you feel more confident while working on huge projects and for huge clients like Apple, Spotify, New Balance, and Samsung. Below I will dive a little more into the depth of the profession.

Difficulties of Work

The main difficulty is that it requires rigorous efforts. First, it is very important to have a vision, this is the basis of the treatment visual design. Visual research can take up to 2 days, every day you have to work for 10-12 hours non-stop. The images for such a treatment must fully correspond to the director's vision and the process of finding them is time-consuming. You cannot use images from stocks or Google images, otherwise, you risk to obtain bad reputation and the client will not want to collaborate with you in the future. All visuals must be taken from advertisements and feature films, one has to watch hundreds of videos while working on a project.

Talking about treatments, they are not ordinary business presentations that are created in an office. Directors often want to see a trendy Vogue-style layout or neon slides for VR-glasses advertising. You have to work on dozens of projects to learn how to read a director's mind and feel what style he/she wants to see. But such flair is very much appreciated because the director doesn't have to spend an hour of his/her time explaining to the designer what he/she wants.

Treatments: Creating Life Hacks

Here are a few life hacks for creating treatments that I always use:

1. Try to use only professional sources to find images, and also use the works of famous photographers and directors.

2. Remember that everyone on the client's side will read your treatment, try to make sure that the viewer does not get bored with it in 30 seconds.

3. Ask the director to send you examples of his/her previous works, so you can understand his/her style.

4. Always do more than you are expected of — send as many different visuals as possible to the director. They love to have plenty to choose from.

5. Make sure that the entire treatment has the same style that can be seen on its every slide. Treatments should be holistic and look like a stylish, clear magazine.