How to Write a Script or Screenplay For Beginners (Part 2 of 3)

Treatments, Storyboards, and Other Documents: Planning Your Vlog, Music Video, Documentary, or Non-Narrative Film

Before we get into the nitty gritty of writing and formatting a script, let’s take a step back to reiterate that up until now, we’ve been talking about screenplays meant for narrative filmmaking— in other words, any kind of feature, short, or skit that involves characters interacting with one another.

However, if you’re working on a different kind of project, a non-narrative project, you may not be able to take all of the advice in this post. Still, even if a traditional screenplay doesn’t work for your project, it’s worth writing out some kind of plan for what your audience will see and hear when watching your project. While you won’t be writing dialogue for actors to read, you’ll still need to answer important questions. Questions like: What are you going to say in your narration? What stock footage are you going to cut to in your documentary? What on-screen graphics are you going to point to during your vlog? These specifics should be answered “on the page.”

If you’re making a documentary, you’ll still likely want to write a screenplay at some point in your process. If your documentary is made up entirely of voice-over narration and existing stock or archival footage, then you can just write a script like normal.

On the other hand, if you’re setting out to make a documentary where you’re interviewing subjects, then you probably won’t write a full script at the outset. After all, you don’t know what your “character” will say. Instead, at the start you’ll likely write an outline (aka a treatment which we’ll discuss in a second) about where you’d like the film to go. Then, you may chose to write an actual screenplay after the footage is shot and you know what clips and soundbites you’re working with.

Or you may choose not to do that. Many documentarians never write a traditionally formatted script at all. However, they almost always have a written plan before shooting that becomes more refined and specific after shooting (but before editing). These written plans might look a lot like a narrative screenplay or not at all. It’s up to you.

If you’re making a vlog, then whether or not you’ll want a script will be dependent on the format of your videos. If you use a lot of graphics or narrate over existing footage or cut around to different locations, then a traditional screenplay format may be a good fit for you. If your videos consist of you speaking directly to camera with little else going on, it may be enough to simply write out your dialogue (of perhaps more accurately monologue) beforehand without worrying about format.

If you’re making a music video or experimental film, then a screenplay might be absolutely essential or it might be an absolute waste of time. What you need to ask yourself is would it be beneficial to have your video/film planned from moment to moment or are you exploring a concept that you’d like to “find” in the edit? If the moment-to-moment matters then you’ll likely want to write a screenplay. If it’s more about finding the right mood and tone in the edit, then you’ll likely want to avoid a full-blown script.

So let’s discuss some other documents that may prove useful for you:

Treatments

A treatment is an outline of what is going to happen in your project written in prose . There is no codified length or style for treatments (other than staying in present tense). Some will be less than a page long while others can be fifty pages. There are two main reasons you may choose to write a treatment

Before Writing a Script: Some writers will create treatments prior to writing their screenplays as a way to outline. It’s a great way to make sure you have all of your story beats figured out before doing the more work-intensive parts of writing like dialogue and scene work.

Or, if you have a great idea for a short film, but want to bring on a writer (someone to write the script for you) or a co-writer (someone to write the script with you), then a treatment may be a great document to show them so they understand how you envision the story. Similarly, if you’re pitching the project to someone (financiers, producers, etc), then a treatment might be a great way to get people excited before a script even exists.

Instead of Writing a Script: There are some projects where writing a traditional screenplay simply isn’t feasible. Perhaps you’re making a documentary that relies on events that haven’t happened yet (let’s say you’re documenting a political campaign or the events of a single sports season). Or perhaps you’re making an experimental film or a music video, more concerned with mood and images than a coherent, traditional story.

These are the times where treatments become the most important document. Because now, your prose explanation of what your project will look like is the main document. In these cases our advice is to be specific as you can be without becoming overly technical. As with a script, try to tell us what we see and hear without getting bogged down with details like lens choice. Even in a treatment, the writing should evoke the feeling of the eventual finished project.

Storyboards

Another key tool for planning your film is to drawing sketches of what you plan to show in your frame, also known as storyboarding. Many directors will chose to do this after they’ve already written a traditional screenplay and are planning how they’ll compose their frames. Meanwhile, other directors choose not to do it at all. The key here is that you shouldn’t worry if you’re not a great artist; you just need to draw well enough to get your point across. Here are real examples by real directors.

James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy):

Rian Johnson (Knives Out):

See? Being a great artist doesn’t mean being great at every kind of art.

However, there’s another kind of storyboard that’s important to our discussion here. There are certain projects where you might choose to storyboard instead of writing a script. This type of pre-production storyboarding happens when the project (music video, experimental animation, video essay, etc.) exists more as a series of images than it does as a traditional narrative. In these cases, storyboards can becomes your primary writing document. They can become the blueprint for your film.

These storyboards are often crucial for popular films with a lot of action sequences. Instead of describing the fight scenes punch-by-punch (which would be boring to read and in all likelihood ignored by the stunt director on set), screenwriters will choose to describe the broad strokes and emotional beats of a fight and leave it to the director to work out the specifics. Often times, these sequences are planned with storyboards. A famous example is the film Mad Max: Fury Road where George Miller never even wrote a traditional screenplay, relying instead on hundreds of boards to plan his film out.

Other Planning Documents

At the end of the day, every one of these documents— scripts, treatments, storyboards— all have the same goal: To help the artist record and communicate their vision before they actually shoot it. Therefore, you should pick the method that best helps you accomplish this goal. And if the best way to record or explain your ideas is some other kind of document, then that’s what you should do!

Maybe all you need to do is write out your narration in a long paragraph. Maybe you just need to list out the questions you’re going to ask in your documentary interview. Maybe you want to take a bunch of still photographs and then edit them together to music. Or maybe you want to take the time to write out an entire screenplay, but with no dialogue.

If that last one sounds crazy to you, then you should know its a favorite method of director James Cameron. He’s used his “scriptments” (less than a script, more than a treatment) on everything from Aliens to Titanic to Avatar. Clearly it works for him!

In the “professional world” these things are often forced to fit into the narrow rules of a traditional screenplay (rules we’ll discuss below), but remember that what really matters the most is that you feel like you’re able to effectively and truthfully communicate your vision to your collaborators through words and/or images. Everything else is just formatting.

Next week: Formatting your screenplay