Short Film: Treatment

Treatment:
What was the task:
The task was to create a treatment which was important as this allowed me to develop my initial idea into an 4 to 5 minute short film and different scenes that I could use in my movie.

What did I learn:
I learned how to effectively write a treatment for story and the ways of writing a treatment (for example writing the start and the end first and then using those to work out what to put in the middle of my film)

How will this help me in the future:
This will help me in the future as this would allow me to have a central idea of how to frame my film and what ideas I could use to elevate my film to a higher standard. This would also help me in the future as if I was to make another short film, I'd use the treatment as my starting point to develop my ideas.

The short film opens with the sound of the clock ticking in the early hours of the morning and the protagonist awakens suddenly. This is repeated a couple of times with the protagonist reacting in different ways each time (e.g. one time they get out of bed and just walk up and down their room). The next time this happens the protagonist gets out of bed and joins a chat room for people suffering from insomnia on their computer.

The next evening the protagonist is unable to sleep again and here’s a bleep from their computer. It is from the chat room and the protagonist has received a message from someone claiming to be their twin. The protagonist is freaked out and slams their laptop shut.

The next day, the protagonist is in an insomniac state again and finds out they’ve received more messages from their twin. The protagonist figures out that the twins name is an anagram for the place they were taken and they start searching out around their house for proof that the twin is talking the truth. Then find a birth certificate and a picture of the place they were taken and finds out that the person claiming to be their twin is actually telling the truth

The protagonist arranges to meet the twin at the park that they were separated and leaves the chatroom. When the protagonist turns around, they see their parents standing behind their chair, holding a box of pills in their hand, and blocking their path of escape. The camera zooms in on the protagonist who is depicted as in a state of fear as he takes the pills.

The screen fades to the black and the mother of the protagonist messages a mysterious person stating that the need to increase the pill dosage for their children as this is the closest they have come to finding out the truth. The film then switches to the mother of the twin who is the recipient of the text and it is revealed to the audience through these texts that the mother of the twin gave the protagonist to the other mother for a large sum of money and that the protagonist & the twin were actually twins. Then a split screen depicts both mothers adding more pills to each pill box and they shut the box at the same time.

A few days later the twin receives a message on an insomnia chat room from the protagonist who now claims to be the twin of the original person claiming to be the twin. (This shows that this pattern keeps happening until they forget about it again when their dosage is upped). The screen fades to black.

Updates:
Paragraph 3:
The protagonist talks to the twin and tries to find out more information ending with the twin telling the protagonist to search for a birth certificate. The protagonist searches through the draws in their house for evidence and finds a birth certificate of their name with the same surname as the twin and they realise that the twin is telling the truth. The protagonist drops the torch whilst searching and runs upstairs.

Paragraph 5:
This was changed from texting to being on the phone so that my film could be less focused on computer screens/texting so that I could use more filming techniques.