Documentaries are essentially based on real life situations or on important topics that could be historical, geographical, and political or in that case, anything serious. There is a definite way in which a documentary must be written, so that it can hold audience’s attention and maintain their interest. This report looks into the different steps to write a documentary that would interest the audiences.

1. An idea for the documentary must be thought through. The idea has to be original, as well as loaded with content that can keep them interested for its entire length period, whether a short film or feature length movie of 90 minutes.
2. The goals that are to be achieved through the documentary must be outlined at the onset in the documentary proposal (which is often serves as the “script). There can be a lot of genres on which the documentary can be based. Depending on the genre of the documentary, a set of objectives should be prepared and the documentary and the eventual filming must reflect those.
3. The subject of the documentary must be thoroughly researched and widely covered. It is not enough to load the documentary with information, as just that alone would not interest the audience. Often, a lot of information is already known to a lot of people, therefore interesting and innovative ways to present them must be adapted.
4. Communicating with experts related to the subject of the documentary would be a good idea to maintain a rich collection of resource for research purposes. In some cases, especially, historical documentaries, there is a scope of controversy with the portrayal of the content. In that case, advices and suggestions of experts in the related field would be invaluable.
5. The viewer plays an active role in the writing the documentary. An outline of what the viewer takes back from the documentary must be made. There are certain emotions that a particular documentary might bring out of the audiences. Therefore, such expectations out of the viewer must be considered and implemented likewise.
6. The documentary must be filled with the research done by the writer. More the information, richer the documentary would be. However, stuffing of information would lead to undesired consequences.
7. The sound and camera angles, along with the complete cinematography play an important role. A certain amount of information might be given away through background narrations. These things are to be thought of and implemented in the documentary.

A Film script treatment for a specific script is a short summary of the story that may be four to fifteen pages long. It usually reads like a novelette, describing how the story unfolds, with only sparse use of dialogue. It is quite different from the synopsis. While a synopsis summarizes the script and provides an outline of the story, the treatment is a novelette or short story in itself.

Script treatments are very powerful tools that attract the studios and potential investors even before the complete script is ready. This is indeed very useful for the scriptwriter as well, since the treatment would help him understand whether the flow of the story is indeed what he desired for. So, we can revise or cancel scripts before we put in our valuable time and energy is writing the actual script. However, for a spontaneous writer, treatment could be more of a bane, and that is why treatments are not absolutely essential component.

There are three different methods in which a treatment can be written. However, the main aim of writing a treatment is similar to that of a synopsis: to attract the reader and keep him glued all throughout.

a.Header-specific: This type of treatment would have the key scenes put down as headers (in capital letters), while a few lines could be chipped in below it, describing the scene precisely. This would allow the reader to breeze through your treatment, if required and is much more attractive if the content is good enough. An example would go like (from “Bluey” with permission of writers):

EXT. WALLIS HOUSE – NIGHT

Beatrice and Bertha, followed by Sarah, run out of the front door of the
house.

Bertha pushes Sarah down the steps.  Lighting illuminates the
sky as Sarah painfully lands on her knees into rain puddles and a
a torrent of rain soaks her.

This would also help us condense the treatment into a couple of pages, and also ensuring that the main scenes are described properly with proper dramatization, wherever necessary.

b.Prose-Style: This type of treatments tend to go longer, as the key scenes are explained with lot more details than in header-specific treatments. It is like writing the story without the details irrelevant to the scene. This type of descriptions would serve a script that needs the details to be fed to the reader. The script also contains the emotions and feels that the actual script might have. The above header-specific example could be translated to prose-style as:

As she steps out of a police cruiser, Sergeant Sandra Bohm, a police fortyish police officer with non-regulation bright red nails, irritably regards  Harold and asks him what his problem is.  Harold offers her a rude gesture instead of a verbal response.  Sergeant Bohm comments that she doesn’t have time for this and writes up a ticket.

c. Hybrid style: Well, as the name suggests, this type of treatment is a mixture of the above two methods, and is most popularly used, as it provides the flexibility and the freedom to exploit both procedures, while giving it an innovative yet attractive look.