Music Video Treatments are the Essential first step when pitching/prepping for a Music Video. The goal of a Music Video Treatment is to write and form a document that defines the video’s concepts and summarizes it through words and visual images.
Often I dread writing treatments, because it can be hard convey the exact images and ideas I have in my head down on a document for someone else to visualize and understand the way I do. I feel that this is the biggest struggle when it comes to writing a treatment, the process of trying to get the client to envision what you envision.
One of the best ways to do this is make your treatments very “Visual” heavy. By “Visual” I mean use a lot of pictures and image references. Clients will have a hard time trying to decipher and understand the words you’re trying to break down, but visual images are easy to understand. Creating a visual story will help really sell your idea and vision to the client and hook them on the idea your pitching.
There’s no real formula or format to writing a treatment. I’ve seen countless styles when it comes to treatments, some more narrative based and wordy, others more visual heavy, some 1 pages, some 8 pages, etc. The point of a treatment, as I said above, is to define the video’s concept and summarize it through words and visual images.
When it comes to writing treatments I like to use a balance of visual/reference images and words. I may explain the story, or list video beats and ideas along with specific scenes and what would be happening in those scenes, but I always make sure to accompany those words with lots of visual representations and images so the client can understand and envision what I’m telling them.
Music videos are heavily visual based, so your treatments should reflect that. Make sure your vision is clear and easy to navigate. You don’t want the client to read a novel and then be left scratching their head when they get to the end. Keep it short and sweet!
Below I’ve listed a link to a product of mine that I sell. Over the years in my music video career I’ve compiled some of my Music Video Treatments into a single product that you can buy and learn from. You will be able to download my various treatments and see how I personally write treatments for various clients from independent artists, to Major Label artists, and record labels.
MY VIDEO TREATMENTS: http://jakobowensproductions.bigcartel.com/product/original-jakob-owens-video-treatments
Make sure to check out all the other video products I offer from Tutorials, Color LUT bundles and more here: http://jakobowensproductions.bigcartel.com
