Without walls, use placemats

Time is running short. We are juggling with our day jobs and drafting a proposal for the Freedom Film Fest 2010 competiton. Although the deadline is two weeks away, we have to complete it by May 12 because I will be leaving for Indochina the next day.

We have to complete a PDF form, write a proposal including a brief introduction on the writer/director, a summary of the film, working schedule, and (here's the catch) the treatment.

Treatment? Sheridan asked.

A half-script, like 'how would you like to treat the film?'. Writing a treatment for a documentary is not quite the same like a fiction, I realised. While in fiction you can control the narrative and get the characters to say the exact lines, a documentary treatment is merely an anticipation of what the subjects would say during interviews or the turn of the events much later.

If we ever get to do the film we will have to adjust the treatment accordingly. But for now we have to visualise the film. We should have a wall or at least a whiteboard to help us draft the scenes and storyline, but since we floated from one cafe to another for discussions the only space we have were the dinner tables.

I have to get placemats and colour-coded sticky notes as tools to lay-out the scenes.