Honing Your Ideas: From Concept to Finished Treatment

Right. Then why do so many great ideas fizzle out somewhere between that first blinding spark of inspiration and the final credit roll?

The answer is simple: before the lights come up, before the cameras roll, even before you write the script, you must take two essential steps if your video is to find and follow its true course:

Step one: clearly define your concept.

Step two: write a concise treatment.

A concept nails down your program's primary message, and the manner in which you will deliver it to your primary audience. Later; as you navigate the winding curves of production, you'll think of the concept as your destination. A treatment is a written summary of the video's purpose, storyline and style. It will become your road map. These tools will help you maintain solid and continuous contact with the video's intended direction every step of the way.

These are probably the most overlooked steps of preproduction, but if you conscientiously pursue them on every project-no matter how simple-you'll save time and add polish, propelling your work to new horizons of quality.

How does a concept differ from a raw idea? Let's look at a couple of ideas and watch how they change as we develop them into concepts:

1) The Trees of New England; and

2) Car Repair

Each of these has possibilities as a video project; but if we were to pick up a camera, or even try to start writing a script at this point, we'd suffer a false start. Before we can set out on our creative journey, we need a clear understanding of our destination.

Admittedly, many ideas don't deserve to survive. Who among us hasn't pulled the car off a crowded freeway to jot down a "great idea" only to read it later and find that great idea somewhat less than overwhelming.

Take our first idea: The Trees of New England. This sleeper might die right on the drawing board. Why? Because it lacks profitability. The visual effect could no doubt be stunning, but who would purchase (or finance) a video about trees when public television carries a variety of nature shows that feature similar subjects every week?

To succeed in the marketplace, your work must deliver a primary message, a primary audience and an effective way of delivering the former to the latter. To prove worth the effort, The Trees of New England would have to distinguish itself from similar programming through style or content to appeal to existing markets. Another option: The Trees of New England could deliver its message in a way that would captivate audiences in a new market niche. Note: if you can see a way to make money with this tree idea, please feel free to run with it.

You may find yourself shelving many ideas that survive this kind of initial scrutiny; these ideas typically lack some element necessary to a profitable video, such as reasonable production costs or a viable market. Or through research you may discover that someone else has already produced your idea. That's okay; you can always generate more ideas. Don't get too caught up in creative decisions during these first stages of exploration. In the process of transforming a germ of an idea into a viable concept, necessity will make many decisions about a project's direction for you.

How about our wannabe video-Car Repair. This one offers a multitude of development possibilities. But remember, you can't please all of the people all the time. Avoid the temptation to create a "do-all" video. As producers, we always want the largest audience we can get-up to a point. Create a repair program that appeals equally to master mechanics and interior designers, and you'll get a show without a specific destination. In other words, your project could end up running out of gas in the wrong town.

Your first move: define the audience. Let's find a target group who could use some information about car repair.

Here's where brainstorming becomes an indispensable tool. There are as many methods to brainstorm an idea as there are people, so there are no hard and fast rules. Basically, you need to distract the left (logical) side of your brain so that the right (creative) side can come out to play.

Here's what works for me: I speak my thoughts aloud, no matter how silly they sound, while bouncing a rubber ball off the concrete walls of my basement office. This technique gets the creative hemisphere of my brain churning; my subconscious coughs up ideas from a well much deeper than the one serving my logical hemisphere. I write down the more coherent mutterings on a dry erase board as they erupt. All in all, it's probably not a pretty sight, but you're welcome to adapt this method to your own brainstorming technique.

Here's a condensed version of my brainstorming session for the car repair idea. I flip the ball. It hits the floor, the wall and then slaps back into my hand.

"Repair," I say to myself, as I continue to bounce the ball. "Maintenance... mechanics...men.. women. ..children ...women...smart women...independent women...car maintenance...where's the need?...when would they have the need?...college...BINGO!"

When young women go away to college, they no longer have Mom or Dad around to watch the oil level and check the belts. The same is surely true of young men, but I decide to target women as the larger of the two potential audiences. Should I go after both in hopes of selling more tapes? Absolutely not. Since the buying characteristics of the two groups will be different, I must tailor the style of the production to one audience or the other.

Through brainstorming, the original idea "car repair" has now become its simpler cousin, "car maintenance." Do we have a real concept now? Not yet, but we're getting there; we know our target market and our message. Still to be considered: the production's style, or the best manner in which to convey our message. This will eventually encompass shooting style, lighting style, acting, wardrobe, makeup and dozens of other factors. For now, however, we'll break style down into two parts: 1) getting the viewer's attention; and 2) and keeping it.