Honing Your Ideas: From Concept to Finished Treatment (page 2)

Hook, Line and Profit

A hook is the attention-getting element that yanks viewers away from their busy day, and into our product. The need for a good hook is the same in every communication medium, whether it's an advertisement, a popular song or a training video. Human beings are frenetically busy creatures; you must seduce them into giving their attention away. After delivering this interesting hook and convincing them to look our way, we must follow through and give them a storyline that will hold their interest for the duration of the program.

There are a number of ways to engage and keep the viewers' attention:

• shock value
• self-interest
• visual stimulation
• glitz and glamour
• comedy

To decide which combination of elements will work best for our car maintenance video, we need a better understanding of our target market:

17 to 20-year-old females needing to perform simple car maintenance themselves. As with many aspects of concept development, most of our decisions are made for us as we discard what will not work-which leaves us with what will.

My gut says to skip shock value in a program that deals with cars. Self-interest is definitely an important consideration for a young lady who is both: I) trying to assert her independence for the first time (ego self interest); and 2) living on a budget (financial self-interest).

Visual stimulation? Our target group comes from a generation accustomed to the kaleidoscopic imagery and lightning fast cuts of beer commercials and music videos. Let's use this one.

Glitz and glamour are obvious shoo-ins for this age and gender. Comedy can be an excellent tool for communicating many subjects, as long as you execute it well. Let's keep humor in mind, too.

Simply being aware of these tools is not enough. More important is an understanding of the ways they will impact our target audience. If we can effectively utilize one or more of them in our production (and our marketing package), we may just have a moneymaking project on our hands.

To recap: we need an eye-catching (visually stimulating) presentation that offers college-aged females something they clearly need (self-interest) in a manner consistent with their accepted versions of self-image (glitz and glamour). If we discover ways to enliven this delivery through the use of comedy, all the better.

Even if we are unable to meet all these criteria, we must be aware of them, so at the very least we avoid working against the psychology of our target audience.

More ball bouncing is probably called for at this point to help us predict how we'll apply these general ideas to our intended audience. But rather than put you through that again, I'll just tell you what I came up with for our sample project: A Young Woman's Guide to Minor Car Maintenance. The package resembles that of a concert video or a compact disc more than an instructional videotape jacket. Lots of neon colors surround a snazzily dressed college-aged woman, who leans confidently over the open hood of a small automobile. Her posture says, "I have the world by the tail, and so can you if you take a closer look at this."

The back of the jacket explains that you'll need no tools to perform most of the tasks covered in the program. These tasks are simpler than you ever thought possible, even fun once you give them a chance.

Best of all, you'll feel an exhilarating new sense of independence after you master these simple skills.

Writing the Treatment

We've come a long way from the original idea. By asking the right questions, we've developed a potentially viable concept. We understand it in terms of:

• to whom the video speaks;
• how the video will speak to them; and
• what the video will say.

Now we can write a treatment, which will help us pursue our project without losing sight of our concept. By clearly defining our direction in this way, we can hold true to our original vision for the project.

Depending on the complexity of a production, its treatment may be long or short. Some in-depth treatments resemble scripts; others simply document mood changes and/or visual effects, with technical annotations along the way. Regardless, the treatment should always move the reader chronologically from the beginning to the end of the program.

There's no established manuscript format for a treatment. Just try to tell a story in as readable a way as possible. The treatment for our car maintenance video might begin like this:

A Young Woman s Guide to Minor Car Maintenance

Statement of Purpose

The main goal of this project is to provide information about basic car maintenance to female college students age 20 and younger. These young women face the full responsibilities of car care for the first time in their lives.

In the interest of hooking and keeping the attention of the target audience, we'll present this information in a series of three music videos. Cuts will be as short as possible. A different actor/musician with a distinct personality will demonstrate each automotive maintenance task.

Most important, the tasks will not be overly technical in nature. Our audience needs to understand only the basics of car care: how to check belts, check the oil and other fluid levels, change a tire, fill the radiator, replace a burned-out fuse and so on. The frequent use of common-sense metaphors will remove any feelings of intimidation this subject may arouse in viewers.

The video jacket layout resembles that of an album cover rather than an instructional videotape. The songs contained in the program will be remakes of popular rock-and-roll songs, with lyrics pertinent to the mechanical tasks.