How To: Write an oversimplified Treatment

Step One: Create an outline of your story, highlighting the most crucial elements. Introduce the main characters, plot, climax and conclusion. Do not leave out the ending, as the reader will need to know the entire story.

Step Two: Write a your first draft of the treatment from this outline in first or third-person. Worry more about explaining the story at this point rather than word count or length. You can whittle it down later. However, do try to keep it at a manageable level.

Step Three: Edit the first draft by removing any unnecessary sentences, flowery language, adjectives, adverbs, etc. If it isn’t pertinent to the progress of explaining the story to the reader, remove it. The editor or producer is pressed for time, and are more likely to read shorter treatments than longer ones.

Step Four: Set the treatment down for a day and then read it with fresh eyes. Again, remove any unnecessary flowery language, adjectives, adverbs and so on. Get to the meat of the story.

Step Five: Research a market for your story using online resources or writer’s magazines and books. Send them the treatment in a 9″ x 12″ manila envelope so as not to fold the treatment. Also include a cover letter and a self-addressed stamped envelope for the reply.

Step Six: Register your treatment with the Writer’s Guild of America. It costs $20 and will protect your story from being unlawfully copied or otherwise stolen.

Make your idea defensible.

One lesson that I learned very early on was that you need to find something unique about your idea so that you can prevent someone from stealing it. Simply filing you treatment with the WGA isn’t necessarily going to protect you, especially if you don’t have the resources to mount an expensive legal battle. You need something that will force Fox to buy your idea or allow you to produce the show with them. You need a good defense!

If your reality program centers around a celebrity, make sure you ‘lock-up’ the celebrity in the form of a contract (remember to offer your lawyer production credit in exchange for free or discounted legal services). Of course, I hadn’t really thought about how we could defend our idea until I started to get calls from people interested in learning more about our show.

Evidently, as Robert began interviewing potential film crews to join the project word began to spread that we were producing a racing reality series. Dallas is a big city that feels like a small town and like any small town, news travels fast. I knew we were in trouble when a national advertising agency pitched our idea to a major automobile company to see if they would be interested in becoming a sponsor. We hadn’t talked to the advertising agency, nor had we even considered looking for sponsors. I didn’t learn about it until after the automobile company expressed an interest in the idea and the agency called me! They starting asking questions I couldn’t answer and asking for footage that we didn’t have. Then it dawned on us, we hadn’t secured the location.

Anyone could have driven over to MotorSport Ranch, pitched our idea and signed contract locking the location up for THEIR show, effectively locking us out of our own idea. I called Jack Farr, the owner of MotorSport Ranch and scheduled an appointment to get together the next day. Over cheese sticks at Chili’s we struck a deal with Jack and by the end of the week we had a written contract. Basically, Jack agreed to give us exclusive right to film a reality show on his location and in return we agreed to give him a percentage of any merchandise that may ultimately be sold. Of course we didn’t have to offer him anything as the upside a television series about his business might offer would more than offset the hassle we would create.

The moral of the story, when crafting your idea carve out something unique and defensible and lock it/her/him up as soon as possible. If you don’t have anything defensible, keep working on your idea until you find something.

Treatment, screener, or pilot? That is the question.

While writing a treatment is a necessary evil, it really isn’t the best way for a first time producer to market their reality series. Robert was friends with Tanya Norman one of the authors of “Pitching Hollywood, How to Sell Your TV and Movie Ideas” and he asked her to meet us at Starbucks to go over our idea. She was fairly convincing in her argument that it would be VERY difficult to sell our show to a network with just a treatment. Tanya was among quite a few people who thought we really had something and she convinced us to think beyond cable and satellite and consider pitching our show to a major network. We had originally planned to shoot a 30 or 60 minute pilot in HD appropriate for cable or satellite, but our estimated $25,000 budget wouldn’t allow for the production quality required by major networks like ABC, NBC or CBS. Tanya suggested we consider cutting a three to five minute screener instead.

The decision came down two options, a short three to five minute screener that would accompany the treatment or a full-scale 30 or 60-minute pilot episode. The advantage of the screener is that it would be cheaper, around $10,000 to produce. The downside is that you can’t air a screener, i.e. it would be worthless if we didn’t sell the program to a major network. The pilot would cost around $25,000 to produce, but we failed to sell the series to a major network we could eventually sell it to a cable or satellite network. If we ended up selling the show to a major network and had a major budget to work with we could either throw away the pilot or sell it internationally. Robert suggested that we could likely sell an hour long pilot for at least $40,000. If we were successful and were able to sell the series Robert estimated that annual revenues could reach $600,000 per year. Ultimately, we decided to product the 60-minute pilot.

Never swim alone, that goes for reality television production too.

Several weeks had passed since Robert and I first discussed the possibility of producing a reality television show in HD. We had never discussed exactly what we would produce, nor had we discussed what a deal between us might look like. It was time to cut the deal. Robert and I met at Starbucks and hammered out the deal. Robert and I would create a limited partnership that would own the show. Each of us would own 50% of the partnership. I would fund the first $25,000 of production costs (i.e. third party cost without markup) and any production cost over $25,000 would be split equally between each party. The first revenues would go to pay off the first $25,000 plus a 12% return. Second revenues would go to pay 25% profit margin (i.e. on the production costs) to Robert’s company. The final revenues would be split equally. I am not certain this was the best deal I could have negotiated, but it was the easiest deal.

If you accept the fact that the potential upside to producing a television show is fairly limited, but the downside is relatively unlimited, it will immediately make sense to include as many people in your project as possible. My business partner in several other deals is Scott Ryan and I offered to cut him in on the deal offering him 50% if he would cover 50% of the costs. I explained that I might be a bit distracted by the project and that by including him in the upside he the distraction wouldn’t cost him anything on any of our other projects. He jumped on the offer and became my partner in the show as an executive producer.

At this point I was still convinced there was significant money to be made and I wasn’t really interested in cutting anyone else in on the deal. This was a mistake. Ironically, I could have raised the entire amount from friends interested in ‘producing’ a television show. Another thing I learned that you might not realize, production credits cost you nothing, but you can trade them for services or even sell them. For example, offer your lawyer a production credit in exchange for free legal services or at a minimum discounted legal services. My advice? Cut as many other people into your deal as possible. Again, if you are hoping to make money you are sorely deluding yourself. Accept the dilution and get busy making your show a success. Mark Burnett only got paid $455,000 for the first season of Survivor, today he makes $1,000,000 per episode.

So you STILL want to produce your own reality television series?

Most of you will already have an idea for a show, as it makes very little sense to get into television production for the excitement or the money. In my case I didn’t have the slightest idea what sort of program I would produce. Assuming you are like me and don’t have an idea consider this advice: It will be easier if you pick a subject that a) you have some expertise with, b) you care about passionately, c) serves a higher purpose and d) is defensible. Of course, as you will begin to realize, I am much better at giving advice than following advice (mine or anyone else’s).

My own story began in 2005 when a friend made an offhand comment about the cost of producing a television pilot. Each year around eight or ten of my friends get together in Las Vegas for a retreat where we discuss our businesses, our dreams, our families and random topics like politics and craps. On this trip, Robert Bennett and I were sitting at the Hard Rock Hotel pool sipping on gin and tonics discussing a small investment we both had made in a friend’s company. We were lamenting how it was likely a bad investment when Robert suggested that for the same amount he had invested, $25,000, he could have produced a television pilot in high definition. Robert runs a boutique television production company called HD Republic.

During our sun soaked conversation Robert described the state of the HD television market. He described a wide open market, with very little content, thus creating very little reason for anyone to buy television sets. The first HD television sets went on sale in the United States in 1998, but standard definition was the rule until Congress passed legislation that requires almost all U.S. stations to switch to HDTV by February 17th 2009. In 2005 HD content was rare and as a result almost anything filmed in HD could be sold. Robert’s analogy was that the HD market was like MTV in the 80s, if you had a music video you could get it on television. He made a convincing case that if we produced a program in HD, as long as we could keep the camera in focus (not as easy as you might assume) we could find a network that would pay real money to air it.

The wheels began running in my head and by the end of our retreat I had mentally decided to produce a reality television program. I just needed an idea. That evening I saw a news report on illegal street racing and it occurred to me that it might make a perfect concept for a reality series. At first glance it seemed to be the perfect idea: a) having a highly coveted demographic 18-25 year old males, b) universally appealing subject (cars), c) danger (hell, it was illegal), d) it was unique (I hadn’t heard of another reality series focused on the subject) and e) everyone I talked to loved the idea (fyi – your mom is not a great focus group).

Robert stopped by office to go over the idea and after an hour or so of brainstorming it became clear that my idea might not have been as good as I had initially assumed. Of course, as I learned through this process, everyone will have an opinion about your idea. Your job is to figure out who to listen to and who to ignore (you should ignore 90% of all advice). Almost immediately Robert pointed out that illegal street racing was illegal. He had a point. I hadn’t considered the potential liability associated with a reality program about illegal activity and how it might make a trial lawyer’s mouth water. Never one to take no for an answer, I suggested that we might ‘stage’ the illegal street races. I suggested that we could simulate the illegal and street part of the equation by filming on a racetrack. It wouldn’t be illegal and while it wouldn’t be on the street, it would be dark so we could easily make it appear to be a street. I even had the perfect location, a country club called MotorSport Ranch where instead of tennis courts or a golf course they have a race track complete with race track front homes, garages and a clubhouse.

Several days later Robert and I got back together. Robert explained that very few members of our target demographic (18-25 year old males) owned high definition televisions. At the time HDTV owners were males over the age of 35. I also discovered there were about ten other shows about illegal street racing in the works (none of them every aired to my knowledge). My idea seemed less and less appealing. My mom sealed the deal when she told me, in no uncertain terms, I wasn’t allowed to produce a television show about illegal activity (if you are over 25, your mom is almost always one of those 10% I suggest you listen to).

Then it hit me, why don’t we make a reality program about MotorSport Ranch? The idea of illegal street racing was quickly set aside, but form the burning embers a new idea emerged. Ironically, the idea of turning the venue into the show offered us a built in cast of more than 400 members not to mention the staff. It also gave us something that was defensible, the location. The idea was quickly coming together, but I didn’t have a clue how to get started.