Scriptment

A scriptment is a treatment of a film or a TV show that is more elaborate than a standard "draft treatment". The term "scriptment" was originally coined by film maker James Cameron, possibly during his early involvement in the development of the "Spider-Man" film series. [James Cameron, [http://membres.lycos.fr/mogwai/scenarios/spider-man.txt "Spider-Man (scriptment)"] , excerpt, 1989] The term became more widely known, when Cameron's 1995 scriptment for the film "Avatar" was leaked on the internet during pre-production, although other directors like John Hughes and Zak Penn had already written "scriptments" before.

A scriptment borrows characteristics from both a regular screenplay and a film treatment and is comparable to a step outline: the main text body is similar to an elaborate draft treatment, while usually only major sequences receive unnumbered headings, which is different from the extensive scene headings in standard screenplays. Scenes and shots are simply separated as paragraphs and can also include explanatory excursuses. As with standard treatments, much of the dialogue is summarized in action. However, important dialog scenes are often fully developed. In most cases scriptments have been penned by directors, not screenwriters, and often seem like an intermediate stage in the development from draft treatment to the first draft of the screenplay. Like a draft treatment, a scriptment can be anywhere from 20 to 80 or more pages, while regular "presentation treatments" or outlines only summarize the plot in not more than 30 pages.

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