ur-grue Pitch Treatment Writer
What This Skill Does
Turns a rough documentary concept into a complete pitch treatment — including logline, overview synopsis, narrative approach, character introductions, visual language, and production context — formatted for broadcaster or funder submission.
When To Use This Skill
- You have a documentary idea and need a written treatment before your first commissioner meeting
- You are responding to a call for proposals and need a document that meets industry format standards
- Your existing treatment is too long, too vague, or too internally focused — you need a reader-first rewrite
- You want a treatment draft to use as a working document before your full development process begins
What You Need To Provide
Required: Project description (2–6 sentences); intended format (single documentary, 2-part, or series); primary subject(s) or character(s); the central question or conflict the film will follow; target broadcaster or funder type Optional: Estimated runtime; production stage (development, pre-production, shooting, post); any footage already shot; tone references (other films this resembles); any scenes or sequences you know the film will contain; what makes this project unique or timely
How the Assistant Approaches This
- Opens with a logline and a two-paragraph "hook block" — the section commissioners read before deciding whether to continue; it must communicate premise, tone, and stakes within 150 words
- Writes the narrative overview (300–400 words): the documentary's arc from opening scene through central development to intended resolution, written as if describing a finished film
- Introduces key characters or subjects in the order the film will introduce them — brief, vivid, with a specific detail that makes each person feel real
- Describes the visual approach and production methodology (observational, archive-led, hybrid, essay film, etc.) in language that an executive can understand without production background
- Closes with a brief production context block: why now, who is making it, and what development or production has occurred
- After the treatment, provides a one-sentence "Next Step" specifying the immediate action: which broadcaster or fund to submit to first, whether a logline-creator pass would sharpen the opening hook, or whether a series-bible-generator is needed if the project is multi-part
Output Format
Full pitch treatment, structured with clearly labeled sections: Logline, Overview, Narrative Arc, Key Subjects, Visual Approach, Why Now / Production Context. Total length: 600–900 words. Written in present tense (describing the film as if it is happening). Formal but not academic register. No production jargon in the creative sections. Output ends with a "Next Step" line: the single most important action before submitting this treatment (e.g., verify word count against specific fund guidelines, run logline-creator, or attach a director statement).
Quality Criteria
- The hook block (first 150 words) communicates premise, tone, and stakes without requiring further reading to understand
- The narrative arc describes a beginning, a development, and a resolution — even if the film is observational and the ending is not yet known
- Each key subject is introduced with at least one specific, concrete detail
- The visual approach section distinguishes this film's methodology from a generic documentary
- "Why now" is answered with a specific reason, not a generic claim about the topic's importance
- The treatment reads as if it describes a compelling finished film, not a development pitch for a vague idea
- Output includes at least one concrete next action the user can take immediately (submit to named fund, run logline-creator, attach director statement, or verify fund-specific word count)
Example
Input
Project description: A feature documentary following a municipal water engineer who discovered that the city's century-old pipe infrastructure is failing silently — and that the repair cost is so large, no one in government will acknowledge the problem publicly. She has been documenting the failures internally for three years. The film is at development stage. Format: Single feature documentary, ~85 minutes Target broadcaster: Public broadcaster documentary strand Tone reference: Intimate observational with a systemic argument (like "Icarus" or "The Cleaners") Why now: A major pipe failure in a neighboring city last year brought the issue briefly into national news
Output
Logline A municipal water engineer has spent three years documenting the slow collapse of her city's water infrastructure — and the institutional silence that surrounds it.
Overview
Cities run on systems nobody thinks about until they fail. This film is about one woman who thinks about nothing else.
Elena Vargas has worked in municipal water engineering for nineteen years. Three years ago, she began noticing something that the city's annual infrastructure reports were not capturing: not dramatic failures, but a pattern of small ones. A pressure drop here. A sudden sediment spike there. A repair record that keeps returning to the same pipe segment in the same neighborhood. Individually, each event is explainable. Collectively, they describe a network approaching failure — and a cost of repair that no one in city government is willing to put in writing.
UNDER THE CITY follows Elena over the course of one year as she continues documenting, attending internal meetings, filing reports, and waiting to see whether the system she works within can absorb what she knows.
Narrative Arc
We open on an ordinary morning in the water utility's operations center. Elena is at her station, watching pressure readings on a city-wide grid. She explains, with the quiet precision of someone who has done this for two decades, what she is looking for. We do not yet know why she is watching so carefully.
The first act builds her world: the engineering, the bureaucracy, and the specific history of the infrastructure she monitors — pipes laid in some neighborhoods more than a hundred years ago, patched repeatedly, never replaced. We meet the colleagues she trusts and the managers she has learned to work around.
The second act turns on a single event: a pressure failure in the city's oldest residential district during a cold snap. Elena's data predicted it. Her warning report, filed six weeks earlier, sits in a departmental queue, unread. The failure is repaired. No public statement is made.
In the final act, Elena faces the central question of the film: what does a public servant do when the public cannot be told what she knows? The film does not resolve this question cleanly — because, at the time of filming, she has not resolved it herself. What we see is how she lives inside that tension, and what it costs.
Key Subjects
Elena Vargas, Municipal Water Engineer. Nineteen years in the same department. Precise, unsentimental, and — when she speaks about what she has found — quietly furious. She brings us her personal documentation: a private log she has kept since the pattern first became visible to her.
Director of Public Works (name withheld at development stage). Elena's institutional counterpart: a career bureaucrat managing a budget with no room for the kind of repair the infrastructure requires. We observe him at public meetings, where his language shifts noticeably from the language he uses internally.
Visual Approach
The film is observational in form: we follow Elena through her working days, her documentation sessions, and her commute. The city's infrastructure will be visible throughout — not as spectacle, but as the background of an ordinary working life. Archive and technical materials (pipe schematics, internal reports, pressure graphs) will be integrated as found-document inserts, treated with the same visual weight as the observational footage. The film will have no narrator. Elena's voice, in conversation with the crew, carries the argument.
Why Now / Production Context
A pipe failure in a neighboring city twelve months ago brought the condition of aging urban infrastructure into brief national coverage. The story disappeared within weeks. The infrastructure did not change. UNDER THE CITY is in active development. An initial filming relationship with the subject has been established. We are seeking development funding to support a six-month shooting period beginning this spring.
Known Limitations
- Treatments written at early development stage require the filmmaker to verify or expand on production details before submission — this skill produces a structural draft, not a final deliverable
- Character descriptions are based on what you provide; the assistant cannot invent specific, credible details for real people beyond what is given
- Different broadcasters have different treatment formats and word count conventions; verify the specific submission requirements before finalizing
- "Why now" sections are only as timely as your input — if a relevant news hook exists, provide it; the assistant cannot research current events