Lighthouse Keeper Short Drama — Director's Treatment

A director's treatment board for a short drama about a lighthouse keeper's last winter: key frames, beat table, locations, sound and Sc. 14.

Updated

This board is the working treatment for a fourteen-minute drama about the last keeper at a Scottish headland lighthouse in the winter before it went automatic. It was built to be read from left to right, the way a producer, a DP or a location owner would walk along a wall of pinned frames. The first section holds the treatment itself: logline, tone and visual approach on one page, with the casting brief and the two films it borrows from beside it. Each reference has a line on what to take from it and what to leave, which stops a reference turning into a style to copy. The key frames sit as one photo grid of eight, one picture per beat, each captioned with its scene number. Beside them is a table of what each beat needs in practical terms: a boat day, a calm sea, a haze day for the fog, a twenty-minute window at blue hour. That way the pictures also make the case for the schedule. A short set of frame rules and a palette pulled from the frames keep the look consistent across departments. Locations collects the recce: the cottages, the peat track, the landing stage and the boat store, with a note on access and a checklist of what is still not locked. Alternates live in a sub-cluster so they stay findable without crowding the main wall. Sound gets its own column because in a film with almost no score, the wind, the lens motor and a distant fog signal do most of the work. The key scene closes the board: the scene as written, its shot list, the call sheet for the night and a blocking note pointing at the frame it ends on. If you are putting together your own short film director's treatment, the useful habit here is tying every image to a scene number and every scene to what it costs to shoot. Photos by Erik Mclean, Josh Hild, itsbeyzafs, ArtHouse Studio, Beck Luo, Mike Sheilds, 27 1, Harry Nixon, Adrien Olichon, Imeel Bagdisar, Tiki Black, Gije Cho, Ramon Clemente and PIC MATTI on Pexels. Sound: "WWS Foghorn" by Work With Sounds / Torsten Nilsson (CC BY 4.0) on Wikimedia Commons.
Dramatic ocean scenery with waves crashing on a pier under a moody sky in Cape Town, South Africa.

Treatment — draft 4

Logline

Winter 1997. Ewan Rennie has kept the light at Ardvane for thirty-one years. In March the station goes automatic. Until then he has a young engineer to show round, a lamp that will soon not need him, and nowhere he has decided to go.

What it is

A 14-minute drama in three movements: the routine, the handover, the boat. Almost no plot. The drama is a man doing his job well for the last time, and noticing every part of it.

Tone

Quiet and exact, not bleak. Ewan is funny in the dry way of men

Scenic view of a misty island with a grassy shoreline and stone structure in the foreground.

Casting

Ewan, 61: a stage actor from the north, not a face off the telly. He has to coil a line, trim a wick and cook a supper on camera without us cutting away. Self-tape is Sc. 11 and Sc. 14.
Callum, 24: the Board's engineer, from Paisley. Polite, out of his depth, good at his job. Not the villain.
- Recalls 20 Nov, Glasgow, Kofi running
- Moira (radio voice, Sc. 6 and 18) from the recall pool
- Ewan grows his own beard from December

Dramatic view of a sea cliff arch over stormy waters during a snowstorm, creating a moody atmosphere.

A × visual grid — Key frames (4 images) — view it on the board above.

Close-up of a rustic stone wall with vibrant moss in Llançà, Spain.
Keepers' cottages
Keepers' cottages

Rubha Dubh for Ardvane

Rubha Dubh light, 40 min past the last village on single track, then 1.2 km of peat track from the gate. Tower, three cottages, boat store, landing stage, fog signal house. Tower and lantern by arrangement with the Board, an attendant on site.
- Ewan's is the end cottage, kitchen to the sea
- Unit base on the hard standing by the gate
- No signal past the gate: radios and a sat phone

Sound

No score until the boat. Before that the film is wind, the lens motor, the kettle, the radio.
- Record the real lantern on the recce: motor, clockwork, door latch
- Wind on the gallery at three strengths, mono and AB
- The fog signal sounds once, Sc. 18, at a distance
- Score: a single fiddle air over Sc. 22–23, recorded in a room, not a studio
Jonah has the recorders from the 14th.

♪ Fog signal across the bay — 1:15 · 0 BPM · M4A (plays on the board above)

Shot list — Sc. 14

  • Shot
  • Frame
  • Lens
  • Note
  • 14A
  • Wide lantern, both, last light
  • 9.5mm
  • Rolls from 15:50, A cam
  • 14B
  • Ewan by the brass switch
  • 50mm
  • Thumb near it, never on it
  • 14C
  • Callum low at the cabinet
  • 25mm
  • Ewan above him in frame
  • 14D
  • Lens starts to turn
  • 16mm
  • Real switch-on, B cam
  • 14E
  • Light crosses Ewan's face
  • 85mm
  • Twice, then the line
  • 14F
  • Gallery, his back, beam over
  • 12mm
  • Three turns, then cut
Wind on the headland
Wind on the headland
Detailed shot of interconnected rusty metal chains displaying texture and decay.

Second choices from the November recce. The harbour wall at Strathan if the landing stage tide window fails; the bothy at the bay for Ewan's if the owners pull the end cottage.

Landing stage
Landing stage

Sc. 14 — The last lamp

INT. LANTERN ROOM - ARDVANE LIGHT - DUSK

The last of the day goes grey on the glass. The lens stands dark in the middle of the room, taller than a man, brass and prisms.

EWAN (61) wipes a pane with a chamois it does not need. CALLUM (24) kneels at a new grey cabinet bolted to the floor, a test meter in his lap.

CALLUM

Sunset's four-oh-eight. The cell takes it from there.

EWAN

I know when sunset is.

CALLUM

Aye. Sorry.

Ewan looks at the old switch by the door. Brass, worn bright where a thumb goes

Blocking

Ewan never goes to the switch. He stands by it. Callum works the floor, low, by the new cabinet, so Ewan is above him in frame until the lamp comes on.
- The switch-on is real: the station fires on its own cell at dusk. One take a night, two cameras
- Pick-ups for 14B, 14C, 14E after dark with the lamp running
- 14F ends the scene: his back at the rail, three turns

References — what to take

Winter Light: the stillness, and a man carrying out a duty he is no longer sure of. Take the patience, not the black-and-white.
Breaking the Waves: the colour. Grey sea, grey sky, skin the only warm thing in the frame. A northern coast shot without making it pretty.
Neither for the story.

Boat store
Boat store
Winter Light

▶ Sc. 11 rain on glass (plays on the board above)

Breaking the Waves

▶ Under the titles (plays on the board above)

What each beat needs

  • Sc.
  • Beat
  • Frame
  • Needs
  • 1
  • Ardvane from the sea
  • Locked wide, from the boat
  • Boat day, swell under 2 m
  • 6
  • Ewan cleans the lens, radio on
  • Through the prisms, 50mm
  • Tower day, Board attendant
  • 9
  • Swell takes the boat store door
  • Handheld, wet lens
  • Rain bars, water pump, 2 doors
  • 11
  • Supper, one plate, two cups
  • Through the window, tungsten
  • Kitchen dressed 1997, 60W bulb
  • 14
  • First night on automatic
  • Lantern, amber on faces
  • 2 nights, Board attendant
  • 18
  • Fog in, the signal sounds once
  • Locked wide, from the gallery
  • Haze day or smoke, 2 machines
  • 22
  • The boat takes him off
  • 85mm from the pier
  • Boat + skipper, calm day
  • 23
  • Lamp on, nobody in the tower
  • From the track, blue hour
  • 20 min window, 2 cameras

Recce — still to lock

[ ] Tower access letter signed by the Board
[ ] Gallery harness points checked by the rigger
[x] Boat and skipper for Sc. 1 and Sc. 22
[x] Tide tables for the landing stage, 18–29 Jan
[x] Kit up the track: quad and trailer booked
[ ] Generator spot out of earshot of the lantern
[ ] End cottage kitchen dressed back to 1997

Includes a nested board (open it from the canvas above)

Ardvane winter

  • Lamp amber — #e3a548
  • Trim ochre — #b89548
  • Whitewash — #dad7ce
  • Sea slate — #3b4750
  • Night sea — #1c262e
  • Peat — #4b3b2d

Frame rules

- Four fixed set-ups for the routine: stair, kitchen, lantern, track. Same lens, same height, every time.
- Horizon on the lower third. The sea is a wall, not a view.
- Nothing is centred except the lamp.
- Day exteriors under cloud only. Sun days are prep days.
- As the winter goes on the frames stay and Ewan is in fewer of them.