Documentary Treatment

Documentary Film Treatment

The Cut-Rate Union (working title)

Format: Feature-length documentary, 85–95 minutes Genre: Investigative / labor / character-driven Working logline:

A young electrician discovers his “union” job has been paying him less than the rate for nineteen years — and that the union running the discount is one of the largest in America.

Audience comparables:

American Factory (2019) — labor and dignity, character-led
The Corporation (2003) — institutional investigation made accessible
Hoffa (Errol Morris-style approach) — labor history with present-tense stakes
Knock Down the House (2019) — multiple parallel character stories tied by a structural argument

Distribution targets, in priority order:

Apple TV+ Documentaries (relationship with labor stories: Boys State, The Reluctant Traveler)
Netflix Originals (range from Last Chance U working-class storytelling to Dirty Money institutional investigation)
HBO Documentaries (McMillions, The Vow — character-driven institutional stories)
Hulu (Fyre Fraud model — internet-native institutional exposé)
Festival circuit first if no streaming pickup: Sundance (US Documentary Competition), Tribeca, SXSW, IDA DocuClub

PART 1 — Why This Film Now

Documentaries about American labor have had a strong decade — American Factory, Union, Working: What We Do All Day, Made in America, Time. The audience exists. The platforms are buying. But none of those films has told the story of one union deliberately undercutting another — which is the foundational betrayal at the heart of modern labor’s slow decline.

This film is also a story about information asymmetry — how working people can lose a fortune over decades because no one ever showed them a simple side-by-side comparison. That theme is universal. It will land with audiences who have never seen the inside of a union hall.

And it is a story with a protagonist’s arc. A worker discovers what’s been done to him. He has to decide what to do. He brings others along. That structure is what makes a documentary watchable rather than a PowerPoint with B-roll.

PART 2 — Three-Act Structure

ACT ONE — The Job (≈30 minutes)

Opening sequence (5 min): Cold open with a working electrician — call him MARCUS, age 26, three years into Local 57 — on a jobsite in St. Louis. Hand-held camera. Real work, not staged. Voiceover from Marcus is plain and unguarded:

“I thought I was set. Union job, benefits, pension. My mom cried when I got in. Some of my friends are still doing DoorDash.”

We see him work. We meet his foreman, his crew, his fiancée at home, his mother at the kitchen table. The film loves him. The audience loves him.

Inciting incident (10 min): A retired IBEW journeyman — call him DON, late sixties, gravelly, sharp — runs into Marcus at a hardware store and starts a conversation. Don asks Marcus what he makes. Marcus tells him. Don pauses and says, “You know that’s not the rate, right?”

This is the scene the entire film hinges on. We then watch Marcus, over weeks, gradually accept that the math is real. He looks up the IBEW rate. He pulls a Davis-Bacon determination. He shows his fiancée. She does the arithmetic on the back of an envelope. She doesn’t speak for a long time.

The widening (15 min): Marcus starts asking other Local 57 electricians on his crew. Most don’t know. One does and shrugs. Another laughs bitterly and says, “I’ve known since 2014.” We meet:

TINA, mid-thirties journeywoman, two kids, was an IBEW apprentice who washed out at year two and ended up at Local 57. Her story is the one that makes audience members cry without warning.
DEVON, 22, just got into Local 57 last month. He’s the youngest member of the film’s central group. By the end of the film, he is the most changed.
RAY, 55, twenty-year carpenter, member of UBC long before Local 57’s electrical program existed. He is not the villain. He is the working person who hates what his union’s leadership has done.

End of Act One: Marcus, Tina, Devon, and Ray each, separately, decide that they cannot un-know what they now know.

ACT TWO — The Discovery (≈40 minutes)

The widening, part two (10 min): Marcus connects with the IBEW campaign team — through an intake form, a phone call, a coffee at a diner. The film follows that first conversation in long, patient takes. The coordinator is calm and competent. The film does not editorialize. The numbers speak.

The film then steps back and tells the institutional story — but through Marcus’s eyes, not a narrator’s. We see archival footage: news clips from 2007 when UBC’s electrical program was announced. We see UBCJA’s disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO in 2001 (real news footage, real context). We see the 2014 IBEW informational video.

The data sequence (10 min): A bravura five-minute sequence laying out the math, structured as Marcus and Tina sitting at a kitchen table with the campaign’s actuary. Real numbers. Real graphs, animated cleanly. The actuary is unflashy, credible, and patient. The conclusion lands: each of these workers will retire with approximately $X less than the same hours under the IBEW agreement. Marcus and Tina look at each other. The room is quiet.

This sequence is the film’s argument, made not through narration but through one of the most powerful documentary devices ever used: two working people doing arithmetic together until they understand.

The institutional story (10 min): We meet the campaign team. We see the Bridge Fund being assembled in real time. We see the first Davis-Bacon complaint filed at the Wage and Hour Division.

We try to talk to UBC International. They decline on camera. We show that decline cleanly — no editorializing. We show the carpenters’ position fairly through their public statements. We let them speak in their own words.

We meet RAY more deeply — the senior carpenter. He gives us, on background and then on the record, a portrait of what it has been like inside UBC to watch this happen. He is moving and complicated.

The widening, part three (10 min): Other workers begin to come forward. The intake line at the Transition Fund starts ringing. The film captures actual workers calling in (with permission, faces sometimes obscured). We see the first transitions: workers actually moving to IBEW dispatch, signing the paperwork, getting their first checks at the new rate.

We see one worker fail to transition — change his mind, return to Local 57. The film does not judge him. The film holds that complexity steady.

End of Act Two: A major regional general contractor publicly commits to area electrical standards on all future projects. The campaign has its first institutional win.

ACT THREE — The Reckoning (≈20 minutes)

Escalation (10 min): The campaign goes public in a coordinated day of action across six locals. The film follows it across multiple cities. Picket lines. A rally. A confrontation at a UBC training center — handled by Marcus and his crew with dignity, no violence, no caricature.

A reporter from a major outlet has been working the story (one of the press kit pitches has landed). The piece runs. The film captures the day it is published — the campaign team reading it together, Marcus showing it to his fiancée, his mother calling him, Tina’s kids asking what it means.

The first Davis-Bacon complaint produces a finding. A contractor is required to pay back wages. The film handles this carefully — it is not a triumphal scene. It is a quiet validation that the math was always real.

The choice (5 min): Marcus has held off transitioning during filming. He has been honest about why: he is engaged, planning a wedding, doesn’t want to risk a paycheck. The Bridge Fund’s wage floor and pension grant are now in front of him on paper. He sits at the kitchen table with his fiancée. They go through the numbers one more time.

He decides.

The film does not tell you what he decides until the next scene.

Closing sequence (5 min): Six months later. Marcus is on a different jobsite. He is working under an IBEW agreement. He has not become a militant or an evangelist. He is just doing the same work he was doing in the opening scene. The same hands, the same conduit, the same panel.

The difference is in his paycheck. We see it.

Voiceover, last words of the film:

“I’m doing the same job I did the day Don asked me what I made. The only thing that changed is that I know.”

Cut to black. Credits roll over a closing card:

Since this film began production, [N] workers represented by the Area Standards Transition Fund have transitioned to the IBEW area standard. The fund remains open. The campaign continues.

PART 3 — Characters

Primary

MARCUS — protagonist. 26, journeyman-track at Local 57. Smart, plain-spoken, undramatic. Engaged. His mother is a nursing aide. His father left. He is the kind of working-class American documentary subject whose face audiences trust on instinct.

TINA — co-protagonist. Mid-30s, two kids, divorced. Washed out of an IBEW apprenticeship at year two. Ended up at Local 57. The film’s most complicated character. Carries the audience’s empathy through Act Two.

DEVON — youngest. 22, just signed up. By the end, the most changed of the four central workers.

RAY — the senior UBC carpenter who is on the right side of the question. The film cannot work without him. He grants the film moral standing.

DON — the retired IBEW journeyman whose throwaway hardware-store question starts the entire chain. We see him sparingly. He is a kind of folk-hero figure.

Secondary

The Coordinator — the IBEW campaign staffer who handles Marcus’s first intake. Calm, competent, patient. Probably a woman, late 30s. Quiet authority.

The Actuary — the independent expert who runs the numbers at the kitchen table in Act Two. Boring on purpose. Credible because boring.

A UBC International spokesperson — handled through their public statements only, since they decline interviews on camera. The film treats their declination fairly and never as a “gotcha.”

A signatory NECA contractor — explains, in plain terms, why his company stopped using Local 57 electrical labor and went back to IBEW. Adds business credibility to a story that could otherwise feel “union” to general audiences.

An elected official — preferably mid-level, sympathetic but not glory-seeking. Provides the political context with restraint.

Voices the film deliberately does not include

Pundits or talking heads explaining the labor movement to the audience.
Narrator (this film has no narrator).
Anyone from outside the region who hasn’t been on these jobs.

The film’s argument lives or dies on the credibility of working people in front of the camera. Everyone else is supporting cast.

PART 4 — Visual Approach

Director’s role-model films:

American Factory (Reichert/Bognar) — patient, observational, unforced.
Time (Garrett Bradley) — formally beautiful, emotionally complete, lets working-class people be subjects rather than objects.
Crip Camp (LeBrecht/Newnham) — archival weaving, character density.

Shooting style:

Two cameras at all times for kitchen-table conversations. Master + close. Patient. No coverage-style cutting.
Handheld for jobsite work. Steady but human.
Locked-off interview style for the campaign-team scenes — to formally distinguish institutional voices from worker voices.
Minimal music. The film is quiet. Music when it appears (likely an original score by a regional musician) is sparse and unmanipulative.

Color palette:

The film leans into the actual color of construction work: high-vis yellow/orange, steel gray, concrete, the deep blue of evening, the warm yellow of a kitchen at night.
No filters. No grading that erases the realness.

Archival:

2007 announcement footage of the UBC electrical program
AFL-CIO disaffiliation coverage from 2001
2014 IBEW informational video, partially excerpted
News clips on the IRA prevailing-wage rules
Family photos and home video, from Marcus, Tina, Devon, Ray with their consent

PART 5 — Budget Sketch

Total target: $750,000–$1,200,000 finished film Recommended financing structure: 50% from IBEW International + locals as documentary grant; 50% from a film-side production company in exchange for distribution rights (standard documentary co-production).

Line	Budget
Director fee (recognized documentary filmmaker, ~2 years)	$150,000
Producer fee	$100,000
Cinematographer (DP, ~120 shoot days)	$120,000
Sound recordist + post-production sound	$60,000
Editor (~9 months)	$90,000
Composer + music licensing	$40,000
Archival licensing	$50,000
Travel + lodging + jobsite logistics	$80,000
Equipment + rentals	$60,000
Legal + E&O insurance	$60,000
Color + finishing + delivery	$50,000
Festival submission + distribution prep	$40,000
Contingency (10%)	$90,000
TOTAL	$990,000

Estimated IBEW exposure: $400K–$600K, depending on co-production terms. Lower than the cost of a single year of paid advertising in market, and the asset lives forever.

PART 6 — Director / Producer Profile (who you actually hire)

Do not hire a corporate video shop, a union AV team, or a friend of a member. This film needs to be made by people who can land it on a top-tier streamer.

Director profile:

Has at least one previous feature documentary that played a top-tier festival (Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, DOC NYC) or got a major streaming acquisition
Has documented experience with working-class subjects, not just political subjects
Is not afraid to film a 6 a.m. call time on a construction site
Will not impose narration or talking heads or other formal devices that violate the film’s argument

Producer profile:

Has relationships at Apple TV+, Netflix, HBO, Hulu, or Showtime documentary departments
Has produced at least three documentary features
Is willing to navigate the union-financing structure cleanly with proper legal separation between editorial and funder

Recommended outreach (not endorsements — verify current availability):

Steven Bognar / Julia Reichert’s production team (post-Reichert)
Garrett Bradley
Penny Lane
RaMell Ross
Brett Story
Joe Berlinger’s team
Magnolia Pictures’ documentary unit
Story Syndicate (Liz Garbus, Dan Cogan) — particularly well-suited for the institutional-investigation flavor

A short list of 6–10 directors, with a one-page treatment based on this document, sent to their agents through a producer or entertainment attorney, is how this film actually gets made.

PART 7 — Editorial Independence

The film cannot be propaganda. If it is propaganda, it does not get picked up, it does not get reviewed, and it does not change anyone’s mind. The financing structure must ensure that:

IBEW does not have final cut. The director has final cut, as is standard in documentary practice.
IBEW does not have approval over which workers appear, what they say, or how they are portrayed.
The film may include criticism of IBEW. If a worker wants to tell a story about being failed by IBEW in the past, that story stays in the film. The film’s authority depends on this.
IBEW has no role in editing or selecting archival material.
IBEW’s relationship to the film is disclosed transparently in the end credits.

Documentary subjects and audiences detect propaganda instantly. A film that pulls its punches is worse than no film. The investment is only worth making if the IBEW is willing to be one of the subjects of an honest film, not the author of a friendly one.

PART 8 — Distribution & Impact Strategy

Festival window (months 18–24 of production):

World premiere at Sundance (target) or Tribeca (fallback)
Festival circuit: SXSW, Hot Docs, Full Frame, DOC NYC, IDA Awards
Concurrent industry screenings for streamers and acquirers
A successful festival run typically results in a streaming acquisition in the $500K–$2M range, which alone covers a significant portion of production

Streaming release (months 24–30):

Target a Q4 release tied to construction-industry news cycles and end-of-year list visibility
Synchronize with the campaign’s anniversary moment (e.g., the 20th anniversary of the 2007 UBC electrical agreement, in 2027) for maximum narrative leverage

Impact campaign (concurrent and post-release):

Free community screenings in every IBEW local hall in the six-local footprint, followed by Q&A with subjects
Curated screenings for state labor councils, building trades councils, and AFL-CIO state federations
Educational licensing to labor studies programs at universities (Cornell ILR, UC Berkeley Labor Center, UMSL, others)
An accompanying impact website with worker testimonials, the campaign’s Transition Fund intake form, and downloadable discussion guides
Press tour for Marcus, Tina, and Devon (with their consent, and with support) at key industry events

Long tail:

The film, if well-made, will be cited in labor scholarship and journalism for a decade. Every future story about UBC electrical work — in any city — will reference it. That is the asset.

This treatment is a working document. It is suitable for showing to documentary directors, producers, agents, and potential financiers. Before any pre-production commitments, the treatment should be developed further by the hired director in consultation with the worker-subjects and the campaign committee. Worker participation in any documentary is voluntary, informed, and continuous; consent is a process, not a signature.