The Stapler Man - ID# 586

Morton West

Seven Day Challenge

Entry Description

Shawn is haunted by memories of being tortured. Will he ever escape his past?

Recent Teacher Comments

Judge 1

Positives: You did a good job of making the dreams feel like dreams - and very clearly differentiating reality it. Having them in black and white, using shakier handheld camera movements, and the music all worked really well together. The lighting at the ending inside of this tunnel that the main character is trapped in, worked really well to make it dark, but not too dark, while also making it feel very freaky, mysterious and claustrophobic.

Improvements: The editing here could have been a lot tighter. The pacing of the whole thing felt way too slow and a lot of moments/pauses could have been cut down so that we stay in the action for a larger percentage of the film. For example, the opening scene was about a minute and a half, and you could have probably cut that in half by making the conversation about Flash shorter, have the girl stapling come in early, and have his reaction much more immediate - instead of having him sit and stare at her for so long before he goes into the back room, and paces for awhile before he actually leaves. I feel like the story was left a little bit too ambiguous. We have all of these dreams with the evil stapler man, but then at the end he appears in real life. So were those dreams not just dreams? Also, who is the stapler man, and why is he attacking our main character? I feel like the story could have been a lot stronger if we were given some more information.

Judge 2

Positives:

Improvements:

Judge 3

Positives: Fun horror narrative.

Improvements: Needs more exposition. Unsure what the stapler man represents. is it the kid's suppressed fear of office supplies? Is it his guilt?

Judge 4

Positives:

Improvements: