Film Treatment

A Story of a Stapler
The purpose of this film is to subtly prod people to become more perceptive of the presence of bullying in schools. In order to accomplish this goal, it is disguised as a fun, short film in order to infiltrate the viewers mind. This is because a lot of people close their minds to public service announcements and things that they anticipate might be moderately tough to swallow.
The setting: a high school classroom. A teacher or janitor walks into the classroom and sets a cardboard box on a desk. He/she then opens it up and takes out one of the objects it contains, a brand new stapler. He/she unpacks it, and sets it on the teacher’s desk. Fade to black. When the picture fades up again, the classroom has students in it. They pass in their work and staple it, and every time the stapler is pushed it grunts and makes a sounds that indicates it is in pain. This is an extreme form of personification. Eventually the stapler begins to jam on papers, and students just whack the stapler against the desk to remedy the problem. The stapler runs out of staples, and it “dies.” (There will be a death rattle) At the end of the film, there will be a black background and text that fades up on it. The message will be, “It might be okay to treat a stapler like this, but it isn’t okay to treat your peers like this. Stop bullying in schools.” (Or something to that effect.)