The Story
By Benjamin Watt • October 30th, 2007 
The first draft of the story summary that my short film will tell is now up, and can be found by clicking here.
It’s based on a joke that my Dad has told many times (I think since his student days, I don’t know where he heard it originally), and which I thought would make a nice animated film. The punchline is kind of a visual gag, so it doesn’t translate so well to text, but hopefully the final article will do the (sort of funny) joke justice!
I’m still considering my options for how I would actually put together a film like this. I wondered about opening with some people telling jokes around a table, and then somebody starts telling the story of the mouse trap, and we start to see the story unfold in the patent office as the person narrates the story.
There’s also the option to actually show a kind of thought bubble showing a mouse running up to the trap as the man tells the patent officer how it would work, but a) it complicates things a fair bit more and b) I don’t want to actually show the mouse cutting its throat on the razor blade! I’d maybe show that last bit being done by the original joke teller as he shakes his head, and possibly the film ends as we fade out from the laughter (or lack thereof). Decisions, decisions.
Benjamin Watt is the producer of this film
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