Lab: How to describe an observation of people at a casino in three different methods

Think of three different ways—other than print—to tell a story. (We’ll assume that your piece has a print component.) Give a descriptive one-paragraph summary for each. Post idea by the end of class.

1. Video or time lapse photography:
I feel that River's casino doesn't allow photography inside its walls, but if it was allowed, this could be an interested method to document the progression of a night in the casino. All of these methods take on a voyeuristic approach, an observer in a strange environment. There could be a camera placed at once table throughout the night to document the kinds of winning and losing that go on there. This footage could then be placed to music and played as a video with captions or subtitles throughout to give the story more background. In this method there would be no spoken word over the film, but just quick easy statistics that wouldn't distract the viewer from the images.

2. Cartoon:
A minimalist cartoon of the people at a casino or progression of time spent at a casino or diagram of the casino. All three could be incorporated together to create an illustrative and factual dynamic to the text of the piece. Observations would be easy to illustrate because all you'd have to do is sit and draw in the space. A progressive way to use a diagram to annotate the space would be to annotate assumptions and first impressions of the space and then take the same illustration and annotate it again once you learned the facts of the space. This could be a light hearted approach to the topic and give it a humorous element.

3. What is left behind:
Telling a story by what is left behind is something that we've done for hundreds of years. Archeologists look at remains to piece together a story about remnants of a community that have been buried for centuries. Doing this in a public space would be non-invasive and you could use garbage, or what people litter and leave behind at places they've once been sitting, to create some kind of narrative about this person or people. Although it would put pressure on obtaining the facts of the story, but it could be an interesting element to the story, stand as a cultural snippet of the city, as well as the behaviors of that person. Certain trash could say something about what that person was eating, how much that food cost, if they were celebrating or playing it safe, or if they drinking, why, etc. There could be tons of information pulled from these remnants that could be verified or grounded into the story with other facts and details.

Lab 3-48 Hour Magazine Idea

Topic:
The River’s Casino
Mainly personal stories with facts sprinkled in for solidity/humor
Online Magazine for video snippets

We’d cover our 48-hour magazine during the weekend of one of the Peirogi eating contests

Length:
Use tumblr as our format to keep updating after our 48 hour deadline

Articles:
1. Gambling Problems/Addiction
2. Seafood Buffet/Free Drinks (pop)
3. Entertainers-Journey Cover Bands
4. Winning and Losing stories/Range of Emotions
5. People, NRA convention-Time Lapse of a certain table/machine
-Convention Center events that draw in crowds to the casino
-How the people in Pittsburgh see the casino vs. other cities in US (Vegas and Atlantic City dress up)
6. Slot Machines, different types, penny machines (kitty glitter-a cat themed slot machine)
7. How to get banned from a casino: Using a fake ID
8. Policy on counting cards: could be a how to illustrative guide, how to play the games, count cards, etc
9. Employee’s outfits and funny stories
10. Card members and Player’s Club (bios on people who have these)
11. Dealer School- story about how to become a card dealer
12. Pro Poker players, any famous people from Pittsburgh seen there?
13. Recent Jackpot Winners!
14. How bad of an idea having a casino credit line is

Art wise:
Photography
Illustrations, cartoons, diagrams, labeled parts
Videos (time lapse and short interviews)

Stats: Short blurbs/side bars/cartoons
About money dropped
How much the employee’s make
How many people go there

Lab 2

Jon Krakauer's Facebook

Chuck Klosterman's Twitter


Chuck tends to post locations and times of his readings and there are plenty of retweets from other users. I think that this is a colloquial way of interacting with his followers. It's nice that he takes the time to respond to people who may or may not be other non-fiction writers who are fans of his work, because he's often @ing users and saying "thanks man". I scroll past these tweets, but I think that they're necessary, and how else would he quickly thank people for kind words? His style of tweeting works for me and I really enjoy what he has to say. It helps when you're clever and funny and can fit your sense of humor in 140 characters.

Krakauer's Facebook is probably not run by him, but one of his PR people. So getting past that, his facebook is a lot of links to his work on Byliner or articles people have written about him. It's nice to be able find excerpts of his work, interviews, and articles so readily. It's almost an archive rather than a personal facebook page, but it's helpful that he makes them available to his followers. It's kind of self indulgent to include your own quotes all over your Facebook page, so that doesn't really work for me. I think it's a pretty impersonal form of social media for non-fiction writers. There are NO status updates, only links to take you away from his facebook page to other pages that are relevant to him. His facebook page doesn't work for me, even though I love the pictures of him at the Magic Bus.

I don't think either of their pages is overbearing or "too-much", but I think that twitter is more successful for writers to interact with their readers than facebook.

Retweet Longshot and Radiolab!

Social Media sites for Slate and Grantland

Slate:
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr?
Last.Fm

Grantland:
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr

Follow Two Non-fiction related pages on Facebook

VICE MAGAZINE
Reporters Without Borders

Online Scavenger Hunt

1. William Faulker's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."-W.F.

2. January 1st, 1644 fell on a Friday. The weather in Philly from the 1st-10th was cloudy and rainy with occasional sunshine and somewhat warm.

3.5 Deadliest Hurricanes
1. Katrina (2005) Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Kentucky 1,500+deaths (approx 1844)
2. Floyd (1999) The Bahamas, the Atlantic Coast, New England and Canada were all affected 56 deaths
3. Allison (2001) Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and up the Atlantic coast 41 deaths
4. Hugo (1989) South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania 35 deaths
5. Alberto (1994) Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana 25 deaths

4. Blueprint of Frank Lloyd Wright's house Fallingwater

5. Ernest Hemingway's 1923 passport photo:

observations
-His number ends in 666
-It is physically stapled to the paper
-He has nice hair
-There is a signature over the image in black ink, I'm assuming his name
-The print of the paper the picture is stapled onto says "United States Passport

Tweet 280 characters about final project idea:

Follow 10 new twitter accounts

1. Rob Dobi, photographer of cool abandoned places.
2. Writing in Public
3. Poets & Writers
4. Chuck Klosterman
5. Grantland
6. Colson Whitehead
7. Elite Editing
8. Pitt Writing Program
9. Feverzine
10. Publisher's Weekly Reviews

3 topic source; urban decay in Pittsburgh

1. Leaving Pittsburgh
2. PA Rust Belt
3. Abandoned Steel Mills