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.