EPJ: Project Update

Tom Nagel

April 8, 2011

Electronic Photojournalism

Project Update

For my final project I’ve proposed to cover city meetings and the active participants who create policy. I’m still working on this story, yet for my final project in Flash I’ve been inspired to go in a new direction.

As far as the original story goes, I’m scheduled to meet with a subject whom I met at a neighborhood leaders meeting. Saturday, April 9, I’ll be observing him as he participates in Clean Up Columbia. Which encourages volunteers to pick up letter in their neighborhoods.

For the new direction, I’d like make an interactive piece out of something I call the Big Stack Tour 2010. The Big Stack is basically about 100 prints from my 35mm camera of socializing from October to December 2010. It’s a popular coffee table fixture. Being prints, it’s innately interactive. My cohorts and I enjoy flipping through and looking at sequences as well as making arrangements of collages and juxtapositions.

Having viewed former work by EPJ students such as “This One Hundred,” I’m confident that Flash is fully capable of bringing this interactivity to the mass audience via web publication. Moreover, I have about 8 more rolls of the same nature, which I’ll be developing soon.

Audio will accompany the stack as I’ve been recording gatherings, with permission from peers, at my home and while out and about.

What is the Big Stack? The story is of three month of debauchery and socializing. It is a study of how we play and how we interact. “We” being this much talked about very unique group called “millennials”.

The same time as this material was created, MU undergraduates we’re encouraged to read the book Generation Me. Mizzou Weekly wrote on June, 10, 2010. “’This book allows for a wide range of discussion topics and should spark a lively debate between faculty, staff and students,’ says David Rielley, director of new student programs at MU. ‘Even though you may not fall into that generation stereotype, it helps you understand their perspectives.’”

The Big Stack is an honest, fascinating, and embedded look at our generation.