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- Project Name
- “Gettysburg College’s Majestic Theater: A Big Role in a Small Town”
- Project Summary
- This project intends to illustrate the role of small-town movie theaters in communities across America, display the factors that can contribute to their failure, and use Gettysburg College’s Majestic Theater as a case study to examine the examples in which these theaters survive and thrive.
- Research question: What is the role of small-town and independent movie theaters in the U.S., and what place do they have in our societies and communities? Why have some examples, especially Gettysburg College’s Majestic Theater, continued to thrive while others have been forced to close?
- Project scope: Throughout the eight-week time-frame, I hope to outline the themes commonly found in scholarly articles denoting the role of small-town theaters; research the instances of theaters that have not been able to survive; understand the forces behind the Majestic Theater’s continued success; and work with Scalar, TimelineJS, and StoryMapJS to present these findings in an informative and accessible way.
- Project audience: The project audience for my project includes Gettysburg College students in various departments (including but not limited to Cinema/Media Studies; English; Business/OMS; Theater); Adams County community members who have been affected by the Majestic Theater in any way; and other people across the country and the world with any interest in small-town movie theaters, film history, media industries, and film exhibition in general.
- Deliverables
- WordPress OR Scalar as my platform
- TimelineJS
- StoryMapJS
- Special Collections sources – need to digitize
- Newspaper articles (Gettysburg Times, The Gettysburgian)
- Videos/media/photographs
- Graphs and charts
- Timeline
- Week 2:
- Visit Special Collections to overview Majestic Theater material
- Practice using either TimelineJS or StoryMapJS
- Finish Project Charter by Friday at 9am
- Research/compile small-town theaters that have shut down
- Week 3:
- Work on digitizing/selecting Majestic Theater sources in Special Collections
- Wireframes due by Friday at 9am
- Work on TimelineJS of the Majestic Theater history
- Write Reflective Post #2
- Week 4:
- Nail down “Intro to Small-Town Theaters” page
- Nail down “About” page (sources/creator info)
- Week 5:
- Visualization due Friday at 9am
- Nail down “Competition” section (stakes/examples)
- Write Reflective Post #3
- Week 6:
- First draft project link due Friday at 9am
- Nail down “Surviving and Thriving” section (buoys/examples)
- Nail down “Present and Future” section (social media/community interaction w/ submission option)
- Week 7:
- Implement feedback/changes/updates after deliberation
- Final draft project link due Friday at 9am
- Week 8:
- Practice for presentation
- Present!!!
- Write Reflective Post #4
- End of Life/Future Plans
- Towards the end of my Scalar site, I’d like to include a “Majestic Present and Future” page which embeds photographs/videos of community members’ shared content regarding the theater, in addition to an embedded social media (Instagram?) post carousel displaying posts linked to the Majestic Theater via location. This would be an opportunity for the project to be ongoing, as community members could submit photos throughout the years that displays the role of the Majestic in the community.
