1. What is your essential question? What is the best answer to your question and why?
My essential question is "What is the most important factor for successful zombie fiction?" My best answer is central message and theme. The reason why a work of fiction's central message is important is because it is what defines our society and culture. The things we find interesting in media are those that we can relate to as a society. For fiction to be successful, it must contain a central message we all understand and value.
2. What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
At the beginning of senior project my essential question was originally, "What makes zombie culture so popular in today's society?" Upon performing days of research, I came across various answers that were just too general and in all honesty quite obvious. Then I realized I had to change my essential question so that it could pinpoint to just one solid answer. From then on out I didn't really know what to do, so I asked my mentor Matt Mogk (head of Zombie Research Society) and he told me I should research cultural anxieties. I wondered why cultural anxieties, and after doing what I was told, I realized that was what zombie fiction was all about. Then I figured that there must be more to what makes zombie culture popular. I thought that in order for zombies to become popular in society, they must be portrayed throughout some sort of media such as cinema, literature, and gaming. This finally led me to my current essential question, "What is the most important factor for successful zombie fiction?" Since most successful works of fiction aren't those simply about zombies but about something more meaningful as my mentor said, cultural anxieties, it has become my best answer.
3. What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
Some problems I faced were getting the first interview done on time. My mentor was out of town at the time to go speak on behalf of Zombie Research Society at a convention known as Infect Scranton which takes place in Pennsylvania. In order to resolve that issue, I contacted Matt multiple times to remind him about the interview and followed up on the day he was actually able to be interviewed. Although it was a bit complicated to get done at first, I eventually got it turned in so I'm proud to say that I managed to make it through. Another problem I faced was figuring out what to do for Independent Component 1. I asked my mentor once again for advice and to my surprise he had a project set for me to work on. He assigned me the George Romero Star Project in which I was to help raise money to try to get George Romero a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I was to have this done by contacting thousands of zombie fanatics and spreading the word of this campaign. All had been going well, the Zombie Research Society and I raised around $17,000 out of the $45,000 that was required. I had even gotten an article published on the LA Times Hero Complex to support our campaign but unfortunately the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce weren't too happy that the price to maintain the star was announced. So the project had to be called off and we are as of now trying to come up with a new way to honor George Romero for all of his great work in advancing the zombie genre into what it is now.
4. What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
Two of the most significant sources I have used to answer my essential question were
-First Interview with Matt Mogk because it helped me find my first answer and get everything to fall in place.
-The Living Dead by John Joseph Adams because it helped support two of my answers: central message and characters.
5. What is your product and why?
My product is the ability to communicate with others more effectively. I can now arrange interviews very easily due to the fact that's practically what I did the majority of the time during my mentorship. Besides having to set up interviews for senior project, I also had to set up interviews for Matt on radioshows. I was required to contact every talk show host on a specific list to set up an interview regarding the month of May- Zombie Awareness Month. I have also gained connections with a few zombie authors (Matt Mogk, Jonathan Maberry,Don Roff, John Joseph Adams, Steve Hockensmith).
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