Our Final Work!
Project description: Street Dance Education Website
The website will be a flash website about street dance genres, and the whole site will be based on the image of a street dance club called “Foreign Bodies”. The purpose of the whole project is to raise widespread interest in street dance, and raise the profile of the dance genres in the name of “Foreign Bodies”.
Target audience: Young teens to young adults.
Who is “Foreign Bodies”?
The Foreign Bodies dance group is a street dance club in Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore. They have been around since 1994 and are one of the most active clubs in Singapore’s street dance scene. The club is being run by solely students, without the help of professional instructors or choreographers, hence widely respected and looked up upon by many for the club’s spirit of independence and their passion for street dance.
Foreign Bodies hopes to be able to reach out to more people and share the knowledge of different street dance genres, such as “Locking”, “Popping”, “Hip Hop” and “NewStyle”.
Why Foreign Bodies?
Over the years, Foreign Bodies has gained much popularity and support within the dance community. Hence we can make use of the club’s credibility and reputation in the dance scene to educate the masses about street dance and raise its profile.
Project Goals & Objectives:
Problems to be solved:
• Lack of knowledge in street dance among the public
• Low profile of various dance genres
• Stereotyping of street dance (such as hip hop = doing breakdancing).
The website will be a flash website about street dance genres, and the whole site will be based on the image of a street dance club called “Foreign Bodies”. The purpose of the whole project is to raise widespread interest in street dance, and raise the profile of the dance genres in the name of “Foreign Bodies”.
Target audience: Young teens to young adults.
Who is “Foreign Bodies”?
The Foreign Bodies dance group is a street dance club in Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore. They have been around since 1994 and are one of the most active clubs in Singapore’s street dance scene. The club is being run by solely students, without the help of professional instructors or choreographers, hence widely respected and looked up upon by many for the club’s spirit of independence and their passion for street dance.
Foreign Bodies hopes to be able to reach out to more people and share the knowledge of different street dance genres, such as “Locking”, “Popping”, “Hip Hop” and “NewStyle”.
Why Foreign Bodies?
Over the years, Foreign Bodies has gained much popularity and support within the dance community. Hence we can make use of the club’s credibility and reputation in the dance scene to educate the masses about street dance and raise its profile.
Project Goals & Objectives:
Problems to be solved:
• Lack of knowledge in street dance among the public
• Low profile of various dance genres
• Stereotyping of street dance (such as hip hop = doing breakdancing).
Proposed product:
A complete Flash Website, with the following sections to educate about street dance.
• “Styles” Section
o Showcases 4 different dance genres, each taking 1 subsection:
-Locking
-Popping
-Hip Hop
-NewStyle
o Each dance genre has 1 demo video clip and 1 performance clip.
• “Groove It!” section
o Provides simple dance tutorials for each of the 4 dance genres.
• About Foreign Bodies
o Introduce the club and explain its brief history.
A complete Flash Website, with the following sections to educate about street dance.
• “Styles” Section
o Showcases 4 different dance genres, each taking 1 subsection:
-Locking
-Popping
-Hip Hop
-NewStyle
o Each dance genre has 1 demo video clip and 1 performance clip.
• “Groove It!” section
o Provides simple dance tutorials for each of the 4 dance genres.
• About Foreign Bodies
o Introduce the club and explain its brief history.
Anticipated Outcome:
The site will clearly show the difference in each respective street dance genres, and educate the users about the basic knowledge of each genre.
Users are expected to gain an understanding of the characteristics of the genres and be impressed by the energy and vibrancy presented by the dancers within the site.
Project Key Personnel
Every successful project requires a cooperative team, and it’s no exception for our project. Here’s the key personnel of this project and their respective roles, arranged according to order of duties:
Lee Zijun:
-Graphic design (interface design and packaging design)
-Flash scripting
-Assistance with filming
-Information Flowchart
Soh Chun Kiat:
-Graphic design (interface design)
-Music editing for videos
-Cameraman for filming
-Video editing (compilation clips)
-Project report
Tay Chao Zhong:
-Video editing (dance tutorials and demonstration clips)
-Cameraman for filming
-Assistance with graphic design
Yeow Jia Lin:
-Flash Scripting
-Assistance with filming
-Assistance with graphic design
Project Supervisors: Mr Stephen Choong, Ms Lee Wee Na, Mr Ignatius Tan
-Provides advice on site interface and interaction design
-Ensures that the project is on the right track and direction
Work breakdown & Schedule
The following shows the tasks to be accomplished within the 3 weeks project duration. The dates in brackets are the dates each task was accomplished.
Week 1:
• Project concepts proposal (13th Feb)
• First draft interface design (15th Feb)
Week 2:
• First draft storyboard (18th Feb)
• Filming of videos (19th Feb)
• Improvised interface design (20th Feb)
• Implementation of flash scripts (20th Feb)
• Complete first prototype (22nd Feb)
Week 3:
• Finalised interface design (25th Feb)
• Completion of video-editing (27th Feb)
• Final Information flowchart and storyboard (28th Feb)
• Project report (28th Feb)
• Complete project application (28th Feb)
• Project presentation (29th Feb)
Facilities used
The following venues of Nanyang Polytechnic were used in the process of our project development:
• Block Q computer labs Q313 and Q314
• The amphitheatre for video taking
• Block E level 3 forum for video taking
Additional resources acquired:
• Video camera
• Camera tripod
• Foreign Bodies’ dance videos
Software used:
• Macromedia Flash 8 Professional
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Adobe Illustrator CS2
• Adobe After Effects 6.5
• Final Cut Pro
• Soundtrack Pro
• LiveType
Problems encountered
Various problems were encountered during the course of our project. Here are the problems that we had to solve:
Lack of filming facilities:
As we had intended to film dance videos on our own for our project, we badly needed an appropriate venue for filming. However, we were unable to book the school’s video production studio for filming nor did we have any filming equipments.
Hence, we went around the school and decided to film our videos at the school’s amphitheatre, where the walls are all light grey. Although it wasn’t like an actual filming studio, we could still take our videos well and it look rather professionally taken after editing. As for the filming equipments, we managed to borrow a DV camera from a friend so it wasn’t much of a problem.
Scripting:
Because we are doing on dance, we have to use videos in our site widely and it we have not handled videos in flash before. We tried importing to the stage directly, but realise that we have very little controls over the playing and looping of the videos. Furthermore, it causes the file size to increase. So in the end we managed to source for scripts regarding the loading of videos externally so that we can have more controls.
Future Enhancements
This project currently focuses on only 4 street dance genres. Hence, in the future it could be expanded to include more dance genres such as Lyrical Hip Hop, Ghetto, Krumping, Clowning, Breakdance and many more. This would expand the range of knowledge that each user can acquire from our site.
The site will clearly show the difference in each respective street dance genres, and educate the users about the basic knowledge of each genre.
Users are expected to gain an understanding of the characteristics of the genres and be impressed by the energy and vibrancy presented by the dancers within the site.
Project Key Personnel
Every successful project requires a cooperative team, and it’s no exception for our project. Here’s the key personnel of this project and their respective roles, arranged according to order of duties:
Lee Zijun:
-Graphic design (interface design and packaging design)
-Flash scripting
-Assistance with filming
-Information Flowchart
Soh Chun Kiat:
-Graphic design (interface design)
-Music editing for videos
-Cameraman for filming
-Video editing (compilation clips)
-Project report
Tay Chao Zhong:
-Video editing (dance tutorials and demonstration clips)
-Cameraman for filming
-Assistance with graphic design
Yeow Jia Lin:
-Flash Scripting
-Assistance with filming
-Assistance with graphic design
Project Supervisors: Mr Stephen Choong, Ms Lee Wee Na, Mr Ignatius Tan
-Provides advice on site interface and interaction design
-Ensures that the project is on the right track and direction
Work breakdown & Schedule
The following shows the tasks to be accomplished within the 3 weeks project duration. The dates in brackets are the dates each task was accomplished.
Week 1:
• Project concepts proposal (13th Feb)
• First draft interface design (15th Feb)
Week 2:
• First draft storyboard (18th Feb)
• Filming of videos (19th Feb)
• Improvised interface design (20th Feb)
• Implementation of flash scripts (20th Feb)
• Complete first prototype (22nd Feb)
Week 3:
• Finalised interface design (25th Feb)
• Completion of video-editing (27th Feb)
• Final Information flowchart and storyboard (28th Feb)
• Project report (28th Feb)
• Complete project application (28th Feb)
• Project presentation (29th Feb)
Facilities used
The following venues of Nanyang Polytechnic were used in the process of our project development:
• Block Q computer labs Q313 and Q314
• The amphitheatre for video taking
• Block E level 3 forum for video taking
Additional resources acquired:
• Video camera
• Camera tripod
• Foreign Bodies’ dance videos
Software used:
• Macromedia Flash 8 Professional
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Adobe Illustrator CS2
• Adobe After Effects 6.5
• Final Cut Pro
• Soundtrack Pro
• LiveType
Problems encountered
Various problems were encountered during the course of our project. Here are the problems that we had to solve:
Lack of filming facilities:
As we had intended to film dance videos on our own for our project, we badly needed an appropriate venue for filming. However, we were unable to book the school’s video production studio for filming nor did we have any filming equipments.
Hence, we went around the school and decided to film our videos at the school’s amphitheatre, where the walls are all light grey. Although it wasn’t like an actual filming studio, we could still take our videos well and it look rather professionally taken after editing. As for the filming equipments, we managed to borrow a DV camera from a friend so it wasn’t much of a problem.
Scripting:
Because we are doing on dance, we have to use videos in our site widely and it we have not handled videos in flash before. We tried importing to the stage directly, but realise that we have very little controls over the playing and looping of the videos. Furthermore, it causes the file size to increase. So in the end we managed to source for scripts regarding the loading of videos externally so that we can have more controls.
Future Enhancements
This project currently focuses on only 4 street dance genres. Hence, in the future it could be expanded to include more dance genres such as Lyrical Hip Hop, Ghetto, Krumping, Clowning, Breakdance and many more. This would expand the range of knowledge that each user can acquire from our site.
Also, the site could be made more interactive for the users. Interactive dance games can be included to engage the users further in knowing more about street dance.
Credits
This project wouldn’t have been made possible without the following personnel:
• Project supervisors (Mr Stephen Choong, Ms Lee Wee Na, Mr Ignatius Tan)
o For providing invaluable advice and guidance.
• NYP Student Affairs Officers
o For approving the use of the amphitheatre for filming.
• Foreign Bodies Dancers (Wei Keat, Wei Fong, Lesner, Ryuta)
o For agreeing to be filmed for our site’s videos.
o For the video camera that Wei Fong provided.
• Ian Poh Wei Yi
o For providing many footage of Foreign Bodies for our use and references.
Also,
• Blogger.com, our blog host.
• Yahoo.com and Flickr, our major research resources.
• Thefwa.com, for countless inspirations.
Last but not least, big thanks to those who supported us and gave us encouragements, advice and help along the way. THANK YOU! =)
posted by CeeKay at
6:19 PM
1 Comments
