StageIt

GR1 - Project Proposal and Analysis

Who We Are

• Tami Forrester
• Antonio Moreno
• Arthi Vezhavendan

Problem Statement

to be entered

User Analysis

Our two user classes are choreographers and stage directors/managers.
Note: Names of interviewees have been changed.

Choreographers

1. Danny (R)

Stuff goes here yo

2. Sandy (M)

stuff goes here yo

3. Betty (S)

stuff goes here yo

Stage Directors

1. Jean Luc (J)

I interviewed Jean Luc, who was the director last year for one of MIT’s premiere acting group. This year he is the dance director for the same group, so he was able to give us both perspectives. The interviewed gave us insight as to how a director works with their actors and managers in order to coordinate their vision. (also through this interview I learned the process of making actors move to different places is blocking)
Jean Luc clarified that the acting troupe he worked with was rather small, so he was able to maintain most of his notes for blocking in his head. Anything major he just wrote in as a brief note on his script. He also worked with a professional acting guild over the summer, and as assistant he was able to give insight as to how a professional director kept track of blocking. There is something called a call book, which for each play, holds the script of the play adjacent to important calls (lighting, music, soundboard, major scene changes) and a diagram of the stage which held locations of actors and props, and had blocking on it.

As far as issues with the current set up go, they correspond mainly to two things, changes and communication. As a director rehearses with their ensemble, he/she will make changes on the fly as they see things they did not think of in the planning stage. So there are scribbles and smudges in their call book with different formations, and the stage manager has to keep track of all those changes, and Jean Luc feels that the changes are too quick for the manager to jot down. These notes are stored in a text file on a dropbox folder, which is shared with a lot of people. This brings us to our second problem.
Communication with lighting director, soundboard director, and music director is critical, and a lot of things might get lost in between when there is a change the director makes, that does not go up to, for example, the lighting director.The dropbox system they have works with the current small troupe, but it proves to be a challenge with a professional play. This is fixed in a dress rehearsal when the whole play is put together, but dress rehearsals are usually not done until the end of the play, and many ideas are lost in the time. So something that would actively sync any changes would be helpful.


h3. Task Analysis

Stuff goes here yo