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I’m Franck Chapelat the director of Just Dance
what makes Just Dance unique for a start is the style of the dances
their humorous side
in Just Dance we see mermaids dance
lots of penguins, socks crocodiles, camels...
you don’t necessarily see that sort of thing in other dance games
we start off with a song, ideas come up
and we try to mix everything together and see what comes out
what seems the most interesting
sometimes, the ideas come before the tracks
sometimes the track gives rise to the idea
and sometimes it can be the dancer who has a suggestion for the choreography.
We generally start with the song, obviously
the team takes the song as a base and tries to think what sort of dance
what background, what character we could use for it
we work with dancer-choreographers who offer ideas
then there’s a period where we bounce ideas back and forth
we give them our feedback as non-dancers they give us their professional point of view
and we try to make things more simple, more fun with a repetition of movements
so that players get fun out of the dance
even the first time they do it.
It’s crazy to think that people from another country
who speak another language will be watching the dance you’ve created
that they’ll be doing the same moves as the ones you devised at Ubisoft...
I remember: one day we were doing a really tiring dance
and at the end - just for a laugh I collapsed
and rolled around on the floor and they said “Great. We’re keeping it in!”
and I was like “Are you sure?
I only did it because I’m tired!”
I have so many good memories working on creating the game
it took a very long time we did loads of different things
there was a lot of dressing up we worked with costume designers
make-up artists, shootings... it was amazing
for me, the best moment was really designing the choreography
when we got together with these people who didn’t know how to dance
and they had to try to recreate our movements there was a lot of laughter
but at the same time it was a huge pleasure
to be able to share what I love doing with them all.