Allegra is a narrative feature film exploring creative and sexual expression, autonomy and identity through the world of pole dance.

Unlike traditional film development, Allegra is being built publicly with prototypes, teasers, audience feedback, tests and more.

This page documents what we've tried, what failed, how we pivoted, what changed and how the film continues to evolve.

Coming soon…

Audience interviews
Tested a rough story outline through an AI storyboard and voiceover (Iteration 1)

Initial concept ideas of story and main character - what did audience like, dislike, connect with etc.

For pole dancers - we received two lots of feedback.

For dance enthusiasts - we didn’t receive any feedback.

POLE DANCERS FEEDBACK

The main thing some pole dancers struggle with is finding the time to do pole. Motivation isn’t the issue, and doing it isn’t hard. What is hard is juggling everything to go to pole and make time for it around everything else in your life.
Would like to see the main character as a mother.
I would like to see more of potentially the concept of ‘we can have it all.’
I relate to the aspect of day dreaming about pole and the struggle of trying to balance all aspects of life.

OUR THOUGHTS

We both realised we weren’t feeling connected to the story and didn’t like our main character being passive about life, feminism etc. and having her eyes opened throughout the film - we wanted her to care about shit and be a woman you’d want to be friends with.
You can be a feminist and still struggle with ingrained misogyny, have ‘pick me’ or ‘cool girl’ moments and let yellow and orange flags in someone else slide until they are red flags.
I really wanted to add a competition into the plot to raise the stakes a bit and help drive some of the conflict.
We don’t really want to keep using AI.

Online feedback forms are not the best way of getting feedback (we kinda already knew this), as one of our pole dancers (B) expressed that it was easier to talk about their thoughts rather than find the time and mental space to fill out a form.
Using AI to create storyboards of something really niche like pole is super hard (the dancers limbs are always really whack) and doesn’t save us any time due to the limitations of the technology (having to constantly tweak what AI gives us and figure out the best ways to give prompts), compared to really shitty hand-drawn stick figures.
Also more prompts and back and forth with AI because it takes FOREVER to get it right = potentially greater energy and water use, compared to shitty hand-drawn stick figures with a sharpie and paper.

We are going to use voice notes, phone calls or in-person chats / group screenings and discussions to get feedback from now on.
Meg is a feminist already, happily single, crushing it, enjoying life.
She wants to be at pole more but it’s hard with everything else going on in her life at the moment.
We changed her from being in a long-term relationship and being proposed to, to being single.
She meets a guy and he creates more issues with her juggling life and pole.
Meg signs up to her studios in-house pole competition.
We may have to change the name of the film from ‘Allegra’.
No more AI storyboards.