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Alton Towers week on TV

The "one off" episodes, both the Wicker Man and A Rollercoaster Year, felt like they were lacking depth. There's just random bits and pieces thrown in. It was interesting to see, but not really any storyline, no real introduction or build up of characters, no aim or continuity to the various scenes, problems, etc.

To me it seems like they collect loads of footage and then due to the time constraint of a single episode, most of it ends up on the cutting room floor and lots of context gets lost.

If they could make a series, perhaps of smaller episodes but give each one a purpose, it would be much better. For example look at different departments or different problems each week and see it to a conclusion. However, is there an appetite outside of this forum for such a series? I'm not sure.
 
Yeah it's interesting @Alsty about the editing. Im not sure more episodes would have helped though, the Legoland one was a series but by the last few episodes it just lost interest.

A good documentary you have to just capture a period of time, then edit it well to find the natural thread, rather than force together a story with piecemeal footage. Both documentaries were really awful at this to be honest.

Both felt like the producers arrived too late to capture the real WM development or covid prep. So were left with some boring footage of mundane things happening and had to pad it with filler, things explained in voiceover instead of shown happening.

I love Magic Factory because it manages to weave in Oblivion's development and opening while still keeping the wider focus on life at Alton Towers. It doesn't come off like just a big advert for Oblivion and at the same time gives a huge amount more insight than the Wicker Man doc did for Wicker Man.

The people it follows are a great slice of life mix too, rather than this weird pedestal the recent docs give. Then they're sat down and tell us about their childhood and their family life, before we're even given a reason to care. It comes off like some sort of Linkedin job advert rather than documenting anything.
 
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Mikw said:
Fact fans : The narrater of "A Rollercoaster year" was Mandeep Gill, or "Yaz" from Doctor Who.
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Fact no 2, the narrator of the first documentary about Wicker Man was Toby Jones, who was also in Doctor Who, playing the Dream Lord in an episode in 2010.
 
RoyJess said:
They should have had Jim Carter narrating the documentary
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Have you seen The Story of Alton Towers which Jim Carter narrates which was a documentary on the history of Alton Towers that was only ever released on DVD? It has gloriously awkward shots of John Wardley making him out like he's some sort of maniac who designs the rides just to scare people :eek::p As cheesy as it may be it actually gives a better overview of the history of the park than most of the recent documentaries!

I'd like to see something like Park Life redone. I do think there is an appetite for this, especially after the recent Legoland documentary which was done in a similar style (well less cringe than Park Life!) with weekly episodes focusing on different areas.
I think that a major problem is though that nothing will probably ever top Magic Factory in terms of comedy, nostalgia and Frank the magic bin man action. A production company could probably make an excellent documentary on Alton Towers, but I guarantee that I'd be (and probably some others) would be saying, 'Well does it have people sending threatening letters about a ride to Andy Hine? Does it have a poem about a terrible last day of the season? Does it have Dawn analysing the Toyland Tours backbeat?' Alas, we were spoilt by The Magic Factory.
 
VerticalLoop123 said:
A production company could probably make an excellent documentary on Alton Towers, but I guarantee that I'd be (and probably some others) would be saying, 'Well does it have people sending threatening letters about a ride to Andy Hine? Does it have a poem about a terrible last day of the season? Does it have Dawn analysing the Toyland Tours backbeat?' Alas, we were spoilt by The Magic Factory.
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So many great moments, the thing is Im sure ridiculous things still happen in the real world but nobody makes a real fly on the wall video to capture these moments and go under the skin. Instead it's all very pre-scripted and uninspired.

Will we ever find out what happened to Dawn after she was not asked back?
 
The program certainly was made from a very positive angle. Given the current climate I can understand that they may have wanted a feel good factor. Also, to be fair I think a theme park often does have a positive atmosphere at the start of the season, when the jobs are fresh and there’s a kind of honeymoon period when everyone’s trying to get along with each other. It did feel a bit too much like an advert though, both for the company and for some of the managers.

I do agree that a problem with a one off reality TV show is that no one cares that much about the characters. I don’t watch a lot of reality TV, but I enjoy the Apprentice. It always takes a few episodes to get into it and start caring about who gets ‘fired’ and which side will win.

You do get a lot of interesting people in the theme park industry. There are a lot of students who can be studying all kinds of things. There are people pursuing careers in things like acting, comedy and art, where they’re not at a level where they can do it fulltime. There are people who are coming back into the workplace, for example after being a fulltime parent. There are people who had high powered jobs and then stood back from them to become a carer for someone, like an elderly relative.

I don’t think you need a program that makes everyone look lazy, incompetent or mean spirited. There are a lot of decent people in the theme park industry. But you also don’t want it to be a load of people bigging themselves up and trotting out sound bites that sound like they’ve come straight out of the training manual.
 
The Gadget Show advertised the Alton Towers bit for next weeks show. They were testing Polaroid cameras which ties in with when I saw them going about the site that day.
 
John_P said:
The Gadget Show advertised the Alton Towers bit for next weeks show. They were testing Polaroid cameras which ties in with when I saw them going about the site that day.
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Technically this week then, as it's this Friday (27th).
 
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