All My Children AMC: The Prospect Park Era (old production thread)

[ThisIsHeavy]

Okay yeah, I just watched the video and they really shouldn't list it under OLTL. I loved every bit of it but it really mostly felt like an AMC video.

[KMan101]

Wow. Another incredibly beautiful clip. They seem to pick the right music each and every time. I can't help but get a little teary.

The sets look amazing. I love seeing Llanfair! Beautiful.

[AllMyDaysatGH]

For my international peeps...It's up on YT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTQ8kQxzLd4

Thanks...IMO, how strange!

[EnglishTea]

She is the stage manager.

[Ryan Chamberlain]

Awww. I loved that video. Darnell putting his head on Debbi's shoulder. Jill talking about James Mitchell. Erika talking about Melissa and Jerry. It was sweet.

[alexisfan07]

It's insane that of 27 characters in the final ABC opening, only 8 are returning, with one gaining their original portrayer back and one back as a recast.

Erica, Ryan, Greenlee, Kendall, Griffin, Cara, Jake, Amanda, Tad, Krystal, Marissa, JR, Colby, Asher, Caleb, Opal, Frankie, Randi, Brot, Madison, Scott, Liza, David, Jesse, Angie, Jackson, Bianca

But we're also gaining five returns that were short-term at the end of the ABC run (Dixie, Zach, Adam, Brooke, Joe). Crazy how much history there is to mine!

[Vee]

You call it insane, I call it a godsend. Almost all those characters needed to GTFO, and almost all of the rest weren't really needed anymore.

[Chris B]

I agree Vee. It works in the shows favor to have new cast members (still tied to the shows history) so you can mine new, fresh stories and relationships, plus they got rid of dead weight. Another thing to consider is the length of these shows.

[jfung79]

Coronation Street has about 50 characters and is only 30 minutes (22 minutes or so without commercials). The length is really not much of a limiting factor.

I think AMC could have done plenty of fresh stories while keeping more of the cast they had, but I'm not going to start in on all that again.

Excited for the 29th!

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks! I had given up hope--Wonderful!

I am only a casual Corrie fan (though it's very popular here in Canada--airs nightly at 7:30), but they certainlyd o not feature 50 characters regularly. I think they mostly do a god job on how they focus on characters--but it's sooo different. First, UK soaps are often built on much shorter scenes (and more interaction between a lot of characters. More importantly, Corrie has a much better budget than these websoaps will have--and the websoaps to an extent have to build up a new audience, Corrie doesn't. It's apples and oranges.

[jfung79]

They rotate the characters in and out of the frontburner, but you don't actually go that long between getting at least a little glimpse of any one of most of the 50+ adult characters, just a few weeks. Wikipedia and the show's website (http://www.itv.com/coronationstreet/characters/) have the list of current characters

I agree the scenes/interactions are shorter and it's a different style of writing, and also there are more community spaces where people can just be hanging out in the background (the bistro, the pub). Pine Valley is more spread out so people don't just bump into each other on the street and naturally all go down to the pub at the end of the day.

And yes, the budget is higher on the British soaps. But it's more a budget limitation than a length limitation why AMC couldn't have more characters in my opinion.

[EricMontreal22]

Right--I actually completely agree with all of that so I won't pick on you for bringing this back up (one thing I had to get used to with UK soaps is how they don't use music scores either--though they do use a lot of "diagetic" music and people say in the movie biz (ie music on the radio, etc.)

[Chris B]

I watch Hollyoaks so I'm aware of their larger casts, but even in those cases I think it's a mistake. Often on British soaps character disappear for weeks, sometimes months at a time. I think that's sloppy. I always hate when a big family event happens and there are a few people missing because of this. I would hate for the Prospect Park soaps to attempt large casts like that, or even casts as big as the hour soaps. It just leads to sloppy storytelling IMO.

As for the cast situation, I feel like AMC at least was canceled for a reason. They'd tried so many things and it wasn't clicking and while I thought the show was good at the end, it still couldn't get traction in the ratings department. Overall I feel both of these soaps need to take the opportunity to reboot as new shows. Introduce new or old families, like they're doing with Opal, new characters and just an overall freshness. I don't want to tune in and see the same thing I saw when the shows ended on ABC. I won't be upset if that happens, but I do feel they need to be more current.

[John]

[AllMyDaysatGH]

Our girl is so going to be coming back full time soon, y'all. Soon.