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Coney Island in New Travel Channel Series on Boardwalks

Posted in Travel, video, tagged Boardwalk, Coney Island, Travel Channel, TV Series on July 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Crew shooting at the Coney Island Cyclone for an upcoming Travel Channel series on Boardwalks. July 21, 2012. Photo © Jim McDonnell

Last weekend a crew from Indigo Films was in Coney Island on a two-day shoot for an upcoming Travel Channel series. The new show is tentatively titled “Amazing Boardwalk Empires.” They filmed Coney Island’s 22nd Annual Sand Sculpting Contest and some of the features of the boardwalk as well as Luna Park and Scream Zone, the Cyclone, Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, the Coney Island History Project, the Coney Island Sideshow and Lola Star Boutique. Coney Island was selected for the show because the Riegelmann Boardwalk is among the top beach boardwalks in the country on lists as various as National Geographic, Travel & Leisure and USA Today.

Extra being outfitted with GoPro helmet cam to ride the Air Race, Luna Park. July 21, 2012. Photo © Jim McDonnell

In the photo above, one of the extras is being mounted with a GoPro helmet cam to ride Zamperla’s Air Race, according to photographer Jim McDonnell. The HD camera is used a lot in shooting sports and POV videos. In the photo below, taken inside the Coney Island History Project exhibit center, Amanda Deutch is being interviewed about the history of Coney’s Boardwalk, where she leads walking tours for the History Project.

Indigo Films is an award-winning independent television production company that has produced such Travel Channel shows as Insane Coaster Wars and America’s Most Haunted Places. The Travel Channel series on Boardwalks is expected to air in September.

Travel Channel Interviewing Amanda Deutch at Coney Island History Project. July 21, 2012. Photo © Coney Island History Project

Video of the Day: Coney Island Lights by Jim McDonnell

Posted in amusement park, Amusement ride, video, tagged carnival lights, Coney Island, Deno's Wonder Wheel Park, Jim McDonnell, Luna Park, Scream Zone on July 8, 2012| 2 Comments »

“Coney Island Lights,” a new video by photographer and self-described “footage guru” Jim McDonnell, is lyrical and bewitching. Lights from Coney’s various amusement parks and attractions come together fluidly thanks to masterful editing by Jim, who knows Coney Island and has a talent for distilling its essence into a short film.

Luna Park’s Air Race ride looks like its performing a ballet with the whirling pinwheels on the park’s lighted gate. You’ll also catch sight of the dancing lights of the landmark Cyclone and Wonder Wheel, Deno’s Carousel and the blinking red eye of the Spook-A-Rama Cyclops, 12th Street’s Saturn 6, Surf Avenue’s Eldorado, the new Boardwalk signs and Scream Zone rides, and the old school carnival rides in Cha Cha’s Steeplechase Park.

In 2010 and 2011, ATZ posted Jim McDonnell’s “Coney Island Dancing” videos. We’re looking forward to “Coney Island Dancing 2012,” which is being shot over the course of this summer.

Saturday Matinee: A Switchback Railway (1898)

Posted in Amusement ride, film, video, tagged La Marcus Thompson, roller coaster, roller coaster history, silent film, Switchback, Switchback Railway on April 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

La Marcus Thompson’s Gravity Switchback Pleasure Railway debuted in 1884 in Coney Island on the site where the Cyclone thrills today. Film footage doesn’t exist since the Kinetoscope wasn’t invented until the 1890s, but this documentary short by British filmmaker R.W. Paul shows patrons at an English fairground enjoying a Switchback Railway in 1898. We love the little boy running up to see the coaster and hope that he got a chance to ride!

Thompson’s 1885 patent was titled “A Roller Coasting Structure” and his gravity-powered ride which took its inspiration from a mining railway is known as America’s first roller coaster. In Coney Island, the first cars seated passengers sideways and went 6 miles per hour over 600 feet of undulating track. When people waited on line for up to three hours to ride, a reporter for the New York Sun proclaimed that “Coasting” was all the rage in Coney this season. As for the nickel ride: “It combined the effect of seasickness, imparted by the primeval swing, with the rush of a runaway ice wagon on a down grade; but besides all this there is a feeling of sailing through space which is elsewhere unattainable without the assistance of a balloon.”

By 1888, Thompson had been granted 30 patents and had built at least 20 roller coasters in the U.S. and 24 more abroad including several in the U.K., according to Robert Cartmell’s The Incredible Scream Machine.