A new Discovery Channel program started this past Wednesday. Factory Made enters factories around the world to learn how products we use are made. If this sounds like the Canadian series How It’s Made, you aren’t alone. When I heard of this show, I thought Discovery was taking over How It’s Made and was relaunching it with a new name.
Factory Made does have a very similar format as How It’s Made, but one thing I like about it is the more upbeat music. Background music can be used to save a show or movie; it can make a dramatic impact.
The Food Network show Unwrapped also comes to mind when we talk about factory tour shows. One thing Unwrapped does well is it uses brief interviews with employees, plant managers, etc to lessen the monotony that these types of shows tend to have. The lack of interviews in How It’s Made always bugged me, creating one of the dullest television shows I’ve ever seen.
The pilot episode included segments on burritos, an enormous HD screen, and cowboy boots. The burrito segment wasn’t very enlightening. Unwrapped has done a terrific job of educating me on the subject of food. The big screen segment was a little dull, but I was surprised to see the LED sections get weatherized. I wasn’t sure how the engineers would protect the electronics from rain, but I didn’t expect them to cover everything in the manner that they did.
The last segment was my favorite. It’s not because I have a particular interest in cowboy boots or anything of that nature. But it was the fact that they included brief interview segments with the plant manager and I also learned about a particular type of wood used to hold the boot together. I had no idea lemonwood was used in boots.
This was a decent start to the series. I hope the producers decide to include more interview segments. The interviews don’t have to be all that enlightening to be effective, mind you. He/she can provide the same sort of information we would otherwise learn from the narrator. But the switching of voices and getting a different visual helps break up the monotony.
Original Air Date: May 28, 2008
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