We’ve seen every episode of Hexagon Bridge, we’ve stalked the website to find out more but we thought it was finally time to sit down with The Joy Sequence himself to talk everything from roller coasters to building home attractions to that game show!
Hi Adam. Thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview with us. I guess the first question is could you tell us a bit more about yourself?
You’re very welcome! I don’t know where to begin with such a question! I have an education background in graphic design and video, but have been a growing lover of roller coasters and themed entertainment for as long as I can remember. It all started from watching my mum play roller coaster tycoon as a kid, to my first roller coaster, to my first theme park trip abroad, to my first scare maze.
You are a theme park fan but what coasters would you say defined you as a coaster enthusiast?
I suppose this could come from a few angles… Silver Star defines me as someone who thinks they’ve ridden an amazing premium B&M hyper coaster, when in reality I’m led to believe it’s often considered one of the weakest. I don’t particularly care for wooden coasters or inverts. I can be a bit annoying with finding certain coaster types to be too gimmicky to really enjoy (spinning, lying down, or sitting besides the track as the focal point of the coaster doesn’t really interest me) and I have low tolerance for elements that simply don’t do what they are meant to do, like an ‘airtime hill’ with no airtime or a ‘zero-g roll’ that doesn’t give zero-g.
Most people will obviously know you as The Joy Sequence. How did that come about and what is The Joy Sequence?
In quick: family coming over for Christmas, wanted to be super extra with the entertainment, made a scare maze in my garage called The Grotto, terrified them all, this led onto me wanting to make bigger and better attractions to see how far I could push it at home, and it serves as a great way for me to explore and build on all of my interests in one project (graphics, video, sound, themed entertainment, experience, storytelling, etc).
I’m going to paste the little description I’ve got on my website that I think sums up The Joy Sequence the best: The Joy Sequence is the fusion of vivid storytelling, distinctive audiovisual design, and immersive experience, with a dash of dread thrown in for good measure. The results are portals to other worlds, inviting you to leave the humdrum of mundane life behind and step into the pages of a new story, in a new galaxy, as a new person, with a new mission, as you navigate through carefully crafted walkthrough scenarios and escape-room environments.
You’ve created three ‘home’ attractions with others planned but Let’s start with your first, The Grotto. With it being your first attraction, what was it about and what did you learn that you took forward into building and developing your attractions?
What it was about: As I was creating this as Christmas entertainment for my family, I kept it Christmas themed and chose to explore the folklore tale of the Krampus, a half-goal half-demon creature of the night punishing the misbehaved and naughty. The attraction served as a walkthrough experience, using the fear of the dark, suspense, things touching you and loud sounds to frighten my family as they walked through. And that it did.
What did I learn: It’s quite easy to make anything baseline scary if you’ve got what I would consider the fundamental components: lighting effects (coloured lighting, strobe lighting, lack of lighting), audio (music and/or effects) and a smoke machine to muffle people’s clarity of what they can see ahead of them. But it’s then the story, layout, narrative, props, branding, theming that you layer on top of it that makes it become a whole experience and story.
Pest Control was the second attraction you built. How did you come up with the idea and How did this one compare to The Grotto?
I wanted to create a walkthrough of chaos whilst also feeling a bit silly. Things like air being blasted at you, water being sprayed at you, mist, jets (I had to resist having things like flour, foam and eggs thrown at people too as I don’t think I’d be too popular). And what better way to have these things inflicted on you than to have gas-masked paint-covered characters doing it.
I also liked the idea that everyone thought ‘Pest Control’ was going to be about bugs being inside, and it wasn’t, it was about the extermination of you, exploring the idea of humans being the pest.
Next was Joy. Where did the inspiration and concept for Joy come from? How long did it take to build? Tell us everything
Keen to continue the tone of a slightly more light-hearted, fantasy folklore theme for The Joy Sequence projects, I wanted to create an attraction with a story even more full of depth and character than previous attraction projects. I also liked the idea of getting people to crawl through a box, and it just naturally came to me that there should be a cult of Joyseekers worshipping a magical box that shouts and spits water at you and throws you into a cursed corridor maze of hell, because why wouldn’t it?
You have another one planned and announced in Guilt Trip. What can you tell us about it, if anything?
Guilt Trip is the next walkthrough attraction that I was working on to come after JOY. The blurb for it from my website explains the premise in a nice snapshot: “The Buttercup Alpha Research Facility opens its doors and sees you enter in an ambitious volunteer programme set to end a psychological crisis. Fear of the so called ‘Guiltmare’, a monster who preys on guilt-ridden children in their sleep has teared apart the lives of families across the nation. Can the Dreamlink Programme, a brand new neural-linking technology allowing volunteers to step into the dreams of a sleeping child to figure out their cause of guilt help solve the problem?”
I think we need to talk about your game show, Hexagon Bridge. I’m obsessed, I won’t lie. Where did this come from?
I’m glad it has given you entertainment! It originally started as a one-off episode of a roller coaster themed game show I came up with a while back, but I decided to bring it back for a few episodes at the start of 2021 to get us through the time waiting for theme parks to open again.
With regards to Hexagon Bridge, can you give us a bit of behind the scenes details about the process of making an episode. Take us on the journey of a making of an episode
The first episode was filmed in person in my living room. I had bed sheets nailed to the wall, a fiddly powerpoint presentation on the tv, lighting scenes ready to be changed on an app and audio files on another phone ready to be pressed accordingly every time the player answers questions. It wasn’t until the 2021 episodes that were filmed remotely I realised it really IS just easier to leave all the lighting colour and audio effects out and add them in the edit!
My last question for you is one that I don’t think you will answer fully but I’m going to ask it anyway, what does the furniture hold for both Adam and The Joy Sequence?
I will continue to throw all of my passion and creativity into growing The Joy Sequence, whether that be physical walkthrough experiences, game shows, prop design, music production, storytelling videos. I’ve got plenty of ideas for future Joy Sequence production projects and ways for people to escape the real world and immerse themselves into a new one. So all I can say is, watch this space.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to Adam for taking part in our interview and we are so excited to see what he comes up with next. If you want to follow The Joy Sequence check out the socials below
Website – https://www.thejoysequence.com/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/thejoysequence
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/thejoysequence/
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