Tainted Dreams

[chicklitsandfantasies]

I've seen other youtube web series where the actors were also producers and pooled together money themselves to fund it and the end product looked way better. And was in hd!

[Nate4]

I thought i was the only one on this damn board who liked her.

[DRW50]

A few of us like her. She's just polarizing and was overexposed on AMC. With the proper writing she's pretty good. I don't know if these shows will have it but Beacon Hills looks interesting.

[AllMyDaysatGH]

I'm her #1 fan around here! OBSESSED.

[Wizzerkat]

Dang, Bobbie Eakes will be 53 this year and Chappell is 48. But in looks you can just switch that around! CC looks older than Bobbie! BE is still so lovely. Although I was disappointed in the overall look and such, too, I do admit I enjoyed AM in this.

[quartermainefan]

"Overexposed" is very polite. I was on cloud 9 when Kendell went into a coma, naively thinking I was going to get a break. Silly me, she didn't shut up and spoke more while in a coma than everyone else who was awake. She and Budig made me quit AMC and I could never get back into it because one of them was always on. Has this woman ever acted in anything else? I don't mean vanity projects produced by friends at their bar, I mean has she ever been auditioned and landed a role in anything? Some TV show, movie or play?

[DRW50]

I'll let you be the judge one way or the other.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0591651/

[rhinohide]

I don't know about any of the others, but Beacon Hill and its production company are openly marketing to the lesbian community. It's been their "strategy". So Beacon Hill isn't really trying to be "edgy" so much as filling a particular niche, and really isn't intended to have broad appeal.

[Vee]

If that's what they want to do, fine. But I'd rather they not try to go head to head with crap like Venice and just make, I dunno, a soap opera. If it has lesbians in it, great.

[marceline]

I'm interested in seeing how this works out. These websoaps are starting to expose some...inconsistencies in soap fandom that I think need to be addressed. Who exactly should these people be making these shows for?

Soap fans are by their nature change-averse. We've seen that a million different ways. We certainly saw it with PP. So I think it makes sense to target a niche. Chappelle goes for lesbians. "Awkward Black Girl" which I consider a comedy with lots of soapy elements was targeted to black women and people who want a multicultural cast.The WIGS network targeted women, although they obviously had more money to work with.

More and more, I think going for the "mainstream" soap audience is a losing proposition. They're already being served by the networks and based on what I've seen the majority just isn't going to be supportive of anything that isn't that model. How many times have we seen people say that production doesn't matter if the writing is there? But look at the comments in this thread. That's obviously not the case. If you give up on a show from jump street because of iffy lighting and sound, you'll never give them the chance to offer good writing. It's like saying you support community theatre then getting angry when they don't put on "Phantom of the Opera" complete with falling chandelier. Better to try and appeal to an underserved audience who will appreciate the effort.

[Vee]

I never thought production didn't matter. It absolutely does. The bigger problem with these webseries is that neither the production nor the writing is ever up to snuff, and the real sell - what it's always been - is "look! Your favorite soap stars!" With, more recently, a large helping of "trying to get the Otalia fans who will watch literally anything provided it features two chicks making out, preferably including Crystal Chappell, future television superstar Jessica Leccia and a lot of shitty folk rock."

If you don't have more than that, and if you don't hold the project up to a professional standard to begin with, I am not going to watch. It would have been so easy for AMC and OLTL to look and be written and produced like one of these - that's what people said about them the minute it turned out they had property rights over some of GH's OLTL transplants - but they weren't. I think there's a world of difference between what the TOLN crews did and what at least 99% of these other indie shows are. Which is why I always disdained all the amateur webseries all the other soap sites still heap praise upon, like DeVanity or whatever - I just don't care for any of them. Because IMO either they're appealing to bloggers who want to feel included by an active creative team who reaches out to them as equals, ensuring their breathless admiration for years to come, or they're pandering to soap fans who just want to see their old favorites, or to a smaller group still. I may be a gay fan but that doesn't mean I'm going to watch any gay or lesbian stories regardless of quality or content or production value.

[QueenOfHearts]

The fact that these web soaps are always about what "names" are in them instead of the writing or production is exactly why I can never get into them. To me they all look alike production wise and the writing is not there to keep me interested.

The last web series I watched was the entire 2 seasons of Aim High. It looked and felt like a CW series and the writing and acting flowed well enough to hook me in from the first episode. That's what a web series should do.

before that I watched Backpackers which was shot in Europe and was beautifully produced and had a nice concept but it needed more depth to keep me interested. Before that I watched the first few episodes of Destroy the Alpha Gammas but I'm not into Glee style shows so I didn't care for it but the production quality was pretty high on that one as well.

The first three episodes of Tainted Dreams were not only boring but written as if I already knew those characters instead of it being the first introduction to them.

[Vee]

Exactly, thank you.

[QueenOfHearts]

If I'm supposed to want to watch these shows production quality and overall writing and acting needs a lot of improvement.

[Angela]

I don't dislike Alicia in this but I don't really buy Alicia as an executive managing dozens of people. Part of that could be that I also wouldn't buy Sonia as an executive managing dozens of people even though she was/is.

I'm willing to give it time. Sometimes it takes a while for things to really gel.

I like her. She's not a purely talented actor but she can play a certain type very well and she is (or was) very charismatic on screen. BH appears to have her in the type of roll she's good at, from the promos, more than TD has her in that type from episode one.

Lesbian-focused drama to pander to a certain base? I felt that was the case with Venice so I never even thought of watching it. At this point, I feel like Crystal Chappell has chosen this as a career path (this will be her third production, no?) and is just looking to produce solid products. I'm a straight chick. I'm open to watching anything as long as its written, produced well - gay, straight, black, white, all of the above. Hopefully that is the case with BH. The promo makes it looks solid - family drama, political drama, romantic drama. I originally rolled my eyes when I heard about all the lesbian characters on this show (Sarah discussing all her first kisses with females) but the promos changed my mind.