Simpson/Lynch Studios: Pleasantview's
"Foxster" and Tara, in happier times!
Some of you -- remarkably few over the past few months, admittedly -- not only follow this blog, but have also followed the joint efforts of Skip Simpson and myself over at our Simpson/Lynch Studios blog during the past year or so. Most of the entries there have concerned the ongoing "soap opera" called Pleasantview, where the "Skipster" and the "Foxster" -- younger and much more successful versions of Skip and myself -- have lived their fictional lives in full public view.
Skip and I ended what we referred to as "Season One" of Pleasantview with a handful of cliff-hangers a few months ago. After a multi-chapter diversion of Skip's (with only an occasional input from myself) called Spy Guys, we recently embarked on Season Two of Pleasantview... only to be immediately but happily "derailed" by our embarking upon not one, but two new (hopefully) money-making projects in the real world. (Details on those coming sometime soon... but don't hold your breath.)
So. What does this mean for Pleasantview (but not the actual Simpson/Lynch Studios blog itself)?
The answer lies here, fellow babies, and if you've EVER read Pleasantview, whether regularly or even once, I cannot recommend highly enough that you click on that link!!!
Thanks for your time.
Wow about Pleasantville! And, I really liked your post about the "fake" Charlie Chaplin.
ReplyDeleteI'll miss Kewl Beanz...
ReplyDeleteAre there prizes for sticking with Pleasantview til the very end? ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you put this out there for all of us to see and catch up. BUT I have a question--can;t you resurrect it again for KEWL Beans, come january? that was so fun.
ReplyDeleteA very serious reply: Skip and I tried something different with Pleasantview: a continuing "soap opera" type storyline. And between our writing and Skip's videos, we really busted our butts on it.
ReplyDeleteBeing a blog, it didn't generate any income, of course, and we naturally knew from the start that it wouldn't. So we depended on site hits and comments to tell us how we were doing, hoping that the feedback would make it worth our while creatively. At one point, we were getting lots of new followers, and lots of comments. Slowly but surely, readership dropped off, and we never knew why. (The timing was irksome. We built up to a big "season finale," and almost no one seemed to care by then.)
Maybe it was the fact that there were rarely any short posts, and readers didn't want to invest the time necessary to stick with us (which is understandable). Maybe one by one, people just didn't like the storyline(s). No one ever told us why. It was like carrying a baby for nine months, only to have people say, "Boy, what an ugly kid!"
So... we basically said "Why knock ourselves out for our three or four remaining regulars, when we as partners can put our time and energy toward (non-blog) projects which will hopefully make us money?"
Therefore, Pleasantview in its former format is done. Sooner or later, there will probably be one-shot stories or even a multi-parter once in a great while... but no, no "Kewl Beanz!" events. (That one alone took months to develop, and we were re-writing and improvising all day long.)
On the other hand, I'm planning a Charles Dickens event for February, on this blog. And it'll be a lot less work for me, I promise you!