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Venice: The Series

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Venice: The Series
Genre
Created by
StarringCrystal Chappell
Jessica Leccia
Galen Gering
Hillary B. Smith
Gina Tognoni
Nadia Bjorlin
Lesli Kay
Dot Jones
Shawn Christian
Molly Burnett
Eric Martsolf
Judi Evans
Michelle N. Carter
Jordan Clarke
Harrison White
Michael Sabatino
Liz Keifer
Adrienne Wilkinson
Christian LeBlanc
Annika Noelle
Patti Pelton
Aaron Hartzler
Wesley Ramsey
Tina Sloan
Gregory Zarian
Country of originUnited States
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes49
Production
Executive producers
  • Crystal Chappell
  • Kim Turrisi
  • Hope Royaltey
Production locationVenice Beach, California
Running time
  • 6–10 minutes (season 1)
  • approx. 15 minutes (seasons 2–5)
Production companyOpen Book Productions
Original release
Network
ReleaseDecember 4, 2009 (2009-12-04) –
present
Related
The Grove: The Series

Venice: The Series is a soap opera web series co-produced by and starring American actress Crystal Chappell, and is inspired in part by the "Otalia" storyline on the daytime drama Guiding Light. The series has been streamed on VenicetheSeries.com since December 4, 2009, and ended in its sixth and final season in 2015.

Venice is described by Chappell as "a show about families, and life, and all the simplicity of it, and the turmoil of it. We're going to be following a character named Gina who is a designer, and she is a gay woman."[1]

Cast and characters

Chappell, Leccia and Bjorlin

Venice: The Series stars Crystal Chappell as Gina, a designer and a gay woman, and Chappell's love interest from Guiding Light, Jessica Leccia, this time as Ani, Gina's love interest. Some of Chappell's and Leccia's former Guiding Light co-stars also appear in the series, including Tina Sloan, Gina Tognoni as Sami and Jordan Clarke as The Colonel. Other Venice cast members include daytime actress Hillary B. Smith of One Life to Live as Guya, Nadia Bjorlin as Lara, Galen Gering as Owen, Gina's brother, Michelle N. Carter as Michele, Lesli Kay as Tracy, Michael Sabatino, Chappell's husband, as Alan, and Robert Newman as an old boyfriend of Gina's. Other cast members include Shawn Christian, Eric Martsolf and Molly Burnett from Days of Our Lives. Gregory Zarian joined the cast in Season 5 as Detective Nick Pfander.

Production

Creation and development

Crystal Chappell played Olivia Spencer on the long-running CBS daytime drama, Guiding Light, from 1999 until the September 18, 2009 network ending. She won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Daytime Drama for her work as Olivia in 2002 and was nominated again in the same category in 2005 and 2006. In 2007, she earned her first nomination in the Outstanding Lead Actress category and her second in 2010.

In 2009, after Guiding Light was cancelled, Chappell, with help from her writing partner and co-producer Kim Turrisi, decided to create Venice: The Series, based around the popular romance between her character, Olivia Spencer, and co-star Jessica Leccia's character, Natalia Rivera Aitoro, also known by the portmanteau "Otalia". However, for copyright reasons, the names of the two actresses' characters are changed, and there is no official connection to Guiding Light.

Although Chappell's character in the show is an openly gay woman, the show is not a "gay web series" but rather a show that "embodies all kinds of people, with all kinds of issues".[1]

Chappell heavily publicized the series through the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.[2]

Filming

The web series is set in, and filmed in, Venice Beach, California, United States. It is filmed digitally. Each episode of season 1 is 6–10 minutes long, while episodes from subsequent seasons run approximately 15 minutes.

Distribution and release

The first three seasons were released for free, and are viewable, on the video sharing website YouTube. The fourth season is available on the show's website, and requires a paid subscription.

DVDs of past seasons of the show are also available for sale online at the website.

Reception and awards

In 2011, Venice: The Series won the first Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Short Format Daytime,[3] and won again in 2014 for Outstanding New Approaches Drama Series.[4] The series was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Digital Daytime Drama Series in 2017.[5] In 2018, Venice was nominated for Outstanding Digital Daytime Drama Series and Outstanding Directing in a Digital Drama Series.[6]

Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Alina Adams named the series one of the "4 best soap operas on the web" in 2015.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b Crystal Chappell, venicetheseries.com Fan Q&A Part 1 www.venicetheseries.com
  2. ^ Lisa Bernhard "Love That Dares to Tweet Its Name Sparks Web Series", The New York Times, August 24, 2009
  3. ^ "38th Annual Daytime Emmy® Award Winners" (PDF). National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. June 19, 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 19, 2016. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  4. ^ "41st Annual Daytime Emmy® Award Winners" (PDF). National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. June 22, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  5. ^ "The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Announces Nominations For the 44th Annual Daytime Emmy® Awards" (PDF). National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. March 22, 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 22, 2017. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
  6. ^ "2018 Daytime Emmy Awards Nominees". Daytime Emmy Awards. New York City: National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Retrieved April 27, 2018.
  7. ^ Adams, Alina (February 3, 2015). "The 4 best soap operas on the web". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
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