Author: ChilltownTV

I'm primarily a writer. Sold a few series to tv networks and production companies but never had anything get on the air. So I taught myself how to animate and completed 3 digital series, launching two. The first, Chilltown has been named one of "Five Web Series That Should Be on Your Radar" by ABCNews/Univision and a "Show to Watch" by Tubefilter. The second, Lele's Ratchet Advice Show, garnered a fanatic cult following. As a result, I now do Lele's 60 Second Wrap Up, a weekly comedic entertainment report (which I write & perform) that airs on urban radio stations Rhythm 105.9fm and the Just Wake Up Morning Show on WWRNfm.

Leesa Dean: Sometimes Entering the Fast Lane Means Slowing Down

leles week in review

Adventures in Digital Series Land #116
by Leesa Dean

Things are getting intense. In a good way! My radio segment *just* went live on AM radio to a pretty big audience! The show, Lele’s Week in Review, is a 90 second parody of entertainment news done by my character Lele. I write, produce and voice it. It’s A LOT of fun.  And a lot to do. I bang out/record a new episode every single week.

Two radio stations have it: Rhythm 105.9 in Yuma, CA and now WWRN 1620 AM Urban Classics (as part of the Just Wake Up Morning Show every Friday at noon EST) which is in Lehigh, PA.  They’re both syndicated out to smaller stations. Total listeners so far: about 250,000. Not too shabby.

WWRN started as a digital channel, I met them when they interviewed me aboutChilltown, I had just started the segment with Rhythm 105.9  and they were interested. WWRN kept growing and growing and now, it’s finally made them jump to AM. Cool factoid:  WWRN is co-owned by former 1990’s phenom Damion “Crazy Legs” Hall from the R&B group Guy. I feel it’s a real opportunity for me to increase brand awareness. read article

Leesa Dean: Digital is Where It’s At!

digital

Adventures in Digital Series Land #115
by Leesa Dean

An intense couple of weeks.  Am in the final stretch of post for my series and hoping I’ll be done in a few months. This part is a bear.  Each episode has many pods that are strung together to make a narrative–approximately 35 per episode. To say it’s been challenging to manipulate them all is an understatement. Plus, I’m reanimating certain bits just to make them tighter and brighter.

Meanwhile, also, about a month or so away from completing a pilot script. There’s a lot going on in this particular show–and the character development is raking me over the coals because I want them to be idiosyncratic and compelling.  Plus, I have limited time to write because of production so my days been nuts so it’s been a challenge.

But a few things happened recently that further legitimatized the digital series realm and it’s the wind that keeping this operation afloat! read article

Leesa Dean: The Squiggle that is Failure

Adventures in Digital Series Land #114
by Leesa Dean

jazzatthenewzealandschoolofmusicConfession #1: Sometimes (ok, a lot of the time) I wake up in the morning and feel like a failure. Why? Duh. Cause my career isn’t where I feel it should be. And, partly, cause I had a Quick! Easy! Fast! kinda-sorta success when I started out. And since then? Well, let’s just say I’m trying to catch up.  This is not about depression, btw. I’m not depressed. In fact, I’m a happy person and actually pretty optimistic about how things will turn out .

The Background: I made a big rookie mistake when I started:  I actually believed my agent/manager would get me work. So I didn’t spend every waking hour networking and writing writing writing. Yeah, I had more ideas. Yeah, I worked on some. And wrote a few spec scripts.  But since right out the box, I sold a spec script to a network (with virtually no experience under my belt), I thought it would just magically keep happening like that.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t. read article

Leesa Dean’s Lovin’ THE STOCKROOM

April Hernandez-Castillo & Victor Cruz
April Hernandez-Castillo & Victor Cruz

Adventures in Digital Series Land #112
by Leesa Dean

Victor Cruz–no not the athlete–is a great actor/comedian I was lucky enough to meet about seven years ago.  Gil T, another great comedian who originally was part of the legendary comedy duo, The Most Brothers (HBO, Fox, opened internationally for some of the biggest names in the business) had worked on some shorts with him and when I was thinking about doing Chilltown, Gil recommended him.  Highly.

I’d known Gil from a project we worked on together that Comedy Central *almost* bought. I was the writer/producer and it was so much fun and Gil was so incredible in it I knew we’d work together again. Plus, his word meant a lot to me. I already had cast him in Chilltown.

I hired Victor, essentially, without an audition and never looked back. He crushed it when we recorded voiceovers. Subsequently, I’ve hired Victor for nearly every project I’ve done. He’s THAT good.  And so professional. And and all-around nice guy.  Ok, I’ll stop gushing. read article

Leesa Dean Gives Thumbs Down to ‘Thumbs Down’

Middle-Finger-Button

Adventures in Digital Series Land – #112
by Leesa Dean

Been so so busy I haven’t had time to do anything, which is why this post is late. Aside from everything else going on (animating/production work on new series, promos and writing a pilot), I just signed a deal with fledgling streaming VOD company Kweli TV.  They fell in love with Chilltown and now it will be on their platform in HD!! So I’ve been redoing all the episodes in preparation for the launch. A ton of work.

But something really big is brewing in the digital media world and I felt I had to address it.  That’s right, Facebook is planning on adding a dislike button (thumbs down) and people are going berserk.  And for a good reason. Given all the trolls, schadenfreude-mongers, ill-wishers and general sh*theads that populate an average timeline, people are bracing themselves for their videos to get tons of thumbs down. To make things worse, Facebook says it’s planning on DELETING any video that has more than 10 dislikes.  Talk about pressure.

When I first read about this I had, what can only be described as, a social-media take on the classic comedian’s nightmare: I dreamed I posted my latest radio show segment and all the hosts from one of the radio stations that carries the segment gave it a thumbs down.  Not only by clicking the button, but also by posting a huge image of the FB thumbs down.  To be fair, that joke did kind of suck. read article