The shot: Female riding male, forward cowgirl position, shot from the front, so she's facing the camera. You'll get that shot in some scenes, sure, but probably 90% of forward cowgirl scenes are shot from behind. This is a big pet peeve because forward CG from the front is my favorite shot/position in porn, especially when the woman's breasts are fondled, and I find forward CG to be the most useless in porn. I guess I'm more a breasts guy than ass guy but take blacked.com... great site but they probably don't have a singe scene that has forward CG shot from the front. Lansky absolutely refuses to use that angle. What's up with that?
^ The point of view from which the camera shows you, depends a lot on what the film-maker finds most attractive and most interesting to look at. If the guy is an avid assman, then he will naturally focus his camera on the lady's ass in the cowgirl position and any other position that makes the lady's ass accessible to viewing. I'd say that there isn't enough diversity among porn-makers in terms of their sexual interests. And that's why you get certain points of view constantly avoided and ignored in porn films. A way to solve this problem would be to have virtual reality porn films, where viewers can feel that they are present there and choose their own point of view. Maybe this will be the future of porn.
Hmmm... now that you mention it this is something I don't see too often outside of POV movies. Aside from the excessive focus on ass you pointed out, I think it's partly a function of that ubiquitous piece of porn furniture: the couch. The camera is usually set up in front of the couch. That's why you see lots of shots of straight on reverse cowgirl; the guy is sitting facing towards the camera. And you'll often see forward-facing cowgirl from the side since the guy is laying down on the couch. Not enough directors take the time to walk around to the side of the couch by the armrests and shoot the forward-facing cowgirl shot straight on.
^ The problem with that is that most of the time, said couch isn't free-standing. The reason they can't get that shot is because a wall is in the way. And even if it isn't, the shot has to be done from an upward angle, and arguably pretty close up to work very well. It's a shot that just works much better on a bed than a couch, but it seems most people don't like to shoot on beds anymore.
The couch factor occurred to me, but it doesn't completely explain it. There are numerous scenes where there's no apparent restriction on taking the camera to the other side, Also, they could have the guy lying on the couch sideways and the woman riding, and get angles from the front no matter if the couch is against a wall or not. There's a reason that the uncreative hive mind in the porn industry has decided forward cowgirl needs to be shot almost entirely from behind... Casting Couch X used to always have a forward cg from the front shot, and they've recently seemingly ditched that for back and side angles.
Whoa! it's like you're the reincarnation of me. I had this same gripe during the last generation's badly shot porn! It's so true. They have some aversion to bringing the camera around front. They do this in bed scenes too, not just couches. They have no problem showing us the worst possible angle for starlets with fake breasts (reverse cowgirl, leaning back). This pose fills pornographers with great courage and they give us that all day long, with the fake boobs tilted at just the wrong angle to reveal how unnatural they are when they refuse to heave like a person's breasts normally would. They've killed forests of wood with that angle. But as soon as you turn the starlet around so she's facing the guy & leaning forward with her Boobs and Hips and Face and Hair all looking their best.... that's when all of a sudden the pornographer becomes very skiddish. He simply can't risk showing us this best angle in all of porn. The risk is too great! Because if someone filmed a porn properly and took full advantage of the great footage that's there WAITING FOR SOMEBODY TO FILM IT, people would realize what they've been missing and would ask, "Hey why haven't you been showing us these great looking scenes all along!?!?!?" and the pornographer would suddenly look like a fool for having just filmed an ass bouncing up and down for 5 minutes straight his whole career as if that was anything but the bare minimum. So these guys just decide to keep on making an incomplete product and they make their peace with that. One theory is some childhood trauma prevents them from approaching a women from the front, so they do porn because this allows them to skip that step and just start things off by dealing with the ass directly. Or is it because the makers of porn are listening far too much to the 5 to 10 vocal hooligans online who seem to enjoy incomplete products----because their fetish happens to be bad porn! Which means the tens of thousands of well adjusted people in the audience must suffer through another woefully incomplete movie that doesn't show the full glory of the naked person they supposedly hired to impress us. (And then we often don't come back to that studio, by the way, once we realize it has zero chance of delivering a performer's best work because your shooting style handicaps every scene before it even begins and limits each movie's potential no matter who the star is.) It truly doesn't make any sense. It's like filming a standing pose from underneath the entire time. What the hella hard fuck is that? It totally makes a mockery of how the performers are exerting themselves & risking back injuries to try and give us a great looking pose which the camera guy totally ignores by refusing to shoot it. It's just dumb. They literally don't know the difference in value between the excellent looking footage they could have captured and the run-of-the-mill scene they decided to actually settle for. The whole POV craze is similarly an unfortunate development. In that subgenre fans get really excited when the pornographer reduces his angles (and effort) by half, which yields a final product that's half as good of a look at the naked person we're trying to see. "But POV allows you to pretend you're the person boinking her, cuz it's shot POV style!" Uh.... the rest of us were already pretending that, you munch, but now we have to do so without the well-rounded multi-angle views that used to be included as a standard part of every movie. How about doing it half POV and half full-body views? "Naw, man, that wrecks it!" Whatever. How about a special reduced version of the movie for POV purists with only the POV shots included? That way they'd be kept happy and could watch only their kind of footage, but the rest of us wouldn't be deprived of seeing the other camera angles. Make that one of the options on the DVD menu. Anyway, yeah. It's weird, how they just can't quite seem to realize they're missing the best part of every scene when they shun the woman during the sit pose. It could have something to do with the huge cocks that are so commonly used now. Maybe most women's faces are looking pained from the big dicks because it's uncomfortable to lean forward for the sit pose and that's why camera men have learned not to focus in on that??? Or do a large percentage of performers these days have trouble faking intimacy in that pose and it becomes too apparent after a few seconds so we only get a few seconds of it???? It's got to be rooted in some business reason besides mere couch choreography. Edited by - Monkey Power on 2/24/2015 2:33:27 PM
Well looks like I'm not alone. Though I'm interested to see a counter argument presented. Clearly if almost every porn director shoots this way, then there's a demand? Or maybe the appeal of porn is so base that the majority of the market is ready to suck up whatever slop porn producers offer and there literally is no demand. But I'd like to hear someone tell me what's so amazing about seeing five to ten minutes straight of the back of a chick's head and ass riding a guy, particularly when the chick has a hot face and breasts. One thing that annoys me is when people talk about Lansky like he's the Stanley Kubrick of porn or something. Anyone with a DSLR, good lens and a couple of months of practice can become as good a photographer as Lansky. The fact is people who actually have talent as a videographer/sinematographer probably aspire and succeed at covering different subject matter than people fucking. But it is kind of amazing how no talent hacks can come into this industry and get a good reputation for doing nothing of value.
^ I'd argue that when it comes to photographing/recording models, the hard part isn't the technical details (like you said, anyone can learn those over the course of a few months to a year if they want), it's about getting models to open up for you and having a creative enough mind to figure out interesting things for them to do and ways to capture it. I'd argue that he seems to be very good at the first part, but fairly average at the second. Especially when it comes to video.
I like that angle too, particularly when the girl is getting hammered in the ass (or DPed). I like it because you can see her front and you can see her face. Of course, this demands that her front be attractive, which for me means she must be lean.
You may have a point there... I honestly haven't noticed much difference in the comfort level of professional porn models from one director to the next. The appeal of porn is all base, and visceral for me and I would think most people watching it. The key things are how good does the girl look, and how well can I see her. For some reason that doesn't seem to be top visual priorities for a lot of porn scenes.
^ I think the amount of girls that are willing to give him their first IR scenes for Blacked speaks to how comfortable they feel with him (and before someone says that it's because of how popular the site has become, the site launched with more than a few pretty substantial first IR scenes, and those were/would have been shot well before anyone knew how well the site would do). Between that and the interview portion of the TLHC scenes, you can tell that he does seem to have a good rapport with his models.
All good points well made. Where do they get these camera guys from? They always seem to be filming at the wrong angles. I bet you're like I am. I watch this porn and I'm shouting at the screen: 'WTF are you on standing at the back of the room?? Filming a scene at a distance. Get in there with the lense. Get in close at all the good stuff!'
This still continues to frustrate me. Just goes to show you how robotic and mechanical porn directors have become. I'm more and more finding scenes with models I like a complete waste because of how the scenes are shot.
most of directors today seems to have just to options: from behind the girl and the close up. Lateral or front views, view from above seem dont' exist most of the time.
So one thing I've noticed is Japanese porn features this shot/angle a lot more... not that I've done a study but it's probably more common in the censored variety than uncensored (though I think you see it more common in Japanese uncensored porn than American porn). I'm not a fan of the censoring, BUT perhaps it frees up the camera man's interest not to be so heavily focused on penetration (mind you, none of these Japanese camera men are particularly ace either.) But that still doesn't totally explain it, because you can still see the penetration from forward cowgirl shot from the front. What you can't see is the man's bouncing nut sack. Maybe that's the key to this whole mystery. Porn directors are obsessed with the dude's bouncing sack. Edited by - RobinWood on 11/19/2015 1:49:37 AM
I'm still waiting to hear the argument that there's a good reason forward CG from the front should never be used in porn. Clearly most porn directors think this. Or maybe the problem is that they just don't think. I'm starting to think it really is perhaps a homo-repressed tendency that draws many into this line of work. They can pretend they are shooting hot women when they are really interested in bouncing nut sacks. I am NOT homo-phobic by the way, if dudes have those tendencies they should feel free to explore it in gay or bi-porn. But straight hetero porn should appeal to straight hetero men.
For effect. Got anything else to add to the discussion? Or even more witty retorts? Because surely this is the best place on the Internet to showcase your developing snark.
You remind me of Captain America in the Avengers movie. "I understood that reference!" Good for you! So back on topic if everyone is okay with that... why are American porn cameramen so much more interested in bouncing nutsacks than women?
