There sure is a lot of feature porn falling short in terms of picture quality. For years PT's Vivid movies have been looking like crap. Sure, you can say that the use of film means that there will be grain, but if you take PT's movies (some of which at the core are quite good as movies), the amount of grain is simply inexcusable, the colors are often off, and there's a lot of compression artifacts. It just shows a lack of care about the final product. And if you take Club Jenna, many people will berate them for the "artistic" look of their movies, but what baffles me is that they have released a ton of films in non-anamorphic widescreen. This is 2007 for heaven's sake, if you go for widescreen you do it anamorphically! When it comes to visual effects, then the problem is not that visual effects always ruin the sex scenes, it's that most directors just throw them in without giving much thought to what the point is with using this particular effect in this particular scene. A really good sex scene is not just a bunch of acts, it has a feel to it and the way in which the visuals are done can help establish that feel if the director knows what kind of feel he or she if after. What this means is that visual artistry can be great, even in porn; the problem is just that what we usually get instead is "visual artistry", directors who try to make their porn look artistic or classy, but which just end up making porn that's even more boring than it would otherwise have been.
Welcome to the darkside....we have cookies. 598 Posts 11/03
Posted - Nov 10 2007 : 12:44PM
1. Since when does applying a film look equal bad picture quality? Anyone seen Traffic? Minority Report? Those are just two examples of applied film look in a movie and no one tells them it's "bad picture quality". It is creating a look and a feel of a movie. Maybe you don't like these effects applied in porn and if that is the case, there is plenty of porn out there for you. Personally, I like the effect of film look if done correctly. The scene in 'Upload' with the 3 girls in the desert, has a similar yellowish/warm tint that Traffic has and to me it made me feel as if it really was in the desert, all hot and sun bleached...it added to my fantasy. And my scene in black and white...I dig it too. I have seen that same footage without the b & w and it doesn't have that old 40's feel, that noir taste to it. When the detective walks into the scene my mind sees b & w anyway because that is the fantasy that is being created. Fantasy. That is what is is about. 2. Since when does making a concious decision to NOT light your movie set like a freakin' K-Mart aisle mean "bad lighting"? Newsflash: there are shadows in the real world. Shadows can be sexy, shadows give definition. As long you can see the hardcore action then all is good. When I direct I often ask my lighting crew to create a mood with the lighting, that is what a lighting crew is for! I remember a scene which was a rape scene I directed in an alleyway...you could clearly see all the hardcore...but people gave me grief about the lighting being dark and poorly lit. It was a freaking nighttime scene in a dark alley! Would K-Mart lighting have been appropiate? Learn to use your lighting appropiately to create the scenario and the feel but still allow the important stuff to be seen. Anyways. That is MY 2 cents. And it's worth about...2 cents. Kylie
What's the fun of getting old if you can't be dirty? 141 Posts 4/06
Posted - Nov 10 2007 : 1:14PM
Have I mentioned how much I love that girl? Okay...Loop, obviously I disagree, but you're certainly entitled to your opinion. My earnest advice would be to stop buying/renting/watching my stuff because we're certainly not going to stop shooting them the way we want.This is complex issue; I started out as an actor and stuntman, but I also went to film school, and I've done most jobs you can do in the film industry. I've physically cut and spliced film hundreds of times (I think I'm the only editor still working in adult who can say this); I've loaded Arri mags and learned (although, mercifully, never had to use) the infamous -- in the film industry, at least -- Panavision Grip; I've shot film and made lab notes and done process marking and edge numbering for post work. In other words, I've done a lot of gearhead shit. P.T. started out as an actor, and transitioned from there directly behind the camera. This isn't a knock against him; it's true of a lot of directors in mainstream and porn. But to my knowledge he's never shot camera, certainly never shot film, or even edited anything. I doubt P.T. knows a T-stop from a backstop. As a result, there are a lot of elements when dealing with film that P.T. simply doesn't know to pay attention to. He's completely in the hands of Ralph Parfait, his cinematographer. Ralph is very good, but he's saddled with a lot of baggage due to Vivid's low budgets -- even for films -- and the restrictions of working in adult. A few of you said you wanted me to babble, when here's another one. Apologies in advance. Let me just say that I love film as a medium. I always have. But I would never want to shoot an adult feature on film because it is a terrible porn medium. There are a dozen reasons why, but for the moment, I'm gonna stick to the technical aspects. First off, to shoot film properly, you have to have that most precious of commodities: time. You must have the time to light properly, and move the camera correctly. In porn, we almost never have that kind of time. Then there are the nuts and bolts factors of mechanics and chemistry that play into any film. Vivid owns its own Super 16mm Arriflex package. That poor camera has been beaten to shit over the years, has horrible movement and registration (which affects the sharpness of the image). Also, a camera is only as good as its lens, and that Vivid camera has a really battered piece of glass. Then there's the actual film stock. To shoot film the right way, you pick your film stock to match your setting; slower, daylight film for outdoor daytime scenes, high-speed stocks for shooting at night, etc. Vivid gives them 200 speed film and says "shoot." ASA200 16mm film is naturally very grainy. The HDV footage that we're shooting now is actually higher resolution than Kodak's 7217 stock, especially after it's been pushed 1 or 2 stops because it's really too slow for down-and-dirty indoor shooting. Okay, then you have to get your film processed. There are only two labs in town that will process adult film: Fotokem and Filmworks, and frankly, they both kinda suck. Filmworks is okay if you really ride them, and Fotokem just doesn't give a shit about their adult clients, period. They're cheap, and you get what you pay for. Guess who Vivid uses? This accounts for your color shifts. THEN you have to get your negative onto videotape for editing. There are really great, state-of-the-art Rank Cintel beds for doing 16mm telecine in town; beds than can actually erase grain without losing definition and clean up processing artifacts on the fly. But doing telecine at those houses costs money, and they probably wouldn't do adult anyway. So Vivid does their transfer at Fotokem with all the care and love they give their porn customers. Add to that Vivid's really crappy DVD authoring (Hey! Let's put a 2 1/2 hour movie on a DVD-5 at a bitrate of 1.9! Sure it looks like a YouTube video, but we saved $60!) and you've got a decent movie like Layout which looks like a 5th-generation broadcast print of an old Mod Squad episode. Christ. See? Ya get me goin' and I get diarrhea of the keyboard.
i'm not going to stop buying your stuff - first because kylie is on my top 5 directors (along with belladonna , joey silvera , jake maone and jewel denyle) and i love her movies - i must say that most of them are well shot with clear picture (especially those from pxp and 5th element). i recently saw sick chixxx and while it was really hot - i did have a little problem with the picture and camera work (but it didn't ruin the movie). as for your movies - as i said before - u do shoot great porn and i can't miss my favorite performers doing all the nasty stuff you shoot (and you always cast the best performers)so i can only bitch about the picture. now i don't want to tell you what to do cause it's your movies after all but the least you can do maybe is to put as an extra the black and white footage - this time with color , that way u have your own vision for the movie and you won't lose those who just want to jerk off to the great sex. and after all you do put tons of extras on your latest movies so i don't see a problem accepting my suggestion. edit: fixed quote Edited by - heynow on 11/11/2007 8:43:07 PM
What's the fun of getting old if you can't be dirty? 141 Posts 4/06
Posted - Nov 10 2007 : 10:24PM
Y'know, we actually had the color version of the black & white scene prepped as an extra for the set, but it just doesn't look very good in color. For the black & white to look right, the lighting had to be extremely contrasty, and the wardrobe almost looks cartoonish in color. Also, we were practically out of space on disc four and something we valued more would have had to go, so we axed it. Maybe we can put it up on the website or something...
Since you're right on the money it's certainly worth more than two cents. Some people might dislike visual effects and the use of shadows just as much as we all dislike bad picture quality, but the two need to be kept apart and discussed separately. And since so much porn now adheres to the K-Mart aesthetic the people who like that kind of flat lighting really haven't got much to complain about. Those of us who, for instance, find that a nice play of light and shadows can actually make a scene hotter are certainly having a harder time, especially since an inept use of shadows can often ruin a scene. And in the adult business the inept directors and cinematographers clearly tend to outnumber the, er, ept. @Eli Cross: Thanks for all the details on the process of film-making over at Vivid; I had realized that there must be several things going wrong in order to get a picture quality that low, but it's very nice to have it spelled out. Kind of serves as a good illustration of how you can get away with cutting a corner, but you can't get away with cutting every corner.
It has the potential to be alot better and more interesting but this won't happen until the producers start listening to the customer a little more. Mike Quasar has taken some advice from the members at Lezlove and his movies have improved significantly over the last couple of years. I have to admit that when it comes to camerawork and lighting , I am a very boring person. I love it simple and steady....I just want to see the action clearly so that I can get off. That's all porn is to me. While I can understand that some folks need more in their porn , I agree with loop about the artistic stuff....to me , it's useless no matter how well done it is. But , I realize that this is business and if it helps sell movies , there's nothing I can say...all I can do is ignore that stuff. Unfortunately , my fetishes are relatively obscure so i have to rely on little bits , here and there. I just wish that most video producers would stop making movies so identical to each other. Be a little more adventurous like the Japanese and experiment with different fetishes.
pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world 12377 Posts 9/07
Posted - Nov 11 2007 : 7:14PM
I wouldn't take the opinons of a bunch of dudes on a porn forum as reflective of anything besides the hardcore raincoater crowd, which only makes up a perecentage of the entire porn audience. For me, B&W and a bit of visual manipulation doesn't prevent a film from being 'strokeworthy.' Rapid cutting is more of a problem in that regard, although in turn a lot of directors NEVER CUT and the scenes become endless and boring.
True, rapid cutting is often used very badly. I personally think that one can have more rapid cuts towards the end of a scene to build up towards the climax in an effective way, but in porn what you often get are rapid cuts that are totally out of synch with the action - in fact, you usually get the feeling that the director/editor is trying to cover up the fact that the sex isn't very hot to begin with. Alternatively that he thinks that rapid cutting automatically makes it look cool or have some kind of artistic quality. On the whole I do however find that directors/editors have gotten better at understanding that even if you edit a scene, you need to preserve the flow of it. It was much more common some years ago that you would watch a scene and think "hey, that shot I'm watching now isn't that really part of what I was watching two minutes ago". Although I too think that sex scenes nowadays are often too long, I'd much rather have a scene that's too long than one which feels like someone had just randomly cut the film into parts and then randomly spliced it together.
What's the fun of getting old if you can't be dirty? 141 Posts 4/06
Posted - Nov 12 2007 : 4:40PM
Man, don't even get me started on porn editors. Editing is on par with production for importance vis-a-vis the quality of the final product. It's also one of the most technically demanding and artistically motivated jobs in any motion picture medium. And yet -- just like all you need to be a fully qualified porn director is a camcorder and a thumb -- every jackass with a computer and a mouse finger is now an "editor." makes me crazy.
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the unknown pervert Deactivated User
I'd like to stay but I've got a plane to catch. 3243 Posts 5/06
Posted - Nov 12 2007 : 5:31PM
Of course ten to fifteen years ago you could be watching a scene and think "that shot I'm watching now is the exact same shot I saw 5 minutes ago, complete with the exact same vocalizations in the exact same pitch."
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ragingbull Deactivated User
404 Posts 5/07
Posted - Nov 13 2007 : 4:55AM
Video killed porn as an artistic medium for the most part.
I miss the American porn of the 80s and the European porn of the 90s. It was better then. Nowadays, I like the Naughty America productions, they're quite good in comparison with a lot of low quality porn out there. And yes I agree with Bigfoot on most of his points. I also hate artificial people, snobby people and unnatural unrealistic porn. Edited by - studioline on 11/13/2007 4:02:16 PM
I kindly thank you. It's amazing how a lifetime of smut seems to be my only area of expertise. Then again, I suppose it is better to be good at something...
for a gonzo fan like me i would say down. the quality of chicks has definitely gone down.it seems to me like the last of the hot gonzo chicks like bree olsen and lela star are now contract girls and only do b/g scene i am a big fan of gangbangs and interracial and interracial gangbangs but that seems to be put on hold because these busted looking chicks think that their to good for it because they all jump in porn thinking they could be the next jenna jameson
I know I'm late to the discussion, but: I've been watching for 20 years, and watched a lot of stuff made in the late 70s/early 80s. In my opinion, the quality of porn now is better than it has ever been. In my opinion, 95% of anything is crap, be it TV, music, books, etc. The difference in porn, though, is that there is so much of it. I can't possibly watch it all, so I figure out what I like or who I like, and stick with it. Generally, the girls now are hotter than ever, many have grown up watching porn, and they seem up for anything. There are exceptions, of course (many of my favorite flavors of the moment only do solo or other girls), but I find that if I don't like what I'm seeing, wait a week. Someone new will come along to blow my socks off.
pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world 12377 Posts 9/07
Posted - Dec 28 2007 : 1:37AM
The women are great (when they aren't overacting) but the care put into shooting and editing a scene, plus allowing some room for real chemistry between the performers, leaves a lot of room for improvement.
For the last 12 months or so I've been back paying attention to porn after a decade and a half hiatus. Some of the industry trends (all fake boobs all the time; cum-shots for the most part with guys jacking themselves off instead of the actresses being enthusiastically involved in makeing the actor come)are a turn off. The attempts at "acting" and "scripts" are laughable; though it is fun to see the upgraded production values and "interesting" locations.
Yes is it:- The Filming The girls The outfits The lighting The editing The script The concept The music The erotic level The heat Overall I'd say better girls, but not so erotic Edited by - Digmen1 on 8/12/2011 3:38:25 AM
That. The stuff of the 90s was too edited down, which made the more thorough scenes from the 2000's seem like a revelation for a while. Then I started to miss the "crafting" that went into the older stuff. Now we've got an hour long scene, but if they can't find a good viewing angle the whole frickin time then what's it really worth to have all these extra minutes packed into your movie? Craft, I'm calling it. Without it, we're left with crap (or something that's really intense but frustratingly incomplete). I don't know anymore if the quality of performers has gone up or down. It might just be I'm a homer for girls from my generation, you know? Certainly, there's been an increase in what's asked of the performers. So much more crotch warfare these days, which in some ways is great. However, all the extra friction is perhaps forcing people to take the more hardened attitude of "I can get through this....in fact, check this out! Bam! Bam! How do you like me now?" Whereas in the olden days you might feel more erotica coming through the screen because she was allowed to sizzle instead of only being served up. Eh.
Short answer -- yes. I think this recession has been good increased quality of porn being released because: 1. Eliminated or reduced the number of companies cranking out tons of mediocre movies. For example, Paul Thomas no longer cranking out junk for Vivid. Companies are releasing less product and the product they do release is geared to sell more. 2. Popular female stars now doing less boring "vanilla" scenes now. With less work available stars are more willing to do other types of scenes especially those that pay more (i.e. IR, gangbangs, strapons, ...). For example, Kim K doing IR now in Kimberly Kane's Been Blackmaled. Lisa Ann doing rare gangbang movie for Elegant Angel. Julia Ann doing strapon movie for Joey Silvera, Amy Reid doing IR now. 3. Some stars coming out of retirement (e.g. Raylene, Debi Diamond (briefly), Inari Vachs, ..) The downside is that some favorites have decided to retire. But overall I think the quality of the product has improved. Makes sense that if sales are down you start producing more of what fans want to see. The companies complaining the most are the ones who can't or don't want to compete.
