What do you think is the impact on the adult video industry of the new high quality gonzo porn released by Red Light District, Jules Jordan and the spawn of new studios with good movies (PlatinumX/DVSX/Zero Tolerance). I'm speaking from a startegic marketing point of AV dvd/vhs sales/rentals. Who are the winners & losers and what effect did this have on the smaller/average studios that were releasing below average or average content before?
Do you think customers just started buying more porn as more high quality material was available and nobody really lost sales volume (increase in sales volume & revenue) or was there a shift in sales (more quantity supplied yet same volume and revenue) ?
To make a long story...probably longer than it needs to be....
I think what your seeing within the industry nowadays is a genuine changing of the guard.
For many years there were only a handful of companies willing to take the risk of producing and distributing this type of material. Their contributions to the present state of the industry should not be minimized but somewhere along the way I believe they became more concerned with quantity over quality and essentially lost touch with the "new breed" of porn consumer. The explosion of the internet has made porn available to the masses anonomously and (sometimes) conveniently. A side effect of the Clinton years was a certain rollback of the shame that one might have felt visiting a dirty book store. Major corporations like Time/Warner were suddenly clamouring for XXX content. Why? Sex sells and even the most conversative whitebread CEO knows it. Porn will never be "mainstream" but it's never been closer than it is right now. Getting back to the main point however, a new breed of consumer, much more savvy and critical than the same consumer 10 years ago, is driving the market nowadays. A market where the prices of XXX movies are a fraction of what they were 10 or 15 years ago. A market where there is genuine competition. Companies like Anabolic/Diabolic and Evil Angel have always known that the consumer is King but many of the larger studios are still releasing mislabled compilations on inferior tape stock without much concern. My guess is that the "casual" consumer of adult entertainment purchases these titles and are too embarassed to return them once they reliaze they've been had The aquisition by Hustler (LFP) of both Vivid and VCA is probably just the beginning of what will be a complete restructuring of the porn hierarchy. There are a large number of companies with huge catalogues that would probably jump at the chance to sell their interests to a big spender like Larry Flynt because it is becoming more difficult for them to move large numbers because, I believe, they no longer understand the market. Companies such as Zero Tolerance (who I am emloyed by),DVSX,, Red LIght and Platinum X are all companies comprised of former employees of the "big boys" who have wished and waited for their time to strike out on their own. It seems as though that time has come.
I think the companys that are going to be feeling the gonzo crunch will be companys such as vca,vivid, wicked etc. Soon the cable market will be hardcore, then they dont stand a chance. Probably the only retail thing keeping them afloat are their cheaper, older catalog titles that sell for cheap.
If the industry moves away from VHS then the 2nd tier companies are dead. Most people have a porn budget. They either use it to buy dvds or rent vhs. If the market becomes "buy only" without any rental, then consumers aren't going to waste their precious cash on mid range porn.
Right now a company like WCP can do well because brick and mortar stores buy their product to rent, but if the industry moves away from rental, and brick and mortar stop buying movies with the intention of renting them, then these companies will have to sell directly to the customer instead (via mail order, like adult dvd empire - whatever).
Will customers who were renting 40 bucks of movies a month, and now faced with the prospect of only buying 2 dvds a month instead, want to gamble their cash on mid line product?
Nope, that's why only the top line companies will survive the switch of a rental market to a buying market.
Or I could be completely full of shit, since what I just wrote barely makes sense even to me.
Gonzo (All-Sex) movies are the wave of the future! I think the younger generation & fans don't care for all that acting, plot, costumes, etc. in feature films.
Plus Gonzo films are relatively cheap to produce.
My Top 7: Red Light District Anabolic/Diabolic Evil Angel Platinum X Evasive Angles Sineplex DVSX
P.S. There will be more & more Gonzo companies sprouting up every year. It's inevitable as it's very profitable.
Jason, I think your question is wonderful, and my take on this is, I stand on my believes from day one, If I want to see a movie, I will go to the movies and see a movie, such as Matrix, Anger Mangement, and etc. We make Porn and those that make inferior product need to go out of business or do something else,The days of putting a great box together and have inferior product inside are over, as it should be, I'm not saying that there isn't still a Couples market out there, but as Jules said, these cable companys can't servive on just couples product, a couple years ago Steve Hirsch sold his hardcore channel for over 100 million dollars, why because he put the Better Gonzo product on his channel, plain and simple. The only people winning from all this great product is the end user and that is how it should be, I'm very up front and honest why I'm in porn, I'm in it for the money, and If you want to make money in this business, you better listen to the fans,Mike Quasar and Jules both put it in proper prospective,I'm a big believer in Adult Dvd Talk,I love the enter action I have with the end user, it makes my job very easy, all you need to do is listen to the fans, they will tell you what they want, now if I could only spell better.
That's why I keep a diktionairy by my computer desk, to prop it up from wobbling.
But some very good points here... listen to fans, but stay true to your vision, I know I don't like a lot of what is out, but as much as don't like, I like even more.
Q-man...somewhere along the way I believe they became more concerned with quantity over quality and essentially lost touch with the "new breed" of porn consumer.
Hell, I'd settle for QUALITY over Quantity....
...because as CyberC wrote... Most people have a porn budget ... yeah, mine is like ZERO, which is why I'd settle for, and welcome the quality.
Don't just put out relases for the sake of putting out releases, make it good, the fans will love it, and so will your sales.
I think higher quality product drives lower quality product out of the marketplace. It's as simple as that. The problem comes when you start defining quality. To those who say plot-driven porn is dead and nobody's interested anymore, I say The Fashionistas.
What nobody wants to waste their time on is bad acting and pointless dialog getting in the way of hot sex. On the other hand, a good plot, good acting and good delivery can enhance the setup for that same hot sex. I believe that those who understand this will still be able to make a good living in pornoland. They may have to live with not being numero uno in the marketplace, but so what?
While I'm on my hobbyhorse, let me just say that I find multi-guy on a girl scenes just as boring as bad plot-driven porn. Why? Because there's zero (0) chemistry there as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, yeah; you young studs are just happy to see object A inserted into orifice B, but you'll get tired of it just like us old farts have.
PS - In my book, gonzo's the present wave. Who knows what the future holds?
What a great thread. Very cool that some of the big movers and shakers of the biz are involved in this discussion.
My take on this is that average and below average porn (not necessarily plot based porn) will lose most of its sales as fresher & better material is released from the newer studios. Better meaning better visual quality, more customer oriented, better actors and directing etc...
As someone mentioned, in the future, there will be more and more studios, older studios and brand new studios that will release 'higher quality' material. What do you think will happen in terms of the customer shift? Will the top companies out of the high quality batch get most of the sales/rentals, will sales/rentals spread across all studios as more and more come in reducing overall sales for everyone, or will sales/rentals remain relatively constant as more variety is available and people will buy/rent more titles?
Nothing says I love you so much as a tongue in the ass. 2884 Posts 1/03
Posted - Jun 8 2003 : 2:44PM
Doesn't it stand to reason that if there is more high quality porn being produced, that it would spur more rentals than sales? Isn't that a way that a budget can be maximized?
Vanilla porn will always be around because of the couples factor. Dudes have a harder time bringing home to their girlfriend/wife an Ass To Mouth, D.P., gang bang or all anal movie (you know the ones where there are five scenes with anal where the guys don't even touch the girls pussy). Of course there are women who dig these movies but the majority like the bullshit story with condoms crap. That said, I think the single guy drives both the rent and buying market (more so the buying market). But couples do rent a lot and also watch a lot of the cable porn that's cut to shit. I think they make lots of money on cable/pay per view, so there's always going to be a market for it. And finally, porn will never succeed with a buy only strategy. Who would buy anything they havn't even seen yet? Would you go pay $20 for a mainstream movie you've never seen? I sure as hell wouldn't. Why on earth would I go spend more than that on a porn that I havn't seen yet. No studio has every movie that's good, they all got some stinkers, you never know until you watch them. Rental will not die anytime soon.
In my humble opinion I think is the impact on the adult video industry from the new high quality gonzo porn companies is going to be huge and their effects have already been felt buy some of the big studios. I don't know the exact numbers but if I may take an educated guess I would say that there is way.....way..............way more market share to go around than say five years ago. On the other hand there is so much more competition for market share than ever before.
I do think we have witnessed a bit of a changing of the guard or at the very least I think you can say gonzo porn has finally evolved into product that can rival the old school studios in terms of overall quality.
As far as the future of the industry is concerned I think there is still a lot of potential for some radical changes. With production costs plumiting, acess to international talent & compitition increasing, and technological breakthoughs around every corner I would argu porns future could takes us fans on a bumby ride over the next several years.
I think the market will continue to grow, compitition will stiffen and only quality product will survive. The best gonzo, the best interactive, the best features, and the best specialty porn.
It will be interesting to see: - how technology will effect distribution (video on demand/pay per view) - the governments reaction to studios pushing the limits of acceptable content (will virtual sex cross the line?) - how much more mainstream can porn get? I say a whole lot more! - will the large corporations throw their hats in the ring? (there is certainly enough money to make it tempting)
Hey Cyberchicken where did you hear that adult video rental is going the way of the DOdo boy I've been waiting two days to ask that question. I just don't see why they would I mean isn't that allot of revenue their frittering away if they did.
I wanna examine the original matter of the “impact of the new high quality gonzo porn.” Is it “high quality”? Yes, the examples cited are. Have these new companies had an “impact”? Only distributors can tell us for sure. (Any lurkers who work for a porn distributor wanna speak up?) Are the examples cited the only new porn labels created in the past 2-3 years? No. Is high quality gonzo “new”? No. Wall-to-wall videos have existed from the beginning, and each pornlover’s judgment of “quality” is different.
I think that in a world where 11,000 pornos are released each year, there’s lots of room, and lots of venues. It is competitive, especially for attention from the porn press. But I’ve been inside giant 2-story pornshops without a single RLD video in it because the owners haven’t bought a single new release in 2 years for whatever reason. There is a big disparity in the rate of innovation in bricks and mortar vs the ‘net. Sometimes I go into a pornshop and want to raise my fists at the sheer IDIOCY of the way they are selling porn. Some of them think it’s 1993 instead of 2003. A lot of b&m retailers are stuck in the old ways, thinkin’ they can get away with being lazy and mediocre and neglectful of customer needs. Fact is, because of the factors that we all know about, there is no one nationwide US chain that sets a standard for quality in porn & sex-toy retail. Sure, we, the pornerati, know about the Hustler stores and Good Vibrations, but only a minority of porn lovers has access to them. I think there is lots of room for porn growth because the market hasn’t been saturated. There are still plenty of places in this country where it’s easier to get weed than porn. Not everyone has access to the net, and not everyone with access likes to purchase porn on it. In addition, true anonymity in buying porn is not best achieved by leaving a paper trail on the net, but by spending cash inside a store. So...any distributors want to tell us if the net has overtaken b&m stores?
A fact absent so far from this thread is that many many many porn customers prefer cheap porn to expensive. They don‘t need high quality in order to get off, so their thinking is: “$17.95 for 4 hours or $27.95 for 2 hours 20 minutes?” Many consumers think this way. They don’t know New Sensations from Nymph. Yes, there is a lot of stuff put on cheap tape stock, but we’re talking like 5% bad tapes from a cheap company vs. 1% from a high-end. Most of the cheapola porn is good enough for Mr. Done-jackin-in-5-minutes. He just buys his porn 4 times a year, and he never gets a taste of the goodness of Evil because it’s always $27.95, even the 10-year-old titles. I have been in stores that are 30% Vivid just because of the cheap (but high quality) compilations. When I was a porn newbie, I bought a lot of Vivid just because they had great compilations that were cheaper than 2 hour features, and I knew EXACTLY what was in them. (4 Hours of Cocksucking! 4 Hours of Debi Diamond! 1001 Cumshots!) To the owners of the studios that don’t want to reprice their catalog I have this question: don’t you think that retailers who buy a lot of porn filler would *rather* buy your tapes than Sunshine‘s? Hasn’t Vivid’s success with comps impressed you? Or the sales of their repriced catalog? Maybe there’s a side I don’t see...help me out here.
Jules wrote: “I think the companys that are going to be feeling the gonzo crunch will be companys such as vca,vivid, wicked etc. Soon the cable market will be hardcore, then they dont stand a chance. Probably the only retail thing keeping them afloat are their cheaper, older catalog titles that sell for cheap.”
Love ya Jules, but I gotsta disagree with ya. There is still a strong consumer desire for star worship, which is something those 3 companies are strong on. Would Jenna J or Tera Patrick be who they are without the companies they’ve worked for spending lots on promoting them? One could consider the question in reverse as well: would Wicked or DP be the same companies they are without Jenna and Tera?
Cable may be unedited soon, but the companies who are big in cable already have a massive head start on those who are not. And HELLO! but VCA, Vivid and Wicked all make more than just features.
Cyberchicken asked: “Will customers who were renting 40 bucks of movies a month, and now faced with the prospect of only buying 2 dvds a month instead, want to gamble their cash on mid line product?”
The rental market will never disappear. A movie, unlike a song, is consumed once by the majority of its buyers. So offering both options makes the industry more money than just selling. Technology may change this, but we’re still far away. Half the country is not even on the internet yet.
SyberScott wrote: “I think the younger generation & fans don't care for all that acting, plot, costumes, etc. in feature films.“
Five of Adult DVD Empire’s top 10 sellers of all time are videos with “all that acting, plot, costumes, etc”, as are 4 of the current top 10.
My own postulate: low quality cheap porn will go into extinction when we have more high quality cheap porn.
Jules Jordan wrote..."I think the companys that are going to be feeling the gonzo crunch will be companys such as vca,vivid, wicked etc. Soon the cable market will be hardcore, then they dont stand a chance. Probably the only retail thing keeping them afloat are their cheaper, older catalog titles that sell for cheap.”
Difficult to say if that will be the case if only because "story driven" porn titles from the likes of Michael Raven, Nic Andrews etc. still contain hardcore sex in their unedited, direct to DVD/Video state. Cable may feel that titles by these Directors and the companies that they work for offer some sort of legitimacy to the medium simply because a "compelling story element" preceeds the anal scenes. It could be seen as a way of showing a dirty movie without actually feeling dirty. Under this perception, Gonzo could find itself "out-classed" on cable by pretentious mainstream knock-offs with 100k budgets that contain enough penetration shots to be considered hardcore.
Just to clarify a point, when I referred to "pretentious mainstream knock-offs with 100k budgets", it was a generalization ... although it's a pretty fair description of Nic Andrews....except his budgets are probably closer to 200k.... but I didn't mean to impugn the work of Michael Raven who's movies I enjoy quite a bit.... but now it sounds like I'm sucking up to him....which I'm not.....come to think of it, some of his movies are pretentious too but at least he makes an attempt at originality....... I think I'll turn in now.
I am on good terms with the managers of three of the largest adult video stores (just movies/no toys or booths) in my area. All of them flat out refuse to rent dvds. Well actually one of them rents older b titles, but nothing new.
They all say the same thing. That renters treat the dvds like shit and after a few dozen rentals the movie has to be replaced. This is actually true with stores like Hollywood and BlockBuster, but they are huge mega corporations and can absorb the cost.
That's not true for mom and pop video rental stores, many of whom are only hanging on because of renting vhs porn. They won't be able to absorb the cost of scratched dvds and it's going to be a tough go for them once vhs is permanently killed off.
great thread - im all about gonzo these days. am i a regular joe? yup. have i been watching porn for awhile? yup. i got tired of the crappy plots & acting of scripted porn that reminds me of 1970's kung fu shows. no one watches those old kung fu shows for the plots or the acting, they watch it for the fighting. when i check out an adult film, im all about:
1. actresses 2. content 3. director 4. studio
in that order. i can also do without the camerawork that some big productions feel they need to do. this isnt an episode of 'dallas' so don't fuzz up the sex shots all the time. i hate that. if i rent a dvd from a studio im not familiar with & they do over-produced camerawork i just get turned off. these small studios still have to elbow their way around & thats what competition is but as far as right now? hats off to the studios & the directors who have made this change in the biz. i also see a turn away from contracting the actors which is a very big relief for me. i remember one of my favorite starlets(un-named)who was contracted by a big studio(un-named) & when that happened her energy & output when in the shitter! nothing else can neuter the market than stagnation.
I do think that if the video stores checked a dvd after someone rents they'll know exactly who's wrecking the DvD's. There's usually dead times during the day where they could do this cause allot of the time when I go into the store there's know one in but me and the clerk and he is usully watching Dr.Phil or reruns of Married with Children.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the fact that some of the newer companies are offering some level of ownership of the product to the directors/employees. In my opinion this is the most significant motivational factor behind many of the new companies' success stories. Now more directors have incentive to put out the stuff that fans want to see and to meet their expectatons for quality.
Still wanking after all these years. 8082 Posts 10/00
Posted - Jun 11 2003 : 12:57PM
"High quality" is a matter of opinion.
Mainly because of all the hype here on ADT I purchased out of curiosity a few titles from Jules Jordan, Red Light District and DVSX and frankly I wonder what the fuss is all about. Good maybe for some titles but hardly ground breaking. Also many of the girls are not good looking (tattoos, fake tits, piercings) and used over and over and over again...
Never been a big fan of American porn (except Dark Bros/Gregory Dark, Joe Silvera John Stagliano) but the "new directors" don't make me a bigger fan...
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Porn Scout Deactivated User
3735 Posts 10/02
Posted - Jun 11 2003 : 6:21PM
The way I see it, the gonzo production model allows for higher quality and responsiveness to viewers because it is both low-cost and low-risk when compared to production for feature-based porn. The popularity and success of this type of production has created a space in the market with low barriers-to-entry that new companies can much more easily compete in. This ensures a competitive, market driven process whereby established players such as Evil Angel, Anabolic, and Red Light District compete with one another, but at the same time are going to constantly be challenged by newcomers such as Zero Tolerance, Platinum X, and DVSX. The winner in all of this is the consumer, who should get higher quality, better variety, and lower prices than ever before. At the same time, this process that I am referring to, while creating better quality and a greater range of choice for the consumer, should increase the size of the market as a whole.
That's kind of the big-picture way that I see it and I believe I have it right for the most part. My assumption that gonzo is lower-cost is based on figures I've read which pin costs for the typical gonzo title around $25,000 as opposed to a feature by Michael Raven that might be in excess of $100,000. My assumption that it is lower-risk is based on 1) the lower up-front production costs, 2) the idea that when putting together a gonzo title it can be aimed much more specifically at a given market segment such as anal, oral, teen, etc., which in a sense reduces the risks involved to issues such as casting choices, camerawork, the skill of the director, etc., and 3) the gonzo model encapsulates the risk on a scene-by-scene basis, so if something goes wrong on a given scene, it isn't necessarily a disaster because it doesn't affect the other scenes at all. If a girl doesn't show up, it sucks but it isn't the end of the world. If a scene just doesn't work out well, the studio can choose to move on without it or, if they choose to include it, they can do so in the knowledge that the movie will have several other scenes the viewer can choose from.
I think Porn Scout is absolutely on target here. One of the problems with features is the necessity to recoup their big investment by trying to appeal to every sector of the marketplace. This rarely works, and usually (not always) makes for wishy-washy porn.
Also, if you have a story with characters, you can't just take a scene out and stick it into your next feature. You can't throw in a quadruple-anal creampie scene at the last second if that's what the audience is currently clamoring for. Pre- and post-production takes a lot longer, because a lot more is at stake - so your brand-new girls aren't new anymore by the time a feature comes out.
Plenty of other differences don't come to mind right now. All stuff that, in my opinion, has very little to do with masturbation.
---Mod Note--don't mind me, just edited just to fix Rick's markup tags. :)---
Re: rjk13's note: I am interested too. In case such product becomes popular demand, what studios can afford such investment of capital? I imagine Stagliano expected no returns on a movie he needed to make, but it would take a big studio to put up that kind of dough for lesser motives. In the consolidation of the fragmented adult industry that seems to have begun, the big players will be LFP and Private (when they get back on track). Maybe Vivid if broadband distribution becomes a reality. The CEO of Private is putting eggs in that basket too. (They must know something.) Seems far-fetched to me and my bets are on Flynt, but if Mike Quasar's 2 cents are worth a quarter, mine would trade in centavos.
Patience is a virtue, but who wants to be virtuous? 4283 Posts 4/00
Posted - Jun 12 2003 : 5:21PM
rjk- I'm wondering if I should answer your question in a different thread, but here goes:
The Fashionistas came in at approximately $500,000. We think that this may be the most expensive non-theatrical adult film to date. We didn't EXPECT to make a profit, but it was certainly a hope that at some point it would break even and maybe make a tiny bit of money. It was done more out of passion and love and for the experience of making what we hoped to be a really great film. The same went for the DVD. We put a lot into it, not just to get more sales, but because it was a lot of fun to do and because we loved this movie so much, we couldn't just do a partial job of the DVD.
The good news: The Fashionistas will absolutely make a profit, and much sooner than anyone could have ever imagined, thanks to all the wonderful awards and reviews and word-of-mouth.
To tie this into the current thread , I hope that the film pushes other studios and ourselves to produce good features with good sex. They don't have to be exclusive of each other.
Sorry. I never meant to ramble on as much as I do here, but here's my two-cents anyway:
The new wave of hardcore start-ups, whether they realize it or not, are doing a great job of counter programming the adult entertainment easily found on cable or in hotel room closed circuits. Fans of RLD, Platinum X, Zero Tolerance, et al. are the same fans who are under-served by the cable market. Still, it's probably a little early yet, despite the praise, to make predictions about these companies' long-term viability. To say that the "couples friendly" companies like Wicked and Vivid are going to have a hard time assumes that they won't be able to adapt. Also, it assumes that neither will be able to again find that one mega-star (like Jenna Jameson) who becomes a successful brand all on her own. Those types of near-crossover celebrity porn girls do a lot for casual porn fans, and I'm not so certain that these newer companies have the patience or desire to incubate that kind of talent the way Wicked did with Jenna. After all, once you've see Jules Jordan run a train up a girl's ass, D.P. her, and cum on her face (all in the same scene), what more can you see her do that you haven't seen her do already? I should point out, however, that I've gladly bought a bunch of Jules Jordan's DVDs, and am eager to give him more of my money in the future.
I guess the point is that a great many porn fans are also fans of particular girls, and the Wickeds and Vivids of the world will always have a market as long as they hold those girls' contracts and market them well. For the sake of the hypothetical, let's say I'm a big fan of a hot young contract starlet named Poonilla who is signed to Wicked Pictures. Once every two months I can look forward to seeing the sweet Poonilla in a well put together DVD where she has 2-3 hot boy/girl scenes and is featured in lots of DVD extras like behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. If I'm a Poonilla fan, then Wicked is going to get my business no matter how much I like watching Brandon Iron turn some girl's asshole inside out.
While I agree there's a changing of the guard in porn production, I'm not so certain the change is so dramatic that it's going to alter what fans want to see. Or, to compromise a fan's loyalty to his favorite pornstar. The porn audience is just too vast and its tastes are just too varied. Of course, what do I know? I don't make the stuff; I just watch it.
Lastly, to echo Tricia's comments, there's no rule that says a feature has to be tame and unoriginal. The Fashionistas proves that. Likewise, there's no such rule for couple's porn, either.
Tricia, that is indeed good news. I watch alot of the hard, extreme stuff, and I love it, but after awhile I start feeling a little brain dead. Its good to know imaginative features can still be commercially viable, because I have always had the feeling that the surface has only been scratched in story based porn.
