First off, the turn around time and budget for gonzo fare is such that telecine/color timing would be completely impractical. Secondly, no one wants to interrupt the action to change mags nor is anyone presently shooting gonzo even remotely familiar with film. Third, the guy whacking off at home doesn't care if what he's watching was shot on film or not. As a matter of fact, he'd prefer that it not be. I've taken flack from various consumers because I shoot in progressive scan which sorta "looks" like film. Lastly, as someone who once worked as a negative cutter, I hope that film soon finds a watery grave as HD 24p renders it obsolete.
Given the current state of porn, you'd have to be a bit of a madman to shoot real hardcore on film. Of course in this biz you can't swing your dick without hitting lunatic...
While there's no denying that shooting on film would up the ante (nothing ventured, nothing gained), the technical issues are easily resolved:
Here in NYC you can get best-light transfers to Digibeta in 48 hours. I know the pace of life is a little faster here than out in L.A., but even if it takes a week out your way that would seem fast enough to me.We deal with this problem all the time. Don't change mags, change cameras.The biggest problem in the industry today is that what porn can and should be is being defined by the last people in the world I would ever give this power to: John Ashcroft and hardcore raincoaters. Fear of Ashcroft keeps real hardcore off the cable channels, and hardcore producers keep pandering to raincoaters. As a result, creativity is almost completely stiffled and porn is at an all time low.Two words: Digital internegative. And anyway, who needs to cut negative if you're going out to video anyway. Or were you planning on taking a shot on film pornopalooza to Sundance?
As far as HD, it's a terribly unforgiving format. Poorly shot HD looks far worse than poorly shot film; and well shot film looks way better than the best HD can do. HD aint cheap either; at $1000/day for a camera rental, plus monitors,etc. shooting on film starts to look like a bargain.
Bottomline:
I think the right director working with the right talent could do something amazing shooting gonzo style hardcore sex with mainstream production values. No jibs, no expensive locations. Just clean verite style photography, clean sound and crisp editing.
Would it cost more than a run and gun shoot with a PD150? Of course. Would it be worth doing? There's only one way to find out!
IAFD, supporters of beastiality. Just say no. 7564 Posts 11/02
Posted - Sep 30 2003 : 1:41PM
The medium in which you work does not dictate whether you can be creative or not. It only dictates in which ways you can be creative. The aesthetic form-genre-formula in which you work does not dictate whether you can be creative or not. It only sets structural paradigmatic borders, which can and often are overriden by idiosyncratic, "creative" aesthtetic impulses, which are seen as a prerequisite for obtaining the standard of "good entertainment" in opposition to mere "correct entertainment". You know, the classic dichotomy of standardization and differentiation, which is non-existent in consumer goods, but is damn important in cultural goods.
Creativity only stiffles when anyone tries to define "what porn can and should be", whether it be John Ashcroft, hardcore raincoaters, or me or you. Maybe it is time we stopped asking the question what porn should be and start asking the question what porn is, in all its diversities as well as similarities.
HoldenMagroin said: "Why subject a perfectly good tee shirt to the potential danger of flying semen."
TonyC, You should take a look at Erotica XXX 1-3, Anal Trainer 1-4, Biggz Beauties 1-3, all released by Digital Sin. They are not shot on film, but the camera they use looks very much like film. I'm also a bit sick of the shot on video look, and found these a refreshing change. Not to mention that the sex is hard gonzo, really good stuff.
Personally I'm a big film fan, the problems lie in cumbersome cameras, mag changes, more intense lighting technique and cinematographers that have their shit together more than the average porn camera guys. You actually have to have your shit tight to pull off film. As you said earlier 7.5k for 75 minutes turns into somewhere around 16 or 17k for a flick that runs two and a half hours, thats just below the line not taking into consideration lights,camera kit,grip truck and everything else it takes to pull off a decent film shoot.
Then you have to pay location fees, agents, talent,etc.. All said and done you're looking at a budget of somewhere around 40 to 50K consertivitly to pull it off.
A good 500T stock requires no more light that a PD150. Kodak's 800 is more sensitive than a any video camera. In either case you'll get better performance in both the shadows and highlight from film than you'll get with any video camera. If anything, you'd use fewer, smaller fixtures shooting film.$7.5K gets you a 3:1 ratio on a 75 minute film. $15K gets you a 3:1 ratio on a 150 minute film. If you're "shit is tight" you could do it for less. I bet a guy like you could shoot gonzo at nearly a 1:1 ratio. If someone needs more than 3:1 to shoot gonzo, they should give up shooting porn or anything else for that matter.
As far as lights, grip, etc. no more expensive to light for 16mm than it is to light for video. In fact, video needs a much flatter ratio and that requires more fixtures, grip, time and money. If you know how to read a light meter, shooting film is easier , not harder.
Camera. Yeah, your'e right. Figure $800 to get a pair of A-Minimas (no bigger than a handicam) so you can swap cameras. Add another $400 for a good AC to handle the out camera. While we're at it figure $500 for a sound guy with a Nagra. Let's be generous and give him $100 worth of audio tape stock.
I'm still under $20K. But I'll have to defer to you on the rest. Are we really going to have to spent another $20K-$30K on location fees, agents, talent,etc? Even if we go back to shooting DV, $25K a lot of money to shoot a gonzo video!
John Stagliano has several times. I think Face Dance 1 & 2 were both film. And Fashionistas was film. You are right, though, you hardly notice it unless you know it is film. Especially with John running around with a DVcam in his hands. I don't know why he does it other than he is an artist as well as a pornographer.
As far as I'm concerned, "You hardly notice it" is about the highest praise you can give any technical aspect of a film, be story craft, cinematography, or editing. Matching your aquisition medium (film, Digibeta, DV) to your other creative choices is an incredibly important part of achieving this "hardly notice it" level of transparency in filmmaking.I think JS might very well qualify as the ultimate madman of porn!
Good point about all the digital codecs the film has to go though to reach our off-color NTSC (never the same color twice) TVs.
The light values and skin tones are beautiful but you loose the immediacy of being there that 60 field video offers.
Still, that scene in Face Dance 2 where the girl approaches the 3 dudes on bar stools stands out as a really erotic shot. And you didn't see that much flesh, either. Which just goes to show that erotica is not the biggest gapping asshole.
Shooting gonzo on film, interesting concept. Anytime I see an adult film shot on film I pick it up. Why? Because I know somebody put some effort into it and I'm interested in how it turned out. But "Gonzo" on film may be a little too far. I don't know anything about filming movies whether they are adult or mainstream but gonzo movies to me are just a guy with a camera, no plot, no stages. Just a girl getting fucked. Yes the quality might be better than videocams but that would also take away from a gonzo film. I would know that everything is well choreographed before watching the film. Before one tries an attempt at gonzo with 35mm maybe they should look into vignettes (aka short stories). That's about my four cents on this subject.
Not only are midtones (like flesh) rendered with a subtly that video can match, film offers much better performance in the shadows and highlights. Nothing illustrates this better than a facial shot on film.
i think digital cameras have more of a home for gonzo. 16mm or 35mm cameras are just too heavy to move. I actually love the camcorder look of a gonzo movie beacause it gives it a sense of documentary, capturing a real life act than a fictional one. editing is a breeze with just the use of a firewire cable you can capture footage off the camera onto the computer. Transferring film digitally takes alot more time and money. Film also costs alot of money and if you dont have a proffesional cinematography you can have shaky results.
This is just plain wrong. There are fully functional 16mm camera no bigger than a handicam. There are 35mm cameras that can be shot from the shoulder or on a small pair of sticks.Camcorder offers one look, professional video another, and film yet another. It's a pity that the heat the gonzo has to offer is rendered exclusively in DV.What you are describing is not editing. You are describing the process of loading footage onto an editing system. Editing is the process of assembling the footage into a cohesive presentation, and is rarely a "breeze", regardless of the technology employed."Shakey results" are just as easy to achieve with handicams and DV; gonzo gives us rich evidence of this. If you are refering to literal camera shake, heavier cameras are better than light MiniDV camera. As far as proffesional cinematoggrapher, let me re-interate: I would like to see the viseral heat of gonzo explored with more craft and intent than is possible with barely competent cameraman weilding a Sony handicam.
Tony, you appear to be a filmmaker. As one of the many "barely competent cameramen" weilding a Sony (in my case, Canon) camcorder I can respect that. However, I am not a filmmaker. I'm a pornographer. I shoot people having sex. This calls for neither the aesthetic value nor inherent complications of shooting on film. The thought of putting the next installment of "Ass Cleavage" through telecine is borderline comedic. Gonzo is the fast food of porn. People aren't expecting art. They merely want some hot scenes to jack to so that they can drop a load and go to bed. I used to carry a chip on my shoulder because I felt that many of the people shooting porn today had no cinematic skills but I now realize that they are simply giving the people what they want. Vince Voyeur is techincally not a good cameraman but he's a great pornographer. The same is true for virtually everyone at RedLight, Evil Angel etc. I've spent many years shooting "feature" movies with large crews, cranes and dollies. Even catering!! I tried to pretend that I was a filmmaker but in the end I discovered that, for the most part, people aren't buying porn for the storyline and I often fast forwarded through my own movies. Those who can tell a compelling story and still find time for good sex scenes have my admiration and those movies are probably worthy of being committed to film. The rest of us will happily continue to shoot gonzo on video and leave art to others.
It's beyond comedic, it's ridiculous!"Giving the people what they want" is never a good excuse for not doing what you want to do. There are good excuses, but that's not one of them.Features? Feh, who needs them.You know someone who's done this? I want names, I want titles!
Let's face it, pornographers shoot on video because they can away with it. Twenty years ago, when shot on video porn was first being experimented with (yes, I remember stuff like Aerobisex Girls), the industry scoffed at the idea. Nobody would watch, let alone buy, this fuzzy, flat, pasty looking shit, they said. But they also had their fingers crossed that people might, because the theater business was in slow decline ever since Miller Vs. California ten years before, and the idea of shooting on video directly, instead of film transfers, was the equivalent of the holy grail to the porno business at the time. And guess what? People did watch it, buy it, and ask for more. Video companies popped up like crazy, and soon the market was glutted with more porn in 2-3 years than had been made in all the previous time since 1970. It was almost all crap; critics, astute fans, and many veterans of the industry complained like hell about quality, budgets, lack of professionalism ("any idiot can buy a camera and make this stuff"), etc; and guess what? Consumers didn't care. Why? Lots of reasons, I suppose. First, there was more porn than ever before to watch. Second, it got cheaper to buy (slowly). Third, the industry was lucky that at the precise moment they began to try video as a medium, a remarkable collection of young new girls appeared on the scene, like Traci, Ginger, Amber, Ali Moore, Bunny Bleu, Cynthia Brooks, Crystal Breeze, Heather Wayne, Christy Canyon, Stacey Donovan, Shanna McCullough, Tiffany Blake, Gina Valentino, Nina Hartley, Dorothy Oh, Kari Foxx, Angel, Raven, etc. So stuff was marketed not by title, but by the babes on the boxcover. Most of these girls couldn't do a line of dialogue and had no screen presence at all, and would have been loop players years before. But that was passe now--it was spin the bottle and roll the camcorder. And it was cheap, cheap, cheap to make.
Well, the older male performers either quit or got behind the camera themselves, and old directors quit in disgust, or started up their own video companies. Some people tried to keep shooting features on video, but it was a hopeless game. Video quality has improved since then, and a lot of adapting has happened in relation to the medium. The truth is, gonzo, wall-to-wall, all-sex porn is a RESULT of the transition to the video medium. It is about the only thing the medium CAN do, decently. Would it be look better if it were shot on 16mm or 35mm film? YOU BET. Would the increase in budgets force porn producers to worry over the final product more, thereby improving quality? SURE. Would film open up lots of new possibilities in the gonzo genre, even mixing the video and film mediums within the same projects? YEP. Do the occasional brave gonzo directors who still do film on occasion (such as John Stagliano and Rocco) achieve great results by combining the current style of sex shooting to the film medium? YES THEY DO.
So why the resistance to film? I think the main reason, as Cal and Qauze have suggested, is that no one remembers how. If the current crop of gonzo directors had to work with film, most would be out of business the next day, financial considerations aside. It would be like asking the Cincy basketball team to do basic geometry. Good luck. Out of work pros and anti-establishment film hippies, who created most of the 1970's porn, were right when they said the inmates had taken over the asylum in the video age.
Second, (and I should qualify this statement first, because there are exceptions, like John Stag, who love their public and consider pornography in a broader context--but fuck it, this is true in most examples) The porn business views its audience with friendly contempt, and always has. Nothing new here: like other forms of consumerism, the porn world is just another part of the popular entertainment industry, which operates reflexively to whatever the flavor of the month is, and stays with it until some brazen soul pops his head out of the sand and shifts the money trail elsewhere. The corporate suits who run the music business today smirk at the shit they pander off, the Hollywood movie business patronizes its audience grossly. Compared to that, porn is pretty user-friendly. But Quaze's comments speak to the consensus. You could say they show contempt, and even a little self-loathing (that is also very common in porno); but you could also say that he is a "reality guy", and Quaze is not wrong about the motives of most porn viewers, as you can read on these boards. I imagine most porn directors like their work, and have lots of good ideas about how things could be improved. But they see themselves as slaves to the machine. If the consumer wants something different, then something different will be made. But the consumer looks to the director (while buying the old product, because that's all there is), and says, "why don't you do something different?" The dog is forever chasing its own tail.
(I should also say that in many respects, the porn business has low-balled itself into the position it is now in. $50k was a small budget feature in 1980--a "grinder" as the biz used to call it. Most budgets were in the $75,000-$250,000 range. But you had theatrical runs in those days grossing as much as 1-2 million, about a third of which went back to the producing parties at the end of the day. Then you turned it over onto video, and in a much smaller market glut (and with higher prices, up to 60-80 bucks a tape retail), you could sell more units than most titles today move. You also had more family video outlets then, all buying units for their businesses. Now adult theater is dead, video stores are dying fast--and big outlets are afraid of carrying porn--and the volume of product in the porn market works against sales, even with more consumers than ever buying product. The video companies seem to need quantity of titles in the market to make margin, which keep the budgets lower than ever before. The dog is eating its tail, too.)
Oh, by the way, and I know this is a controversial thing to say, so be gentle with me on this one. The idea that there are lots of old classics that "tell a compelling story and find time for sex scenes" is bullshit. It is a myth the porn business itself pushed from back in the early 1980's when it was deemed cool to try to standardize porn into Hollywood TV movie formats. It never worked. Porn and mimetic Hollywood narrative are pretty incompatible with one another. Read that again. The older masters, like DeRenzy and Metzger, made lots of sex films in all sorts of different formal and stylistic structures, but they were too smart to try to make something like, say, AMANDA BY NIGHT, which is a slick, made for TV type movie, but a failed sex film. These guys were pornographers and filmmakers. The two are not exclusive to one another. But they also knew some tricks and had an understanding of the genre that is lost today, except for someone like Stagliano, who is really old-school in many ways, despite his reputation for innovation.
(Mind you, I'm not saying that classic porn didn't have story structures. Anyhow, this is a different topic.)
Between your choice of nickname and apparently first-hand knowledge of things that happened when I was still in diapers, I'd have to guess that you've been around while.
I have to second Quasar's rave. You've done a great job of laying things out to show how we got here. Perhaps I'm reading too much into your post, but I think you've left a few crumbs for how you think the biz might get out of the "dog chasing its tail/lowball world" it's created for itself. Count me as another who will be axiously awaiting your next post!
Patience is a virtue, but who wants to be virtuous? 4283 Posts 4/00
Posted - Oct 6 2003 : 8:53PM
Yes, John Stagliano has shot on film a few times. Face Dance 1 and 2 (shot together) Wild Goose Chase The Fashionistas
I mentioned this thread to him in Barcelona, and he simply said the he personally would probably never shoot gonzo on film, because (among other things) one of the things he likes best about gonzo is that it feels real, which is a good thing about video picture. Film helps make something look more polished and a step-removed from reality.
That was just a personal statement though and not meant to reflect on anyone else.
As I've mentioned before, JS's work has had as profound an effect on my work as anything I've seen and I'm going to make a point of seeing all four of these films just as soon as I can.
I think he's absolutely right about the emotional effect of anything that's 30i vs. 24p. The MTV awards were broadcast in some sort of 24p format, and I didn't care for it. or lack of a better word, it didn't look "live", more like a concert film and that seemed to drain the excitement out of it. Aparrently Quasar has had the same reaction to his work when he's shot shooting 30p.
My current project is mixing DVCAM with 16mm, and we're maintaining a very strict convention of when we use DVCAM and when we use 16mm so as not to invite comparison between the two.
Aside from the pure beauty of film, which satisfies me as a director, film's taught me a few things as a producer as well: a modern S16 camera can be less obtrusive than a fullsized video camera; film can get an acceptable image under lighting conditions that make it nearly impossible to shoot quality video; forget jibs, dollies, cranes, etc dollar for dollar, film can be the cheapest way to elevate the production values of a project.
I can't help wonder what Tommy, with his minimal crew/real sex approach could do with an A-Minima. All he'd need is a good AC to set the apeture, and load the "out" camera for him. With his wide-angle look, he wouldn't even have to focus!
