High Def

We'll probably have to wait 5-10 years for the 3D capture in HiDef to make it to gonzo.

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Sony has just introduced two HDV cameras that are on par with two long-time workhorses of the porn industry: the venerable VX1000 (and its decendents) and the PD150, a "prosumer" big brother to the VX1000. With price points at about $3700 and $4800 respectively, don't be surprised if you start seeing gonzo porn that's advertised as being "shot in HD" showing up soon.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are at least a half-dozen HD acquisition formats competing for the professional market. These cameras start at about $1000/day for a basic kit (body, lens, batteries&charger) and go up from there. I don't expect we'll being seeing gonzo footage shot with these cameras any time soon.

At any rate, until there is a widely accepted, non-broadcast HD delivery system (like a disc capable of holding enough data to present HD) I don't think it matters much whether gonzo is shot on SD or HD. HD acquistion can look pretty spiffy when seen on an HD monitor, but HD knocked down to SD looks only marginally better, and only if the DP really knows what she's doing. (For a comparison, look at old episodes of American Chopper next to new episodes.) I expect that gonzo shot on the new Sony HDV camera won't look any different than gonzo shot on a VX2100 or PD170.

For our own part, we've just shot some tests to see how film works into the approach we use in shooting sex scenes, and so far I'm very pleased with the results. The hazards, costs, and difficulties of shooting film are mostly overstated, and shooting film offers rich benefits, both in the short and long term.

Regardless of what happens with the HD format wars (and when it happens) film offers the immediate benefit of looking much nicer than video. Film can be transfered in HD against the day when HD is common place, but still looks better than HD acquistion when shown in SD. The film image also offers a certain emotional reasonance that video doesn't have. For our work this makes a difference. Where ever budget allows, we'll be shooting film, and eagerly look forward to when it can be presented in HD

-T.C.

Edited by - TonyC on 1/1/2005 1:51:34 PM

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I think I might start a separate thread about DVD zoom - how many folks use it, technical info, etc.

Sounds like zoom is tied to the quality of the player I'm using. My 4x zoom is actually better quality (i.e. less degradation) than my 2x zoom, which is annoying. Maybe there are techie sites out there on the web that discuss the quality of the zoom function on different players.

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Which one has cleaner math?

-T.C.

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HD-DVD and Blue Ray players are scheduled to go on sale in the States towards the end of this year . With Sony's Playstation 3 due to launch early '06 with a built in Blue Ray drive .

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One of the things that the big boys learned when they started shooting HD for things like morning shows, network news, and sports pundet shows what that they had to really tune up their set painting, make-up and other details (I think someone on here mentioned the suddenly shabby looking Tonight Show curtains.)

I can't see any reason that most HD porn would look better than SD porn, whether it's shown on a Blue-ray disc or on the internet. Gonzo shooters already do such a poor job of filling up the pixels it has in a competent, craftsmenly way; what makes you think they'll do any better if we give the average gonzo director responsiblity for six times as many pixels?

-T.C.

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There are really only two ways that video should look: either straight-up war correspondent ENG, or network anchorman/soap opera. This is why real amateur works so well on video. The visual texture of the video is perfectly in sync with the subject matter. But once you try to fancy it up, video is very unkind to flaws of any sort, either visual or conceptual. If you can't get the whole thing looking like Good Morning America or Day of Our Lives your video is going to look low-rent and cheesy.

On the other hand, film is incredibly kind. Flaw that would look like bad make-up end up looking like character. People just look sexier and more important when you shoot them on film.

I think the reason for this is that you never see any "character" in professionally produced video (other than hardcore ENG). For video to look right, it has to be hyper produced; seemless lighting, very heavy and expertly applied make-up, expensive wardrobe, etc. Everything in the world of professional video is super blow-dried.

In skilled hands, I've seen some HD that starts to elicit the kind of emotional response and sympath that film triggers – mostly in doc and reality TV produtions, both genres where we've been trained to accept the video image. A lot of HD looks like those infomercials that Cher used to do, utterly devoid of any character – but with more pixels to show off the flaws.

But on the other hand, you seen all kinds of "character" in professionally produced film. Gundy wardrobe, pock-marked faced, bad teeth, etc. (I just watched The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly last night. From the earliest age we're trained to (at least potentially) accept these "flaws" as an artistic choice when we see film, where as we see it as merely substandard production when we see them in video.

Long and the short: If you can't afford a first rate make-up artist and actors with perfect teeth, you might be better off shooting film.

-T.C.

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BTW I watched a volume of John Leslie's The Voyeur the other day , and he manages to get more 'atmosphere' into his video based product than most films I've watched . Plenty of natural light , and no obsession with opening up the action and breaking the spell . Top banana .

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I can't speak to Zero Tolerance or John Leslie directly, but certainly you can get a lot more out of a XV1000 that most porn shooters do. My whole world has been more or less build on understanding what a handicam can and can't do, and designing production that play to the equipments' strengths. This is a combination of choosing the right approach to the right subject matter, a couple of frame-rate, filtering, and other camera tricks, always having a top quality make-up artist when doing studio work , and as you said about Leslie, trying to avoid doing anything that would "break the spell." (Most of the video porn I've seen recently seems, if anything, to be going out of it's way to try to break the spell!)

The cost issue is a puzzlement to me. On one hand I see porn directors and studio posting to ADT that they're moving 20,000 units or making millions of dollars, but then on threads like this I they turn their pockets inside out and say they can't afford $15K-$25K for a nice industrial grade camera. (You can be sure the British equivelent of Friends or ER isn't being shot on a PDX-10!)

Furthermore, shooting film just isn't that much more money when considered in the whole budget. Last October I shot a test of about 400' (10 minutes total footage.) We did an anamophic 16:9 transfer of the footage and produced a short DVD. The results were encouraging; the short looked good letterboxed, it looked good as full-frame 4:3 (cropped left and right by the DVD player) and it looked good full-screen 16:9.

We showed the test to our most important distributors and retailers and they were all excited by what they saw. Buoyed by this, we're going to do a "shake-down cruise" later this month. We've got one gay couple and one lesbian couple lined up, and expect to roll about 4000' feet of film between the two love scenes. For the time being, interview will still be shoot on video.

Now granted, 4000' of film, processing and transfer is going to cost a little bit more than one or two MiniDV cassettes. But compared to paying the subjects, the make-up artist, the DP, the soundman, plus my time and my wife's time, it's not the biggest expense of the day, not by a long shot. And all we need to make up the expense of shooting film is about 10 more units per/month. I honestly don't know if we'll get those extra 10 units per month, but for the sake of getting to see real sex shot on real film, I'm willing to find out! Then of course there's the ability to re-issue on HD when (not if, when) that becomes a reality for home systems. Short of projecting a print, it doesn't get any sweeter than shot on film and presented on HD!

Of course it's a shake down cruise. By the time it's all said and done I might feel like it's not worth the extra effort and expense. By this time next month we might be singing the praises of video! But what are we talking about here? About $2,500. Is that really so much to try and make our work look better? I don't think so.

-T.C.

<typos, clarity>

Edited by - TonyC on 1/4/2005 10:35:54 AM

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Tony , I'm really hopeful that your trial run of yours works out . The soccer (it's called football , damn it ) mom project piqued my interest , and I've been looking forward to seeing what and who you come up with . Have you ever seen Wifey ? She's my ideal of an American house wife : good with the kids , full of sass , with a ravenous appetite for man juice . I wish there were more older women in porn who didn't have such weary eyes .

Will these other projects be 'reality' based in the same mold as Marie and Jack ? Or are you considering using roleplay/scenarios in your productions ? I understand it complicates things , but mightn't it be easier for some couples to unleash their full power on film/tape if they're released from having to "just be yourself" ? Besides , I often enjoy the set up to the action more than the writhing naked bodies themselves .

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I do enjoy giving him a hard time though. Some of his threads have great humour and sarcasm.

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One of the things I love about this business is how passionate people are to do good work. Nine times out of ten, if you give folks the chance to do work they can be proud of, they'll work twice as hard, twice as long, for half as much pay. Harnessing that passion to create is an independent producer's number one ally.

-T.C.

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I know what the "real technicians" mean. I work in I.T. and see amateur experts all the time... usually when I have to fix their computers.

Edited by - oatmeal on 1/4/2005 11:32:37 AM

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1) The only way to produce finacial viable explicit content was to shoot on video.

2) My incompentence as a writer or director of fictional narrative.

3) The lack of sufficient resources to produce fictional narrative that features explicit imagery (i.e. can't shoot on film)

4) Even if I could write and/or direct, people that can act won't do hardcore and people that will do hardcore can't act.

5) Pairing relative strangers for the sole purpose of having sex for the camera is yuckie.

6) Extended sex scenes, so crucial to the enjoyment of erotica/porn/smut/whatever-you-want-to-call-it are fundementally incompatable with fictional narrative.

7) Even if all the elements could be brought together successful, the presense of explicit imagery would religate the end product to the porn ghetto, and limit the rewards, both professional and finacially, to the small returns found in the porn ghetto.

Obviously I'm at a point where I'm seriously questioning the first presumption. By this Summer (and perhaps earlier) we should know if shooting film is viable, or just a pie in the sky fantasy.

Marketing M&J has also led me to question #7. About 30% of our sale come from areas decidedly outside "the ghetto". I know annecdotally that for many people, M&J is the only sexually explicit video they own and they're eager for more.

If shooting film proves to be viable, and if sales from outside the porn world continue to be an important slice of the pie, I can envision trying out new story-telling techniques. Mrs.C and I have an ongoing conversation about how the formal/structural problems might be addressed. We're not talking about full-blown scripted, feature-style work. But we are talking about something that gets away from the documentary conceit, and aspires to a more transparent presentation.

I'm also getting an inkling that by working with people like Brandon Iron and Kami (just to name two) together we just might be able to create the illusion of credible directing and acting. I'm realizing that I actually do a lot of directing in my "documentary" work, and those people certainly aren't professional actors! I have just the barest seed of an idea as to how I could bring that style into a more traditionally directed filmmaking style.

But first things first. The lesbian couple is a beautiful pair of black women. I can't think of a better way to show off the look of film – imagine that beautiful pink blossuming from betwixed all that chocolate! Cross your fingers for us. With luck, come the end of the month we'll be posting a lot of these

-T.C.

Edited by - TonyC on 1/4/2005 5:51:26 PM

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-T.C.

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Don't worry! "Real people, real life, real sex" is a rich vein, and I have every intention to continue to mine it – probably well past the point of being played out!

-T.C.

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But as an example of the qual;ity that HD will provide, it's excellent!

Now, back to our original question... How long till we see this quality routinely in gonzo and not only in Vivid-style movies (about which I couldn't care a whit less)?

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Darth-Morpheous
adultdetective.com

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When the idea came up of having the women of BKP direct our bossman said think of what you hate about porn and do it different. Now we are still really small and trying to make our mark and TOTALLY amateur striving for something better but one thing we've been told over and over again amateur doesnt have to be amateurish. So why do so many Vids come out looking amateurish?

Janay - BKProductions

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HDTV can be either 720p (as Island Fever), 1080i or 1080p.

The sample clip looks marvelous. Incredible depth to the image....

Set-top player capable of playing WMV-HD are cumming out this year too... :-)

yes, I would LOVE to see move releases like this.

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DVDs can only do 480p at best... HD DVDs have to wait until the standard is sorted out. Can media PCs and video cards dish out 702p or better?

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For example the in the test I shot last out in S.F. last October, as the women (in the avitar) were wrestling each other out of their clothing, Jenn of them gave Tina an unintentional forearm shiver right to chin. In response, Tina grabbed Jenn by the shoulders and playfully but rather forcefully pushed her down to the bed. Then they both started giggling before falling back into each other's arms, kissing and groping.

This "blooper" definitely was not in the (very loose) "script" (if it can even be called a script,) that we were all working from, but it's absolutely in the short vignette I cut from the test footage. In fact, it's one of the most charming moments in the whole thing. (Although the way Jenn goes down on Tina is pretty nifty too!)

-T.C.

Comstock Films: Films for People Who Like Sex

Edited by - TonyC on 1/20/2005 11:48:53 AM

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-T.C.

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Edited by - TonyC on 1/20/2005 11:54:10 AM

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this migration from old signal to HDTV is going to be a pain in the ass for a long time.

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-T.C.

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If you keep talking it up aren't people eventually going to get wise and force prices on film equipment up?

Would you be able to suggest any film equipment for home use that you'd consider good and affordable? Do you have to go to a shop to transfer film into digital?

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-T.C.

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Also, is there any point in using the 'film-like' 24 fps mode?

In a feature, I'd expect it to be cut and hopefully put in the BTS footage.
In gonzo I'd much prefer this stuff to be left in.

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the sony page for the camera in question. There's got to be an manual around with a better explanation.

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Tony - I for one will be ecstatic when you finish and release your new movie, as it will be quite interesting for you to have released more than one porn movie in your career as a porn director/producer.

To answer LeeO's question, I'm not sure yet if I want to see gonzo porn in true HD. Vignette porn and features that put a significant amount of time into makeup and set design - maybe.
I do like the 24i look from HDVideo prosumer cameras.

John will be shooting a feature that I will be assisting on late this year and we're still deciding on whether to shoot film or HD.

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-T.C.

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I'd actually like to know what you mean when you say that 30% of M&J's sales come from outside the ghetto - because I (perhaps mistakenly) jumped to the conclusion that you were inferring that the market for the average gonzo is ghetto.

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What I mean by outside of the porn ghetto is that about 30% of the sales of M&J take place in retailers where it is the only title that features explicit depiction of sex, or even nudity. In more than a few of these cases, M&J is the only DVD title the store carries. As I've talked to these retailers about what we're working on, including the fact that we'll be producing both gay and lesbian scenes, all of them have responded very enthusiastically (a few are cautious about gay material.)

As I've said to you Tricia in private, and also publicly on this board, I count seeing an early Buttman title as a watershed event in my development not just as a pornographer, but as a filmmaker and a storyteller. I've been cribbing from that Buttman video for nearly ten years now, and that's allowed me to take a wife, buy a house, and begin a family. J. Stagliano's willingness to jetsion the burdons of scripted, feature style production made me understand a completely different way to prioritize my productions and openned my eyes to possiblities.

If I seem especially vitriolic about Gonzo today, it's because I feel so let down by the genre. I like seeing a woman get fucked by 2 guys at once as much as the next fellow (3 or 4 is better), but I find myself nearly dispondent when I see this and other sex acts rendered in a way that is mildly offensive and (far worse) boring. Add to that the attitudes expressed on threads like Euro girl porn draught and my dispondency turns to rage.

The rage, of course, is of my own making. Like many others, I sometimes turn it outward as ugly self-rightousness. One of my New Years resolutions was to try to be better about this. The stress of the shoot this weekend (12 hours, 3 couples, 6,000 ft of film) no doubt has me edgier than usual. I actually called Steph at home the other day to apologize. Come next week, after we get the daylies back, I hope to be in a much better mode.

Till then I beg everyonce patience.

-T.C.

<spelling, missing words>

Edited by - TonyC on 1/20/2005 4:03:20 PM

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I just get frustrated when I hear people say that they know the cure for porn today, but then (at least from a distance) seem to be more talk than action.

Do what you believe in, but (for God's sake) do it.

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-T.C.

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Anyway, I was just saying that right now there's definitely things that we disagree about, and I'm going to step back for a bit. Nothing major.

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The difference in opinion you two are having is the old gonzo vs. feature argument. Neither of you are right or wrong but you are definitely wasting time talking trash instead of making it.

Kinky Clinky

(p.s. Trish, congrats on the title)

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-T.C.

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I classified your movie as feature... under assumption because my local dirt-merchant still hasn't bothered to import it.

If that's not the exact root of your dispute it's close.

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