I have been told by certain sourpusses (who will remain nameless) that there is no market for plot-driven bareback porn. Ha! I disagree. I think the market is ripe for story-based sex movies. Just ask Sean Storm.
In 2004 Storm, collaborating with Helix Studios, co-produced "Storm Drain," the bareback genre’s first true plot-driven video. And it was very successful. So much so that Storm created his own production company and began filming "The Storm Chronicles" – a multi-part story that follows Storm’s self-inspired character on a lampoon of his life and livelihood as a porn star caught between his love for sex, his love interest, his career, his fans, a stalker, and his long-lost twin brother (on a mission of sexy revenge). The story is set during the onslaught of a hurricane. His character is genuine, funny, and sympathetic. The sex for the most part is hot. And the series is both charming and successful.
As well, take a look at what some of the non-bareback studios are doing as of late. These are videos I consider my "YSW" list (YSW stands for "You Should Watch"):
DANGEROUS LIAISONS > Lucas Film
Michael Lucas released "Dangerous Liaisons" in 2005 and it won all sorts of accolades (including best picture) at the GayVN awards – as well it should have. "Dangerous Liaisons" is a very well done movie with plenty of sex, drama, intrigue, and more.
FUCK FICTION > Cazzo Films
Not as polished as "Dangerous Liaisons" mostly because of the dialogue between German actors being delivered in stilted English. However "Fuck Fiction" won Best Overall Film in the 2007 European Gay Porn Awards and is well worth watching for inspiration.
SEX HIKER > Black Scorpion
Black Scorpion is a relatively new production company who released a film last year called "Sex Hiker" and it won the GayVN award in 2009 for Best Group Scene. And it’s no wonder. The scene was very well shot. Overall the film has an Indie film look to it thanks to the wonderful camera work by Mr. Pam. I recommend this one for the overall look of the film in addition to the use of a rather simple but effective premise.
TO THE LAST MAN > Raging Stallion
The hands-down winner in this year’s GayVN Awards was Raging Stallion’s "To The Last Man" – a 2-part plot-driven movie that captured awards for Best Picture of the Year, Best Editor, Best Art Direction, Best Oral Scene, Best Three-way, Best Music, Best Screenplay, Best Videography, Best DVD Special Edition, and Best DVD Special Features.
To The Last Man takes the sex movie to new levels. It is a violent portrayal of life in the West, complete with brutality, a hanging, rape, a drowning, and a revenge-fueled killing spree. The sex is of the caliber Raging Stallion is noted for. And the acting is better than in many indie gay films that have played the film festival circuit. But while the violence and bloodshed contained in this picture seems unnecessarily over the top, the fact still remains that this is about as close to a Hollywood movie as any gay porn film has ever come.
I cite these examples because I feel they show a trend that is developing in gay porn. And I believe today’s gay audience is far more sophisticated than many porn producers are giving them credit for. These films are the equivalent of fine cuisine compared to the junk food our genre has been churning out ad nauseum. There is no reason some of us in the industry couldn’t start making porn of this caliber. I do not believe we are any less talented, or that the kind of talent that is necessary to create such films is unavailable to us. Certainly these examples demonstrate that there are men out there who can act AND fuck. Perhaps we are not fully utilizing talent that is already in our midst.
Hollywood has provided numerous great genres we can tap into if we so desire: mystery, suspense, drama, action, romance, period, capers, film noir, crime, espionage, western, horror, sci-fi, even camp. We can borrow and adapt stories we love or we can tell new ones that are of our own creation. We do not need huge budgets to work with. What we do need however is a commitment to creating a better product overall. Once we commit to that the rest will fall into place.
I am not saying that all producers of bareback porn must follow my recommendations. Certainly some among us are comfortable doing what they are doing and have no drive or passion for change. And there will probably always be a market for junk porn just as there may always be a market for the brand of pure dreck featured on Xtube. However we do need a few bold souls to get out of the junk porn rut and start producing something that will inspire and challenge the rest of the pack as well as entertain the portion of our audience that is craving something more sophisticated and personally involving. We need to break the mold again. We need to come up with videos that blow the porn-watching public out of the water and make the folks who organize awards programs such as the GayVN Awards take note that we are not the underlings they want us to believe we are.
No goal is too high to set for ourselves if we really want to achieve it. I firmly believe we can do this. We can change the direction of bareback porn for the better, and make it a more viable, marketable, and entertaining medium. I want to know who among you is willing to give it a try!
Showing posts with label Helix Studios. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Helix Studios. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
PART 2: ORIGINS
"Bareback Porn" got its official start in a garage playroom in Phoenix Arizona when director Michael McKey asked a few friends if they would like to be filmed having sex without condoms. It had been nearly a decade since the gay porn industry almost unilaterally decided to adopt a policy of using condoms in each and every video they cranked out. Such an undertaking on the part of McKey and friends would be controversial. Scandalous. Rebellious. And that is exactly what McKey had in mind.
He had worked as a videographer for gay porn studios in the past, filming in the industry’s widely-accepted paint-by-the-numbers style. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with the way things were being done in the industry. So Michael McKey made a conscious decision to break every rule he knew about making a porn video. And he set out to challenge the idea that there was only one formula to follow to make a successful picture.
Among his radical changes were the following: No condoms. No scripts. No pretense to tell stories. No cameras on tripods. No elaborate sets. No shaved, buff pretty boys. No disco music to drown out the sounds of sex. No costly overhead. No shooting schedules. No chain of command. Instead, McKey did the whole thing himself, on a shoestring, in his garage with its walls and floors draped in blue tarps and black plastic. His "set" consisted of a sling or two and some wrestling mats strewn around the floor. Lighting was provided by overhead fluorescents for the most part. And his actors… the antithesis of the porn stereotype: leather-clad, hairy, bearish, pierced and tattooed men over 35. But the big selling point was not only that the gents performed without condoms… but also that McKey filmed the cumshots in all their glory – perhaps in a way that had never been done in the pre-condom years. He captured unforgettable images of orgasmic juices as they sprayed, oozed, and dribbled out of every orifice, focusing as much loving attention on the money shot as he did the action that was needed to deliver it.
It’s one thing to film taboo. It’s another to wallow in it.
With that one low budget film (titled simply "Bareback – The Video"), McKey tapped a nerve that inspired several other would-be pornographers who quickly followed suit. Bareback had been born as crudely as if he had given it birth behind a dumpster. And that one little 77 minute garage-porn video colored nearly everything that would follow in its footsteps for years to come.
Initially barebacking became synonymous with leather. And what followed was a slew of barebacking leather daddy pictures from various newcomers to the porn industry.
By mid-1999, I was appealing to Hot Desert Knights, with whom I had developed a relationship and who was the most productive studio in the genre at the time, to consider using performers that were of a more universally (and commercially) appealing type – younger, smoother men. My rationale was that the genre had become bogged down in leather and was limiting its appeal to a much smaller segment of the porn-viewing market than it could be reaching. HDK wasn’t interested, citing that they knew their market and what that market was interested in buying. But in 2000 they released a video called "Boys Club" that featured ten smooth-shaved men in their twenties. It was an immediate success, and fostered a handful of other younger-men bareback videos in the HDK line. Other studios took note, and started offering content that moved away from the leather daddy stereotype.
New companies began popping up here and there. Helix studios, Tipo Sesso, and Cobra debuted with offerings of college-age boys having unprotected sex. Puppy Productions featured men in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Gaslamp Video (now SX) had already begun to find an audience for bareback videos featuring mixed-age performers. SX was all over the map, using twinks, daddies, musclemen, men of color, "str8" men, and college jocks (sometimes in leather drag). The only thing consistent in the SX line was the apartment they used as their studio. Whereas their actors’ performances were by-the-numbers, their creative use of the same space from picture to picture was interesting to note – and inspiring to this porn-director-wannabe.
Even with all of these evolutions one thing didn’t change. The shooting model that Michael McKey set up became the model by which nearly all bareback videos since have followed: no scripts, no storylines, hand-held cameras, and low budgets. McKey amputated the fantasy aspect from porn by bypassing the "set-up" and going directly to the sex. He proved his point. But now there’s such a plethora of point-and-shoot bareback porn that it’s become both redundant and mediocre.
Certainly there are standouts among the studios. Treasure Island Media, for instance, has made an art form out of their gonzo-style productions in which the cameramen are as much a part of the scenery (and sometimes the action) as the tops waiting their turns in the background. And newcomer on the block, Slut Machine has managed to create a hybrid between the action style of Paul Morris (Treasure Island) and the visual production style of Owen Hawk (Dark Alley Media) that breathes a bit of fresh air into a stagnating genre.
Today there are dozens of other gayporn companies producing bareback porn on the cheap by adhering the decade-old McKey filming blueprint. And with venues out there the likes of X-tube, it appears that anyone with access to a video cam these days thinks he’s a pornographer. So while there is a never ending torrent of new bareback porn flooding the marketplace, most of it I dare say is not worth watching – unless your entertainment threshold is very very low.
Next up, the history of gay porn, how technology plays into the current state of affairs, and what it promises for the future.
He had worked as a videographer for gay porn studios in the past, filming in the industry’s widely-accepted paint-by-the-numbers style. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with the way things were being done in the industry. So Michael McKey made a conscious decision to break every rule he knew about making a porn video. And he set out to challenge the idea that there was only one formula to follow to make a successful picture.
Among his radical changes were the following: No condoms. No scripts. No pretense to tell stories. No cameras on tripods. No elaborate sets. No shaved, buff pretty boys. No disco music to drown out the sounds of sex. No costly overhead. No shooting schedules. No chain of command. Instead, McKey did the whole thing himself, on a shoestring, in his garage with its walls and floors draped in blue tarps and black plastic. His "set" consisted of a sling or two and some wrestling mats strewn around the floor. Lighting was provided by overhead fluorescents for the most part. And his actors… the antithesis of the porn stereotype: leather-clad, hairy, bearish, pierced and tattooed men over 35. But the big selling point was not only that the gents performed without condoms… but also that McKey filmed the cumshots in all their glory – perhaps in a way that had never been done in the pre-condom years. He captured unforgettable images of orgasmic juices as they sprayed, oozed, and dribbled out of every orifice, focusing as much loving attention on the money shot as he did the action that was needed to deliver it.
It’s one thing to film taboo. It’s another to wallow in it.
With that one low budget film (titled simply "Bareback – The Video"), McKey tapped a nerve that inspired several other would-be pornographers who quickly followed suit. Bareback had been born as crudely as if he had given it birth behind a dumpster. And that one little 77 minute garage-porn video colored nearly everything that would follow in its footsteps for years to come.
Initially barebacking became synonymous with leather. And what followed was a slew of barebacking leather daddy pictures from various newcomers to the porn industry.
By mid-1999, I was appealing to Hot Desert Knights, with whom I had developed a relationship and who was the most productive studio in the genre at the time, to consider using performers that were of a more universally (and commercially) appealing type – younger, smoother men. My rationale was that the genre had become bogged down in leather and was limiting its appeal to a much smaller segment of the porn-viewing market than it could be reaching. HDK wasn’t interested, citing that they knew their market and what that market was interested in buying. But in 2000 they released a video called "Boys Club" that featured ten smooth-shaved men in their twenties. It was an immediate success, and fostered a handful of other younger-men bareback videos in the HDK line. Other studios took note, and started offering content that moved away from the leather daddy stereotype.
New companies began popping up here and there. Helix studios, Tipo Sesso, and Cobra debuted with offerings of college-age boys having unprotected sex. Puppy Productions featured men in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Gaslamp Video (now SX) had already begun to find an audience for bareback videos featuring mixed-age performers. SX was all over the map, using twinks, daddies, musclemen, men of color, "str8" men, and college jocks (sometimes in leather drag). The only thing consistent in the SX line was the apartment they used as their studio. Whereas their actors’ performances were by-the-numbers, their creative use of the same space from picture to picture was interesting to note – and inspiring to this porn-director-wannabe.
Even with all of these evolutions one thing didn’t change. The shooting model that Michael McKey set up became the model by which nearly all bareback videos since have followed: no scripts, no storylines, hand-held cameras, and low budgets. McKey amputated the fantasy aspect from porn by bypassing the "set-up" and going directly to the sex. He proved his point. But now there’s such a plethora of point-and-shoot bareback porn that it’s become both redundant and mediocre.
Certainly there are standouts among the studios. Treasure Island Media, for instance, has made an art form out of their gonzo-style productions in which the cameramen are as much a part of the scenery (and sometimes the action) as the tops waiting their turns in the background. And newcomer on the block, Slut Machine has managed to create a hybrid between the action style of Paul Morris (Treasure Island) and the visual production style of Owen Hawk (Dark Alley Media) that breathes a bit of fresh air into a stagnating genre.
Today there are dozens of other gayporn companies producing bareback porn on the cheap by adhering the decade-old McKey filming blueprint. And with venues out there the likes of X-tube, it appears that anyone with access to a video cam these days thinks he’s a pornographer. So while there is a never ending torrent of new bareback porn flooding the marketplace, most of it I dare say is not worth watching – unless your entertainment threshold is very very low.
Next up, the history of gay porn, how technology plays into the current state of affairs, and what it promises for the future.
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