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Porno directing 101

August 03, 2006

Me directing Simone Valentino, the leading lady of “The Bi Apple,” script in hand.

I learned by doing – and you know what? It was kinda awesome.

I know you’ve all been itching to hear details and I’ve been wanting to write about them, but I’ve spent the last few days running around a whole damn lot – returning rented equipment, spending time with the movie’s editor, making more giant lists, sorting through photos. Not to mention - eating and resting and fucking.

We had three sweltering days of shooting, with the air conditioner on full blast between takes, though the heat wave this week has made the weekend look cool in comparison. I can’t imagine if the weekend had been this hot (the temp peaked around 105 in NYC today). Friday was the worst heatwise – after we shot the sex scene of the day, the DP (that’s director of photography, you perv), sound engineer and I all noted that our fingers had gotten all pruney from sweat. Ew.

Anyway, I think we did a really cool thing this past weekend, and I can’t wait til it’s finished and people are seeing (and buying) the movie. I got the dailies from the editor yesterday and the film just looks so pretty – the lighting is very un-porno (not blasted out), the shots are cool as hell without being distracting, the rooms we used all look really pretty and the performers are hot as hell. I did something that was a bit of a gamble – but a necessary one in New York – I hired a crew of people who didn’t all necessarily have experience making porno. Many of them are erotic artists with interesting and pervy sensibilities, and it was just perfect. Everyone totally got it, and we had lots of laughs, sweaty nudity and many random conversations that ranged from mayonnaise to shit to NAFTA. Normal porno stuff, right?

The things that I expected to go wrong did go wrong – the wrong rental equipment showed up, we ran behind schedule, there was a no-show, and there were boner problems – but since I expected all of this stuff it ended up not being a huge disaster. Of the bad stuff, some could be laughed at, some could be dealt with by my amazing and adept production manager Mikey Mongol, and then there was some stuff that I couldn’t do a damn thing about.

Though I kept my cool throughout, which seemed to impress everyone but felt pretty normal to me, there were a few feelings stirred up in me that I didn’t really expect and wasn’t quite sure what to do with. Getting people to fuck on camera when they aren’t 100% turned on or hot and bothered for their scene partner is some challenging shit, both in the actual sense and in the internal emotional sense. Although I’m about as straight forward and non-sketchy as pornographers come, it’s difficult to not feel a little sketchy under those kind of circumstances. Definitely something I’ll write about more once I’ve mulled it over a bit.

Some details on the movie are starting to surface in different spots, though I’m still making an effort to keep things a bit quiet until we get closer to the release date – I don’t want to blow my proverbial wad. Plus I like to torture you all. That said, I and various other sources will be leaking info over the coming months.

So far, you can check out a little bit of stuff by Mikey on TGP, plus a picture and blurb over at Gram Ponante’s site, and a big ole post on Fleshbot today, with lots of pictures.

Check it out! And stay tuned for more once I reorganize my life.

Posted by Dacia at August 3, 2006 01:35 PM

Comments

Posted by: Theron at August 3, 2006 03:18 PM

Posted by: Mikey Mongol at August 4, 2006 12:25 AM

Posted by: Mikey Mongol at August 4, 2006 12:26 AM

Posted by: Tony Comstock at August 4, 2006 08:08 AM

Posted by: Amber at August 5, 2006 06:15 PM

Posted by: Radical Vixen at August 6, 2006 02:49 AM

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