Lights, Camera, Action

The minutes soon ticked by and Neil was ready to start clicking away with his camera.
Neil hadn’t gotten a drink at the bar and I was pacing myself through mine. I wasn’t a big drinker and a glass of coke could easily last me three hours in a bar.

I was a cheap date.

He asked me to sit on the sofa while he ran some test shots to check his lighting and then off we went. He directed me through poses. Subtle changes or he’d change angle altogether before asking me to progress the scene. The images should tell a storey. A simple and unimaginative one in this case merely depicting me starting off dressed and slowly stripping out of my black dress then my bra and finally my thong. I tried to remember the posses the girls pulled in the porn mags Id read before to help me. He asked me to hold my breasts or squeeze them together. To spread my legs a little wider and to spread my pussy lips so everyone could see exactly what was going on down there. Id never showed off to a boyfriend like this before so it really was a new experience for me. And I never masturbated.

Once I was naked he grabbed the pink vibrator and passed it to me. He said there were no batteries in the jelly like machine so I only needed to pose with it. Hold it to my hole or insert it slightly.

In time id discover many “amateur” photographers would expect me to insert fingers and dildos and actually masturbate myself. I didn’t understand why at first. It was only pictures so I didn’t need to physically go through the motions just put things where they should be and stay still in a pose. Neil, my first professional photographer and all the other professional photographers that followed didn’t expect me to do that. Initially I thought it’s because they, the amateurs, didn’t really know what they were doing. They didn’t know how the pros did things properly.

Later id work out it was simply that they were closet pervs. Some wouldn’t possess a video camera for which you would be required to act out a masturbation scene so rather than miss out they’d ask you to do it for real but just take still images. Others just couldn’t control themselves and once you had your vibe in hand they’d be all “Oh, can you move it about abit. In and out?

These guys didn’t really care a blind bit about photos or art or getting into making porno movies themselves. They just wanted a live wank show. It became easier to placate them then try to insist you were a professional model and should be respected as such. Often if you played their game and complied they’d book you again or give you a tip.

Neil laid my foundations. He showed me the ropes and how things “should” be done.

I was busy posing with a pink jelly vibrator up my twat with my legs in the air when he said “OK, that will do me”. We must have been working for about 45 minutes.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little turned on showing off in this provocative way in front of Neil even though he was in no way attractive to me. I had to switch off to the physical aspect of my real time audience but still have the enthusiasm I would have if I was doing this in private to some gorgeous bloke id been chatting up all evening in the pub and managed to convince to come home with me. It was strange but stranger still it wasn’t so hard. I was still anxious throughout and that took a lot of my concentration not to mention actually concentrating on posing. I didn’t have time to think about how weird this all was. How unnatural.

I sat there not sure what to do next. I was naked in a small generic looking hotel room. He asked me to grab my denim jacket and put that on. I lay on the bed and he started to shoot again but he couldn’t really do another series of shots as I didn’t have much to strip out of. So the second set was more of a mess around. A time killer. Then Neil made a suggestion.

As I briefly said before Neil laid my foundations that day. He also laid me.

Stick Wit Choo

So you see there is more to being a dumb blonde porn chic or ditzy glamour girl than simply throwing poses in well... not very much at all and it’s not all just laying on my back having the time of my life getting shagged senseless.

Somewhere in there, there is a business woman, a PR exec, a makeup artist, a personal trainer, a driver or chauffer, a secretary, an agent, a wardrobe assistant and on and on and on.

If I had to be honest id say for every day I spend on back of house stuff I do one hour of actual paid work.

Talking of paid work I managed to befriend one of the industries core players who became one of my main bookers for a period of time.

I was passed Peters number by an amateur photographer. At the end of the shoot the guy wrote down a number and said he knew Peter, who was a long standing professional photographer in the business, was always interested in new girls and that I should give him a call, so I did. Turns out Peter was passing my way later that day so asked if he could stop by for an informal chat to see what I looked like and discuss how he works. I didn’t know any better at the time and Peter sounded nice enough and pretty much promised me work over the phone so I agreed to meet in order to seal the deal. I didn’t have any issues with him popping by like this but over the years I became aware that nine times out of ten anyone asking to come and meet you pre shoot was a time waster or something equally as dodgy but most likely just looking for a free shag. Sometimes I get quite offended when I think about how stupid some people perceive women and models in particular to be.

So really Peter was lucky I was still new and naive as I wouldn’t have entertained that notion for too many months longer. We met and I made him tea. He was a bit on the touchy feely side but in more of a big brother hug than a creepy perv kind of manner which pushed any worries I had about my safety around him away. He talked like he’d known me for years. He told me about himself, how he only lived about 5 miles away from me and how he used to be a Page 3 photographer for one of the tabloids until he fell out with the papers owner. He went on to tell me how he didn’t just photograph girls but also arty black and white landscapes as well. Peter showed me some of these images in a calendar he’d had made up and they were impressive. He gave me a calendar to keep. He told me that he often took girls out for Chinese and that he only ever ate Chinese or McDonalds. I didn’t even have to ask if these dining experiences were romantic as his storeys were so matter of fact. He was just everyone’s mate.

He described what he had in mind for me. He had a film producer friend he worked with and they would come to my flat and do some pictures and a film. It would be a boy/girl shoot with a male model called Vince but this particular film was centred around the fact that Peter was going to join in in a gonzo fashion and take over from Vince half way through. For a fleeting second I wasn’t overly happy with this purely because Peter was the complete opposite of anything I found attractive. He wasn’t fat or spotty he just was the opposite of everything that ticked my box. I wanted the work though and knew if I said I didn’t want to work with him he’d say that he wouldn’t be able to use me for the shoot as that was the whole point of the film.

I put my professional head on and concentrated on the fact that not every guy I was going to work with was going to be a stunner. Come on, Oliver wasn’t particularly good looking and neither was Big Dave. It certainly wasn’t a case of beggars can’t be choosers but as you know I was taking my new career seriously so I pushed my concerns out of my head and agreed.

That mixed with the fact Peter told me about loads of other jobs he could book me for if I did well in this first one meant the cons of having to grin and bare something so non life threatening for a few hours was worth it with the pros out weighting this decreasing concern. He also said he’d take me to his studio and shoot my first professional portfolio images.

I decided Peter was a generous guy and one that might take me places so I made a mental note to stick to him like glue which seemed to suit him and his pally demeanour.

The Real Deal

My first official and professional boy/girl skin flick was certainly a momentous day to remember for me.

I had been cast in a two girl one guy scene. I found out on the day when I arrived at the location bright and far too early that the guy I was to be working with was a famous French porn star. The other girl was a young jail bait type. I kept hearing her name a lot so I assumed she was fairly popular and this made me aspire to work with her. I was quite excited about this scene really. I got to work with the legendary Cheryl Blows – well she was legendary in my naive head and I got to do my first proper sex scene with a man. I assumed Cheryl would be like Jody and take me under her wing. In fact id heard that Cheryl and Jody were quite pally and had work a lot together so I assumed Cheryl would be Jody mark two.

I was of course wrong. Cheryl had an attitude problem. Well that’s how I surmised it. In retrospect she didn’t, she just was a very private and aloof girl and didn’t involve herself with other people in the business. She was very young and so had a popular look and her personality or seeming lack of it made her appear even younger and almost shy.

Still I tried to make her like me and focused on the fact I still got to say I worked with her.

I was nervous it being my first full sex scene with an actual live penis. I kind of hoped Cheryl would take the lead as Jody had done before so that I could copy. I was glad it was a two girl threesome so at least I wasn’t completely out there on my own. Of course id had sex before plenty of times. It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to fuck but porn wasn’t really like real life. I mean for starters you didn’t have all the thrill and build up of managing to pull someone before you take them home and shag their socks off. It’s kind of like all the emotional stuff is taken away first and you’re thrown in the deep end. It’s kind of weird picking things up half way through a story and being expected to be as passionate as if you had worked really hard to snare this hunk of a guy and get him back to your place.

That’s the acting part and it’s also one of the parts that will screw you up in the head most in this business. At first you just get through it on nerves and anticipation alone but soon you get bored of it and start looking like a bad actress. That’s when the booze and drugs start being a requirement to get through it.

I was so nervous. That was to be expected I guess but I felt like a freak for being nervous. Everyone on the set had had sex before and most were used to watching other people doing it. I wasn’t used to any of this though but I tried hard not to let it show and prayed Cheryl read my mind telepathically and did guide me through.

Me and Cheryl got made up by the makeup artist who also happened to be the producer/directors pimp wife. She was a pretty plump lady who seemed deluded about her age. Mutton dressed as lamb sprung to mind. She had been a porn actress herself in her younger years, her massive breasts managing to make her very popular not just in the UK but also largely (pardon the pun) in Europe.

Carmen booked the girls for the shoots and acted as a makeup artist on the day. I came to the conclusion after a few shoots with this company that Carmen liked to be in charge of make up so she could make the girls look like fucking morons in a vain attempt to feel better about her own fading looks. Make up really was applied with a shot gun. Bright red lippy all over your face so you resembled Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and glitter spray all over you so you looked like an extra in Starlight Express. This was especially annoying when the location had no shower facilities so you had to go home with most of the glitter still stuck on you, your baby wipe hooker wash not really doing the trick. How her producer/performer husband never complained about the state of us or even managed to get a hard on when he was performing with us looking like demented idiots was beyond me.

As I mentioned Carmen was also a pimp or a Madame. She had been introduced to the escorting world on her trips to Europe and had made many rich contacts who would like nothing better than to splurge large amounts of cash on porn stars or glamour models. She was a very popular buxom lady in the 80s and working as a prostitute supplemented her modelling and porn income and after the glamorous work dried up kept her in the lifestyle she was accustomed to.

She had managed to set up an escort agency of her own specialising in porn star and glamour model escorts. She was in charge of booking the girls for her husband’s productions, that way she could coaxed them into joining her escort agency and supplement the escorts she already had on her agency books with more porn and modelling work when they weren’t in demand by horny wealthy men.

Going it Alone

The glamour of doing professional shoots soon got thrown straight back at me in my sheer determination to succeed in this new career of mine.

Jody had given me the name of a couple of online modelling websites I could join free of charge. All I had to do was send them some pictures of me and fill in the form with all my contact details, stats and modelling info and voila! I was out there for all the world and his dog to see and book.

Proper agents took a commission for booking you. Some took it out of your fee and some took from the producer on top of your fee which was always a bonus. Producers and photographers usually preferred to book you away from agents for this reason. If anyone ever shot you they usually took your contact no. on the model release form anyway but if a model release wasn’t required they made sure they took it anyway. That way they could call you direct next time they wanted to book you or get you to fill in for some other girl who hadn’t shown up.

Agents knew it happened so they always tried to milk new girls for all they were worth as fast as they could. This is why you can be shot to death in this business within a matter of weeks. Some producers and photographers are chummy and share the details of new girls between them thus losing the need for an agent even more so.
An agent will push you to as many contacts as he can as quickly as he can before your no. starts getting out there on its own.

As I say the agents knew this practice went on but they never did anything about it. Bad business sense and laziness I guess. There saving graces were that they had a large catalogue of girls on their books so should a girl no show for a shoot, which was a regular occurrence, the agent could easily replace her. These were the times the producer was more than willing to pay a commission.

These online sites were like virtual agencies without the agent. The customer, the producer or photographer emailed the model directly and negotiated rates or whatever. There was no physical agent to pay a commission to.
However with no physical agent at hand to vet people claiming to be photographers or movie producers and production companies it was down to the model to ensure her own safety and that’s not as simple as it looks.
Its very easy for a guy to email saying he is Hugh Heffner and give a link to the playboy site. He just makes up an email like hugh_playboy @ hotmail.com and he’s away.
The sad thing is alot of girls are thick. Thick and lazy and ignorant to their own welfare and safety.

I found that most professional companies would call me direct either through an agent or by having been given my no. by another industry insider.
Emails were nine times out of ten from amateurs and wannabes and dodgy blokes trying their luck.

When my profile initially went up on the first modelling site I was delighted and excited to see a list of emails as long as my arm after just half a day. I read them all with gusto and thought about how popular I was and how much money I was going to make. I had no reason to distrust these people. So far id had a good and honest ride in porn.

I learnt to “read” peoples emails pretty damn quickly though. There are tell tale signs as well as switching on your common sense which as I say so many girls in porn lack.

Porn Genres

It appears everyone makes porn in their spare time these days. With digital this and digital that and the internet meaning booking a girl to perform or model for you is so simple.

The gonzo/amateur fashion set by icons such as Ben Dover where by making his professionally shot porn look like he was just some guy who went out and with the luck of the devil was able to pick up non professional models off the street who amazingly agreed to shoot a porno with this ugly old bastard that they have “never” met before. Reading that back if I was that girl id run to the nearest police station and report the pervert, so how comes so many of you guys believed it?

Do you really think ALL women are nymphos and throw that much caution to the wind with regard to our personal safety???

I remember shooting with a couple of hobbyists a long while ago and despite my attempts to let them in on the inside story, that it was all an elaborate set up, there was no changing their minds. One guy saying “well maybe some of them are but there was one that was real”. Idiot. It’s actually quite scary how some people believe porn and especially porn of this gonzo nature to be real.
Now the distinction between feature porn, or professional porn and gonzo/amateur porn.

In the UK we don’t shoot features. This is a very US thing and basically is a film shot the same way a typical mainstream movie is. With a start a middle and an end. Not to mention a plot and characters.

We tend to shoot vinyets here in the UK. A film made up of four or five separate little stories. Sometimes they all tie in together in a theme but we don’t do features.

Both these styles are shot with high quality production values and in a 3rd person perspective so the end result is the viewer is observing the film from an outside point of view.

These types of films are expensive to make and you’re more likely to find some twat claiming “it’s not porn its art.” Arty porn is known as erotica.

Now what we do well and in abundance here in the UK is gonzo and amateur porn. More modernly known as reality porn or POV (point of view).

Much like the Ben Dover synopsis I gave earlier amateur porn is about real life. No makeup artists, no dressed sets, no acting and no gloss. Except it’s not really real because no porn is real. Its fake real. We like making amateur reality porn here because it’s cheap to do and being British we do the camp, tongue in cheek thing well. The Europeans are to kinky for this and the Americans are too serious.

Gonzo is not a character in the Muppets, well he is but in adult films it’s a style of shooting. Rather than shooting the action in flat 3rd person perspective the cameraman is a part of the action too. This gives an interactive feel or a 1st person perspective. It’s a genius idea really. It works on so many levels from giving the film a grittier more real yet slightly unbelievable feel, to one that encompasses the viewer to feel he is part of the film as well.
These days gonzo has been re branded as POV.

It’s this amateur and gonzo work that has gotten so many guys thinking “I can do that. I can pick up my little consumer camcorder and book a porn star and fuck her and then I’ve made my own porn film”. Why watch it when you can make it yourself. Everything is interactive these days so why not porn.

It’s this appeal that is starting to jump up and bite the professional film world in the ass as people would rather watch something genuinely amateur or DIY. The makers of porn are dying as people realise they don’t need them anymore.
Porn will never die out completely but there isn’t such a need for an industry to provide consumer demand. It’s meant the industry here in the UK is on very rocky road at the moment.

A Career Choice or Hobby?

When I first set my mind on taking my clothes off for a) some fun and b) some extra pocket money I didn’t even think about porn. The association between topless modelling and full on porno hadn’t clicked. I don’t think I even realised they made porn in the United Kingdom.
Well let me explain a few basic elements of the porn business.

It’s a very close knit community really. I once tallied up how many producers there were within the UK and including all the semi pro ones (of which there are a lot and the numbers are growing, but I will explain what semi pro means later) there were about 50. Which is surprisingly a lot. But when you understand that about 95% of all UK production studios are mostly one man bands where the producer is the director and sound guy, lighting, script writer (if there is a script) and sometimes the make up artist too which could be worrying you can see that this isn’t such an impressive figure. It’s just simply 50 men and rarely women.
The performers are a similar story. There are probably no more than 50 full time actors and actresses in the business at one time but all the amateur ones could easily take this figure into the thousands.

So I better explain what all this professional and amateur jargon is about. Quite simply like any sports person there are people who do porn full time and this is their main form of income. It’s their full time job and chosen vocation. Not for long mind you as most girls typically disappear after 18 months. Usually when they move on with their lives, get boyfriends and float back to reality. Guys, if they are talented, can stay for decades though.

So an amateur performer is someone who might just do it for fun, as a second income or on a part time basis. Adventurous couples (and singles) tend to be amateurs as they just love sex and don’t mind doing the odd film sometimes even for free as it adds abit of spice to there already entertaining sex life. Believe it or not most pro porn starlets aren’t really that into sex. They might be abit hornier than your average girl but doing it all day everyday takes its toll and it soon becomes just a job and the sex losses its appeal.

You get the pro/am distinction in film and image production as well. The same rules apply. If it’s being made for a profit or for sale then it’s a professional shoot. If someone is just doing it for fun or as a hobby then they are what we call an amateur. These amateurs are stereotypically older guys who purely enjoy taking naughty pictures of sexy young girls. And who can blame them? I always enjoy doing amateur photography shoots. They aren’t always old guys and some have more talent than the pros. The fact you’re not working to make a finished product that HAS to be good enough to make someone a profit or even an income means amateur shoots are far more relaxed and usually quite good fun. Any guy who has the guts to book a girl to strip off and spread em just so he can pursue his unusual hobby is OK in my books. Amateur “ togs” (that’s jargon talk for photographers) are a hole other story though.

Then you get the semi pro guys. Now this semi pro thing is a fairly new development in the business and although the amateur guys don’t get upset – why would they, they are only in it for their own leisure and pleasure, the pro guys get rather irked by these semi pros.
Semi pro status is when you are making porn for an income but it’s not your main job. You might be an accountant but do porn on the side. It’s not your only form of income. And this is really the most sensible approach to take when getting into adult film or photography. Despite the general view of the public that blue movie makers are all filthy rich this is a myth. Most of them are flat broke investing more into what they do than what they actually make.

I always say don’t get into porn to make a million cos you will surely lose a million trying.
Possibly this hatred towards the semi pros is because they have actually had the savvy to see that the business isn’t as lucrative as people initially and misguidedly think. Maybe its jealousy that the pros have taken more risks by putting all their eggs in one large and sexy basket but the semi pros stand to make just as much in the long run. The semis get the best of both worlds while the pros struggle. I can count the rich professional get ups on one hand – actually half a hand because several of them had money to start with.

I want to take the time to explain about other distinctions too. About the gay V. straight business, the fetish V. vanilla or mainstream market and also about dirty and mythical associations the business has such as with child porn and paedophiles.