Audiophiles, those who think spending $200 on a mains cable will improve Ringo Starr’s drumming, have been getting vocal about ‘limiting’ recently.
The Podcasters among you might use limiting already. It’s a destructive way of making audio sound louder which works by raising the average volume of a sound by reducing the contrast between the loud and quiet passages. Its use is why TV ads seem louder than the programs they’re in, and why listening to music recorded in the last decade can be so tiring (computers have made limiting very effective) - without the differences in volume which are part of live performance our senses are beaten into submission and the initially exciting loudness turns us off. Audiophiles rightly complain that modern music is hard to listen to and wastes the scope for loud and quiet (dynamic range) which digital audio makes possible.
I think pornographers are over-using limiting too.
The oft commented on porn ‘arms race’ is typically blamed by those involved in it on bored consumers. It seems equally plausible that the reason viewers have tired of ‘routine’ sex is the lack of skill in its presentation. If you want people to notice your Matisse you don’t hang a Picasso on each side of it. If you want people to thrill at your nudity, you have to undress slowly enough to tease.
Pornographers, who pile sex-scene on sex-scene have removed the thrill of nudity, the excitement of a hand over a clothed breast, the tingle of a hiked skirt. Unable to raise even eyebrows with foreplay and innuendo they lock focus on someone’s large intestine and shock us into watching how much fits in. Carmina Burana is exciting because it builds and the action scenes in Heat stand out because they’re surrounded by hours of talking. If graphic sex is porn’s ‘action’ there must be a better way of building to it than the cheesball narrative and dodgy action of most ‘features’
Perhaps the answer to ‘where can porn go from here’ - when here includes Max Hardcore forcing performers to vomit on his genitals - is backwards. Less explicit, less raw, less intense and more sexy. Perhaps the key to making a porn movie sexy all the way through is less actual sex.
The Carmina Burana is also exciting because it features a song from the standpoint of a Goose on the spit. I think they just did it for the shock value.
It would be nice to say that quality trumped all. Sadly — and just like in the rest of the media — it doesn’t, but more and more people do seem to waking up to it. Conent shot with a love of the craft and the subject matter that shows a variety of shapes and sizes. That doesn’t all have the same kind of plastic sameness. That, that right there, that is the real alt-porn at the moment. Which is sad really.
Quinn - I think you’re right. When the mainstream is so bad, alt is just good…
My God I don’t think I’ve read something on this [or any other site] that I have so agreed upon in a long time.
I think it is rather sad that the pornography industry seems not to understand that while there is a market for just plan sexual content that the sexiest material has routinely been found in Hollywood. The reasoning being exactly what you said above. That there is a plot that sandwiches the sex scene.
Personally I have wanted the quality of plot, acting, and filmography from mainstream Hollywood to find its way into pornography or the pornographic elements of porn into mainstream Hollywood.
What is the point of catering a film to the “uniform fetish” if the talent only wears their uniforms for a total of 2 mins the entire film?
robber.baron - Glad you agree. I truly believe that quality’s the real ‘alt’. As most pornsters can’t act, or remember lines, it might take some creativity but as my friend Mr. Skin has proven - sexy sells.
I recently saw “Look Don’t Touch” from Vivid, directed by Chuck Lords. The conceit is that the couples in each scene have to spend 15 minutes together talking, flirting, and teasing (and, in most cases, stripping) before they can touch each other.
I’ve got to say, the sex itself was pretty pedestrian, but the chemistry in each scene was amazing. It was one of the hottest things I’ve seen recently–and it totally didn’t push any envelopes. Only one of the scenes has anal, the rest are straight-up oral-vaginal-cumshot.
It’s like what gonzo directors have been trying and failing to do with pre-scene interviews. We feel like we know the players, they let us in their heads a little, and let each other in their heads a little. Anyway… super hot stuff, and a great example of less is more.
Dan - that sounds like a real step. Comstock does similar stuff but is truly documentary style as well. I might have to check that out myself. The key in my view is to shoot as if you’re not allowed to show any sex. Make it as hot as you can and then add the sex to push it over the top. Now someone give me a damn budget…
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
When it comes to sex, a quickie can be fun and sexy in its own right, but not if we never have more extended-length sessions. It is fun to tease and be teased, to want what you don’t yet have, and to watch your fantasy unfold before your eyes. As you say, modern, mainstream porn has all but robbed us of that pleasure.
If porn is to achieve what it sets out to do–that is, to turn us on, fulfill fantasies, and then get us off–it cannot start at the endpoint. Give us a chance to get turned on!
The hottest porn I’ve ever experienced was reading The Marketplace series. Hot sex scenes mixed in with great storytelling, multiple plots and actual character development. If only someone would make it in a movie. Or better yet a series of movies.
Vixen - I’m sure someone’s optioning those books as we write this…