Are Features Coming Back?
God, I hope so.
I don’t know how many years its been since most of the the XXX Biz has wandered the great wasteland known as Gonzo, but its been far too many.
I started out in this business as a feature guy. I’ve produced, directed, shot, and/or edited more features than I can remember. Back when features ruled, you needed some skills to make them; even if those skills were simply knowing the right people to hire to manage, shoot, and cut your feature.
But then everything changed, including the need to know how to do much of anything.
Suddenly, all a gonzo porn-maker needed was a cheap mini-DV camera and an equally user-friendly still camera… plus a bit of fundamental knowledge like how to turn the cameras on and switch them to full auto mode. And if you didn’t know how to do that, you probably knew someone who could, at the very least, figure that much out. Some of these people often were (and remain) guys and gals who couldn’t get a job as a PA on a feature set. I know that sounds elitist but I don’t really give a fuck if it does.
If you don’t believe it takes a bit more skill and knowledge to make a feature, consider the vast numbers of cheap, incompetently produced, so-called gonzos released each day, week, month, and year.Gonzo certainly opened doors for a lot of wannabe pornographers. After all, gonzo is cheap to make and if there’s one thing pornogaphers love, it’s cheap-to-make content. But when a marketplace becomes SO saturated with cheap product, something’s gotta give. And while some people might say, “In a free-market economy, easy access to the marketplace is a good thing,” look where it’s gotten us: Its led us to the Great Porn Depression! Never, in the annals of porn history, has so much inept shit been stuffed down the throats of the porn consuming public!
The good news is I think I’m seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I think maybe the success of a few features are causing a few more people to re-think their positions on the venerable feature; Digital Playground and Pirates comes immediately to mind.
And now I’m reading about companies like Bo Kenney’s SexZ Pictures who are embracing the feature market. And I know Mr. Kenney well enough to know he’s not trotting down the feature path because he’s simply a patron of the arts.
Yeah, I’m thinking maybe features are going to make a comeback. And if they do, there’s gonna be a few unemployed (unemployable?) pornographers wandering a different sort of wasteland.
But on the plus side, there will be a few–perhaps like myself–suddenly finding themselves returning to the helm of feature porn-making.
Posted by jimmyD under It's all the same crap. |