SHL wrote: ↑10 months ago
darious wrote: ↑10 months ago
Damien - Can't say I disagree with you about most of your sentiments with regards to this niche. I've been a fan and patron of this niche for a VERY LONG time (think back to the days of dial-up modems/BBS chat rooms
)...
Speaking as a long time vet...it's true that the niche peaked the interest of a wider audience and there were far more producers creating content in the early 2000's...which has greatly diminished over the past 5-10 years ..
Aside from the 'customs', which is obviously the only thing keeping this niche afloat....it seems as though the 'talent pool' (i.e., models) has greatly diminished as well...Save for a few 'dedicated' models (e.g., Coco)....another issue (IMO) is a lack of talent available in the niche to keep things fresh/varied. I think SHL is the one site where I see different models on most new releases...
That's not really the case on most SH Fetish/Productions... as the talent pool is VERY limited...Obviously, attracting new talent requires incentives ($$$) which no doubt is severely impacted by diminishing ROI due to rampant file sharing
One question/idea that's always crossed my mind is why this niche never really adopted a 'streaming' only (no downloads) business model to help reduce/eliminate file sharing of uploaded content on various file sharing sites???
I get that a 'pay per minute' or 'online rental' business model may not be as lucrative as selling 'downloadable content'. ...But the unintended affect of having all content available for 'download'....is the proliferation of file-sharing.....which is obviously far more damning in terms of lost revenue....
Just my thoughts...
The 'Model Pool' is complicated.
I do think in fact - there are a decent amount of performers who are no longer hirable due to the success of their OF accounts (Alina Lopez being a good example). But I don't think this is the primary reason for a 'model drought' as you could argue OF has converted more women into sex work than converted sex workers into exclusive producers of their own content. If anything I imagine OF becoming more normalized to our society has probably created a landslide of potential new talent to work with as more young women will feel more comfortable exploring the sex work industry, who ten years ago socially wouldn't risk the backlash.
I am one of the few superheroine producers who shoots in LA. Most of the directors featured on SHG are from roughly the same area (Seattle/Portland). You could kind of see that in releases historically - when a traveling model would go Northwest they would then be slatted to appear in a lot of those directors work all at the same time.
The pandemic I know shut down the Northwest for a long while as that first year it was too high risk to shoot this kind of content, so a lot of models stopped traveling, and a lot of directors choose to stay safe vs risk the health risk. I don't know we have fully recovered from that as some talent that I know decided around that time to no longer do travel gigs, as the first year of the pandemic showed them what life could be like without living across the country in a car hunting for more work.
I didn't end up in the same situation - I went to LA at the height of the pandemic and shot roughly 6 films with those who kept working. Batgirl The Prison, Wonder Woman The Harvest, Spider-Girl Multiverse Monster, Supergirl brothers Vengeance, Batgirl Double Crossed, Wonder Woman Recon Interrupted - were all shot in the same month. Things at that time were so bad in LA - the hotel almost didn't let me book a room but had mercy on me.
To work with the talent I want to work with - I will go anywhere. I will go to NY, I will go to LA, I will go to London. Whatever it takes. Most people don't have the luxury to do such things and to be honest - it can take the piss out of you.
Another aspect of the 'Model Pool' is also about taking chances with new talent - you never know when hiring someone new if they can pull off a convincing superhero, if they can throw a fake punch, etc. On boarding a new heroine takes work and risk. I imagine a lot of people who order customs - just ask for proven talent they have seen from other films. In that sense - customs may actually be preventing more new talent from appearing in these films both in custom requests as well as making the danger of hiring unproven talent on your own dime feel less appealing.
It can also be political. Some directors don't like 'sharing' talent and it can become a territory thing. They won't help you hire someone they have worked with, or will encourage someone not to work with you, so the only work someone gets is through them. The less work someone gets in the fetish industry - the more likely they are too leave it.
So I think all of things are factors into what people might be saying when they say there is a modeling pool issue. The pandemic and OnlyFans changed things, where models travel too isnt the same, customs maybe factoring into rotating proven talent, less original content means less people take risk on hiring fresh faces, the older we directors get the less likely someone will travel to the talent becomes. It kind of creates the illusion that the modeling pool is shrinking. But I dunno, maybe it is.
LAST THOUGHTS ON THE 'MODELING POOL'
Taboo content is under some scrutiny recently with OF becoming bigger - credit card processors reacted by becoming more puritanical, places like clips4sale and OF then clamp down on 'taboo content'. This genre reeks of taboo content: chloroform, hypnosis, CNC, superheroines getting beaten to a pulp, etc. Even if a film doesn't have nudity - the second a rag goes over someones mouth it becomes problematic to place into the free market.
I think this does affect the work that some people will allow to happen. I have had a couple 'model agents' outright refuse to even tell their talent I wanted to hire them, just having me run in circles pretending they were inquiring with their models when in reality - they never had any intention of letting me hire anyone they managed. Now I don't know thats because of the taboo nature of the content, but I can say it didn't happen to me before but happened a couple times last year. It got so bad I took a trip to LA for two weeks and didn't make a single film cause agents essentially walled me out of their talent pools.
All this stuff can intertwine and change how things work. It's harder to incentivize a model with content sharing when... she can't sell the content you shoot with her on OF. Leaves you less to barter with.
STREAMING
I have a lot of thoughts on this one. The primary one being a moral stance: I don't believe in people paying for content and not getting to keep it.
As someone who loves to collect films (blu-rays) and music (vinyl records) I value the ability to own the work I love. I also believe creatives should keep control over the ownership of their work and thought it was cool when Taylor Swift re-recorded all her albums to gain control over her art.
I don't think of myself as a pornographer, but a filmmaker who is comfortable with porn. All of you only know me as Damien Woods - the superheroine porn director, while in fact I have spent a lifetime as an artist who is known in my social circle for mediums I choose to explore - artist/painter/photographer/filmmaker. I went to art school. My thesis project was a short film. It was not about superheroines... lol
I DO NOT BELIEVE IN WATERMARKING MY FILMS. Every frame a painting (shoutout to anyone who knows the reference). I don't care if I am making an indie film shot for a film festival, or if I am making a fetish film for internet perverts - there is a sanctity to film, there is a sanctity to art. If someone wants to buy my films and add it to their collection - I respect that human instinct to own and worship.
Does that put me at the risk of losing revenue? Maybe. Hollywood - a billion dollar industry (or is it a trillion dollar industry? I dunno, don't care to look it up) can't even protect their own product. Across the Spider Verse was being streamed on TikTok the same week it was released. If Hollywood can't stop that with the money they have - how could I? The internet is a complicated place and its so easy to copy and replicate data
I decided back in 2020 to take another approach - I literally wrote an article on Heroine Movies about it. I wrote about how file sharing was killing my business. How maybe I would create a members only website to sell new films, amongst other things. And I was met with A LOT OF CRITICISM! Internally (my peers) and externally (the audience)
The arguments then if I could remember correctly were - that my films sucked and thats why no one was buying them, that it had nothing to do with file sharing. Or that I was just a cry baby. Insiders in the industry told me I shouldn't even acknowledge the fact that illegal streams existed, that it would only encourage the audience to seek them out. I think as far as I am aware I might be the only, if not count us on your hand, superheroine director who was publicly acknowledged that illegal streaming was actively fucking my business and life. I remember when I released Supergirl Brothers Vengeance - someone leaked it only a couple days after I began selling it. And SALES PLUMMETEDDDDD
I bring this up because in fact = telling people I was struggling seemed to work. That year I probably for the first time in a long time, saw a lack of my work being stolen and displayed on illegal streaming sites compared to what I had been use too. Eventually - that goodwill wore off. But I genuinely think most people didn't even consider piracy was hurting this genre. It was almost as if they hadn't even considered it.
(Side note: I remember even talking to pirates in DMs asking them kindly to not leak my film until at least two months after release, as a middle ground to at least let me hit profit, they were very cool about it. It was complicated... but... they took down their posts for a couple months so thats saying something!)
If I had a choice between...
A) My site doesn't let you download but my profits increase
vs
B) My site lets you download but my profits decrease
Then I am picking B. I don't give a fuck. I don't believe in selling an empty box.
I rather humiliate myself and ask my pirates to kindly fuck me softly. All of you deserve the ability to download and own the films that you purchase. I just wish less people had the desire to create a genre cancer by sharing what they buy.
But... thats show business baby!