Comments on: The Secret Formula for Making Boring Porn, Part 2

By: Unboing Unboing | The Art & Business of Making Erotic Films

Unboing Unboing | The Art & Business of Making Erotic Films — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:30:34 +0000

[...] time readers may remember my post from early January of 2007, The Secret Formula for Making Boring Porn, Part 2, and may also remember that it ended up linked to a Boing Boing post entitled “Media [...]

By: Why Porn May be Worth $10B a Year | SugarBank

Why Porn May be Worth $10B a Year | SugarBank — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:49:14 +0000

[...] The debate about revenues in the adult industry is everywhere and Christ-on-a-dildo is it wrong. Too many smart people with too little experience of major adult websites are dismissing the value of the internet. [...]

By: ErosBlog: The Sex Blog » Blog Archive » An Economist Confused About Porn

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:43:05 +0000

[...] So, what’s actually scarce? New porn, fresh porn, different porn. It’s scarce because it doesn’t stay new for long, it’s scarce because ninety percent of everything is crap and so lots of even fresh-made porn isn’t fresh, it’s scarce because (short of stacking fetishes until you’ve got one-legged panty-sniffing midget girls mud wrestling with shaved sheep) it’s tough to make porn that’s new and different. “New and fresh” requires art, craft, skill, all the other things that are in short supply in any industry. And, oddly, unit volumes are so low in porn that art, craft, and skill tend not to be rewarded. [...]

By: Thomas Roche

Thomas Roche — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:40:49 +0000

Tony: Good points, but you say:

If the average gonzo flick (the mainstay of the industry) costs $18K out the door, with 12,000 +/- titles/year, that puts the total annual production, post-production, replication and packaging costs somewhere around $216M/year.
When what the Times said (at least as quoted in BoingBoing), I believe, was:

The sex-related entertainment business grew in 2006 by just 2.4 percent, roughly the rate of inflation, to just under $13 billion (…)

“The sex-related entertainment business” is a lot bigger than DVD sales. It includes (or should include) website content as well as strip clubs, escort advertising (and therefore the back pages of almost every urban weekly paper in the US), professional dominants, phone sex, and depending on how they define it could include softcore porn made-for-Showtime as well as softcore “underground” companies like Seduction Cinema, adult movies in hotels and motels, private dancers for bachelor parties, etc.

In the absence of very specific statements about what they are and are not counting, the Times’s referencing revenues of “the sex-related entertainment industry” is meaningless, but that statement does not specifically state $13B in DVD sales; at the very least it would include online content.

By: dramaphile

dramaphile — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:05:49 +0000

I have a friend who works in porn editing for one of those “formula” sites, and he complains that it’s about the most boring thing to do in the world. And the timing rules stated in Nina’s blog are just about the same as what he told me.

It’s sad, really, that the adult film industry is so overpopulated with what are essentially boring practically identical ‘C’-movies (because they’re even worse than ‘B’-grade) that aren’t worth a dime. I know I’d be more willing to pay for porn if it actually had substance to it (like your films, tony!), and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.