From the soon to be released MATT AND KHYM

Those of you who are familiar with the Comstock style know that we always interview people in pairs. When we do this, we use two cameras. The first camera (a-cam for short) frames both of the interviewees, and the second (b-cam) is a close-up that stays with whomever is talking. What I like about this is that it lets me do more interesting things with the interview than if we just had one camera that panned back and forth and zoomed in and out.

For example, if we’re on the close-up of Ms. Interviewee, and she says something that makes Mr. Interviewee laugh and nod his head, we can cut to the wider camera angle (the two-shot) and the effect is sort of like cutting to the reaction shot in a film that’s shot narrative style. We see the action (close up of Ms. telling us a cute but embarrassing secret), then we see the reaction (two-shot with Mr. laughing and nodding in response to the revelation).

If it’s done right, the audience shouldn’t even be aware that we’ve switched from the close-up to the two-shot, and the fact that we don’t notice good editing is one of the things that’s utterly magically about film. The camera’s point-of-view moves fluidly through time and space in a way that our own POV never does, yet somehow, when it’s done right, if feels more natural and normal, and is easier to watch than a camera that just sits in one place and stares endlessly at the action.

I don’t make any claims to be a master at this particular part of film-craft (or any other for that matter). But when it’s working right I do enjoy it, and the last few days I’ve been enjoying deciding between the close-up and the two-shot on Matt and Khym’s interview very much. Their interview is chock-a-block with opportunities to move from one shot to the other and back again in a way that helps move the story along and helps to reveal more about Matt and Khym’s relationship.

I also noticed something about Matt and Khym’s interview. I love faces, and usually I’m always looking to find a way to the close-up. But Matt and Khym spend so much time relating to one another that this interview is mostly the two-shot, with the single person close-ups used mostly as color or grace notes. Here and their either Matt or Khym has a longer passage in close up, but time and time again I’ve found that if I stay on a close-up the way I usually would, I miss too much of the relationship. There’s just too much going on between them to stay with the longer close-ups in the way I usually favor. It’s exciting to see the way a couple relates to each other have such a strong effect on the way I cut their interview!

Figuring my way through things like this is one of the things I really like what about what I do. In it’s own way it’s as exciting as getting to see beautiful women take their close off and have sex. While there’s a certain sameness to these little movies, within that sameness there a huge opportunity to enjoy what makes each of these couples unique. They look different, they express themselves differently, they make love differently. That’s what makes this work so rewarding, and that’s what makes me feel so lucky I get to do it!

Oy, where do I start? (cue Julie Andrews…)

Thanks to our wonderful sponsor, PjurUSA we printed up 250 posters and 2500 postcards in advance of this weekend premiere of DAMON AND HUNTER at the New York CineKink Film Festival.

And because Ell told me she had such fun and received so much love and support when she put out posters and flyers in Melbourne I thought it would be a good idea if I went out and postered for CineKink. After all, it’s a home town premiere, and there’s nothing like the personal touch, right?

So Saturday I came into town, posters and postcards in a big box, first stop Chelsea, which has (in many people’s eyes) replaced Greenwich Village as the gay ground zero in Manhattan.

Chelsea is fabulous. The streets are filled with fabulous looking men, there are fabulous boutiques and restaurants. Chelsea looks and feels like what you think gay New York would look and feel like. Chelsea does not care that you have a movie. Not even if it’s your home town premiere. Not even if it has beautiful young men kissing it. My sister and I schlepped around, hearing “no” more often than “yes”.

I also managed to dump the cart four times. It’s a toss up between the time that I hit the older gay man in the ankle with the cart and then dumped the contents all over the Southwest corner of Ninth Ave and 23rd (fourth dumpage), and the time I spilled all 250 poster and 2500 postcards over the narrow foyer of the porn shop on 21st just off Eighth (first dumpage) for low point of the evening. I know that a few people said nice things, but the specifics are lost in the haze of people who were disdainfully disinterested, or even down right surly.

We caught a cab back to my neighborhood (Hells Kitchen) and tried few places between where the cab let us off and my apartment. They were nice, they were interested. We had dinner, and as a last stop I put a poster and cards in the gay bar on Ninth between 45th and 46th. Everyone there down right friendly.

Sunday morning we had a diner breakfast and then when schlepping up Ninth Ave. I had resolved to ask at every place we past, no matter the toll it might take on my (already low) spirits. But instead of another ass-kicking, everyone smiled and said “sure!” and “congratulations” and “do you have tape”. Every Arab-run bodega said yes; every Korean run beauty salon said yes; every pizza place said yes, nearly every resturaunt. The cobbler said yes, the frame shop said yes, the barber said yes. By late morning posters for DAMON AND HUNTER were up and down both sides of Ninth ave, from 42nd to 57th, and I had received a bunch of well-wishes, good-lucks and way-to-goes.

My sister had a singing thing to go do up town, so I said goodbye to her and caught a cab downtown to the Village. Would the Village be more like Chelsea, or more like Hells Kitchen?

Well I’m pleased to say that the Village was like Hells Kitchen. Shop keepers and bartenders told me “tear down what ever’s out of date and put of your poster”, or “I have a lot of customers I think would really like to see this, can I have a few more cards?” I criss-crossed Bleeker and Christopher streets, Greenwich Ave, and Hudson, went up and down West 4th twice. Every where people were nice and interested and congratulatory. They made me feel like I had accomplished something special by having my movie play in New York! It was fun, and my spirits were buoyed!

Monday I made hand-deliveries to editors at HX and Gay City and Next. I stopped by both Babeland stores and got a warm welcome, and they turned me onto a few joints in their neigborhoods that were hip to having the poster up. I went to the Pioneer theater and they were nice enough to let me put out cards (they rent my movies at their Two Boots Video). I stopped by Kim’s Video on St. Mark’s Place, and all the cool indie kids said “congrats!” and “good luck”!

Then on the way home I visited my lab and my telecine house, and everyone came out and clapped me on the back. “Best Documentary! Good for you!” Higher-ups were fetched to see the poster, and everyone had a good laugh at the big “Banned” red dot. Not many people shot porn or docs on film anymore, and these were just the people who could appreciated what a risk I took shooting D&H on film. All the NYU film students who came in, their 100′ daylight spools of 16mm in hand, were eager to take cards, and excited to meet a real live DIY filmmaker who actually shoots film and makes a living.

I got back to my neighborhood, got a meatball hero and a beer. I ate the sandwich and drank the beer, and was asleep by nine o’clock and didn’t wake till nine this morning. Tonight is the opening party for CineKink. I’ve got a few posters left so I suppose I’ll take them. There are just enough postcards for the screening itself.

The last few days feels a bit mad. I actually lost a notch on my belt from all the walking around, and there were some moment where I thought I must be a bit crazy going door to door in Manhattan and with my poster and cards and DVDs. But here now, after three solid days, I think it was the right thing to do. Google results for “Comstock Films” have spiked and so have sales, so maybe people are actually seeing the poster, going home, and getting on their computer to find out who we are.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about the word “shameless”. One of the things I love about making my movies is when it looks as though the people are so lost in their pleasure that they’ve gone entirely beyond caring that the camera is there. Somewhere Saturday late evening I stopped caring about how silly I felt trudging up and down Eighth Ave with my little cart. Not caring didn’t make it fun, but it did allow me to keep going. I was shameless, and that shamelessness took me into the very nice days that I had Sunday and Monday, and now a few hundred more people know about DAMON AND HUNTER and Comstock Films, and that’s a lot better than a sharp stick in the eye!

Other than my own productions, I’ve never been on a porn set. Everything I know about how other people shoot explicit sex comes from discussions with porn makers and performers, and from what I can infer from looking at the results; and mostly what I can infer is that “the formula” for making porn is very different from making love, or even for having good sex.

Marie and Jack alluded to this during their interview in Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story. When they made their decision to pursue a porn career, they rented a few porn videos to get a better idea of what would be expected of them:

JACK: We only started watching so that we knew what we were supposed to be doing. Like if we were going to work for a particular company, we’d rent one of their movies to see, you know, how they shot.

MARIE: It was like the same positions every time; doggie, missionary, reverse.

You can see this passage on our video podcast in Episode 1 of Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story

Responding on her bulletin board to a fan’s lament that contemporary porn lacks spontaneity, Nina Hartley breaks down today’s typical approach to shooting a sex scene even further. Says Nina:

Yeah, things were different when I started.

It gets boring, certainly.

It does sound boring.

Our approach to shooting a sex scene is a little different. From Hunter James’ interview in the May issue of DNA Magazine:

DNA: You’ve had sex on camera before. Can you tell us about your previous experiences and how they differ from Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together?

HUNTER: When you make porn for a studio there is usually a lot of direction: suck his cock, move your hand out of the shot, say this and say that. For this they just turned on the cameras and let us do what we do normally, without interruptions.

In the behind the scenes featurette Damon and Hunter: The Making of a Love Scene, which is included on the Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together DVD, Peggy and I lift our skirts a little, reveal our secret formula as it were.

When you watch The Making of a Love Scene, you’ll see that our approach is rather different when compared to what Marie and Jack or Nina Hartley describe. It’s born out of my background as a documentary filmmaker, which is mostly about finding interesting people in interesting situations, and then doing our best to stay out of the way while we try and keep up.

It’s not the only way to shoot a sex scene. It might not even be the best way. But it’s not boring, at least not to me. I don’t think the results are boring either, and I hope when you see our films, you’ll agree!

Yesterday we got a nice mention at Fleshbot.com. Well not actual us, but we were mentioned in a post about an absolutely ravenous bunch of women fans of Damon and Hunter; both the real life couple in our movie of the same.

With the holidays and other minor chaos, the high definition transfer I mentioned earlier got pushed back to next week, so in the between time, Mrs.C and I have been working on a Making Of/Behind the Scenes featurette that is as unprecedented as shooting gay sex on film and mastering on HD.

We’re known for our two camera approach to shooting sex scenes, but during the filming of Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together there were in fact three cameras used: Mine (an Eclair ACL Super16 film camera), Peggy’s (another Eclair ACL Super16 film camera), and video camera that runs continuously throughout the entire scene. (You’ve already seen a bit of footage from this third camera in the humorous Mag. Change clip in last months Teamwork, Part 2.)

What we’re doing on this Making Of/Behind the Scenes is presenting each of these cameras, running sycronously through the multi-angle function that DVDs have.

The first camera angle will be footage from the video camera, with the footage from each film camera inset into each corner:

The second camera angle is the footage from my camera:

And the third camera angle is the footage from Peggy’s camera:

By using the ANGLE button on your DVD remote, you’ll be able to switch between these three angle as the DVD plays. There will be two audio tracks, one that’s just the audio we recorded during the scene, and a second track featuring commentary from me and my wife.

Watch just the two film camera angles with the scene sound track, and it’s like editing the scene yourself. Listen to our audio commentary track and switch between all three camera angles and you’ll get a peek inside our process, how we decide who will shoot what, how we “seen” inside each other’s head while we’re shooting, and how we (try to) cover each other’s mistakes, along with insights and background stories about the film!

Of course this is just a bonus feature. The main event is still the film, and what a fine film it’s turned into! Damon and Hunter marks the realization of a long-held ambition for me and Peggy; to capture real sex and real love between two very real men, and we couldn’t be more excited about it!

I’ve finally got the Xana and Dax interview roughed out into a pretty cogent little narrative. At just over 17 1/2 minute, it has a beginning, a middle and and end, with some nice little diversions along the way – like facesitting, cocksucking, and the joys of doggy-style sex.

As a treat to you, dear reader (at least I hope it’s a treat,) I’ve uploaded a QuickTime movie of their lovely little story. It’s nearly 20 megs, so you’ll need broadband as well as Quicktime 6.5 to view it. But even at 20 megs, it’s very heavily compressed, so please don’t judge the DVD quality by the .mov file. (You’re much too sophisticated to do something like that, right?)

Do listen to all the sweet things they say about each other. Do watch for the subtle little facial expressions that let you know that they really do love one another – the slight nod of the head or wrinkle of the nose. And do imagine what it will look like when this is blended with the roughly 45 minutes of lovemaking we shot. If you’d like to see full-sized pictures of what Xana and Dax look like making love, click here.

So with those caveats and provisos, I’d like to invite you to meet Xana and Dax, a quarter hour of their reflections on falling in love, staying in love, and having great sex. I think you’re going to like them!

-T.C.

I just got off the phone with my friend Phil. He and his wife Masae were the first couple we ever shot – the very first test shoot we ever did when we embarked on this approach to sex and cinema nearly ten years ago. We’ve stayed in touch with them over the years. We’ve shot a couple more tests with them (to work out threesome shooting), they house sat for us a few Summers ago, and we used their house for our shoot last month during the Blizzard of 2005. They’re two of the nicest, sexiest, most authentic people we know.

Anyway Phil called to see how our adventure in San Francisco went and to let me know that they feel like they’re at a point where they want to make a lasting statement about how important sexuality is in their relationship. He and his wife and their lover would like to shoot a released love-scene and interview with us. I couldn’t be more honored that they’d ask us to help them make that statement.

It also gives me a nice feeling of “closing the circle”. When we first approached Phil and Masae with our ideas I didn’t have much beyond a few Legshow Magazine layouts and some decidedly unsexy corporate work to show them. We wanted them to get naked, have sex, and then lets us take the tapes back to the edit suite to work on them, all with the promise that they wouldn’t end up on the internet. I don’t know why they trusted us but they did, and we made them a beautiful little tape that they still enjoy watching to this day (I think they’ve shown it to a few other people too.)

Since that first shoot with Phil and Masae, we’ve become a little more sophisticated with our approach. We shot them with a mismatched paired of Hi8 cameras; now we shoot a pair with Super16s with matched lenses. When we first shot Phil and Masae we went on pure instinct; now that instinct is informed by years of experimentation and study. But one thing was there and the begining, and hasn’t changed at all — Phil and Masae were and are two very real people who agreed to share their very real sex with our cameras. That night they might have been having sex for the camera that night, but they were together for each other. And ten years later they still are. And from what they’ve told me, their sex is better (and wilder!) than ever.

-T.C.