The story work on Ashley and Kisha’s interview is done. It’s smooth, it flows it has pace and panache. Right now I’m working the rhythm between the two shot and the close-up, using the camera choice to emphasis passages or highlight reactions. It’s one of my very favorite parts of making these films.

I am also monitoring the reshuffle of our Google site index and the the slow return of ComstockFilms.com (hopefully) back from page 15 obscurity to a relatively high ranking on the search term [real sex]. And that’s how I discovered that Sienna Miller didn’t have real sex in a recent love scene.

A week ago I didn’t know who Sienna Miller was, and mostly I still don’t. What I do know that she looks very nice bumping and grinding and humping with her co-star (I found a link to the clip on The Hater.) Warm glowing light, a roaring fire, and (what’s this now?) jump-cuts.

In a love-scene, jump-cuts are a hipper version of cross-dissolves, and they solve two editing problems that come up when cutting love-making.

Like a cross-dissolve, a well executed jump-cut can be understood as passage of time. The couple is going at it mish jump-cut now she’s on top, and we, the modern movie-going public understand that it’s not a magic act, it’s a symbolic passage of time.

The other problem they solve is you don’t need the sort of shot coverage that a match-cut would require. You can move people through time and space with jump-cuts, showing all the different ways the couple humped and bumped, without going to the time and trouble of actually moving the couple through time and space. The mismatch between shots stands in for all the missing action and time.

Comtemporary filmmakers like jump-cuts in love-making scenes because the old standby, the cross-dissolve has become associate with Hallmark movie of the week montages, and late-night cable softcore. 9 SONGS has jump cut in the love-scenes, INTAMCY has a few, Erika Lust uses them in THE GOOD GIRL too.

So far, I haven’t used jump-cuts or cross-dissolves in my love-making scenes.

I know it’s old fashioned, but I like cross-dissolves as a way to symbolize the passage of time and/or create a dreamy atmosphere. But you can’t throw them around willy nilly. Every time I try to use them in these films, they’ve ended up feeling jarring and discordant, so I’ve taken them back out.

I haven’t used jump-cuts either, but that’s more philosophical.

As accepting of jump-cuts as modern audiences are, a jump-cut is still more noticable than a match cut or other techniques used to create flow or compress time. Jump-cuts feel more mannered and remind me I’m watching a confection. To me, traditionally editing feels less obtrusive, especially in a love-scene, and that make the love-making scene feel more more “real”, and “real sex”, the kind that people whe really care about each other have, is what I want my films to feel like.

At any rate, all props to Sienna Miller’s PR people. All the buzz of real sex on film without having real sex on film. Clever! I’m taking notes!

Erika Lust, producer/director of the award-winning erotic short, THE GOOD GIRL is in post production on her next (untitled?) production, and she’s got a trailer up on her blog that you’ll probably want to check out.

Trailer/Teaser for Erika Lust’s New Project

My first impression? Again, Erika leaves most of the rest of the erotic filmmaking world in the dust. While the 818 still thinks that punk circa 1997 is a cutting edge look, the styling in Erika’s clip is as fresh and contemporary as anything you’ll see on MTV or a fashion mag. Erika’s clip looks pretty and sexy and glamorous. Life the way you think sexy young European jet-setters must be living it.

Will the glamour hold up under the stresses and strains that is ultra-low-budget filmmaking (ie porn?) We won’t know till we see the finished cut. But if I had to bet on anyone, I’d bet on Erika. She’s got style to spare!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote some sharp words about director Erik Lust’s entry into the blogosphere, and gave a URL where an online version of her erotic short The Good Girl could be downloaded. Well no sooner had I hit “post”, and the link went offline due to server overload.

This morning I’m happy to report that The Good Girl is back online, and still very much worth a look:

http://www.lustfilms.com/thegoodgirl/download.htm

Last week our upcoming film Ashley and Kisha got a nice mention on Ethnoerotica and I started to write a post (tentatively titled “Race Riot”) about what we’ve seen in terms of sale for Ashley & Kisha versus our other titles The long and the short of it is that lots and lots of people have preordered Damon & Hunter and Matt & Khym, lot and lots of people have bought Marie & Jack and Xana & Dax. But comparitively few people have pre-ordered A&K. But as I began to speculate on why this might be, I got bogged down and couldn’t pay off the title, so I quit.

Just yesterday, I kvetched at Erika Lust about the men’s porn/women’s porn thing, and haven’t quite found myself satisfied with what I said there either.

Then today I had cause to read an entry I made nearly a year ago, after a wonderful phone visit with Jessica Holter, founder of The Punany Poets: Am I a Punany Poet?

I rather like what I said towards the end it:

In the past few years, sexually explicit material has fractured into an ever-increasing number of what “the industry” (mis)labels “fetishes”. There are segregations by sex act, by race, by age. There are videos that show nothing but young white women getting fucked in the ass by black men, or videos that show nothing but asian women having sex with each other. I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with people wanting to see what they want to see (a photo I saw at an early age of Sophia Loren has left me easy prey for the word “Latina”) but as this fractured view of sexuality more and more defines pornography, it seems to imply that the way to reach the audience for graphic sex is by focusing on the most objective, quantifiable elements. I don’t think this is so. I think there ways to depict sex that can transcend race, gender, or sexuality, and Jessica, Linda, JAG [people who've said generous things about A&K] and the others are helping to sustain me in my belief that by focusing on the subjective aspects of the sexual experience, I can reach across boundaries of race, or gender, or sexual taste.

Of course our differences still matter – Jessica [Holter] is a African-American woman, raised in the South by old church-going lady who “still had cotton under her fingernails.” I’m second-generation Irish and Jewish, raised the in the white, middle-class suburbs of the West Coast – but those aren’t the only things that matter, and they’re not always the thing that matters the most. You don’t have to be African-American to be inspired by the story of the Tuskegee Airmen; you don’t have to be Jewish to feel the horror of The Holocaust; you don’t have to be young, black, or a lesbian to know when you’re watching Kisha ride Ashley’s face, you’re seeing something that’s as right as rain.

I’m not stupid. I know that when I say race or gender or sexual orientation aren’t always the most important thing, I’m saying it from the point of view of a person who’s never had his race, or his gender, or who or how I fuck held against me in any but the most trivial sort of way. And so I suppose it’s only natural that if I, as a middle-aged, white, straight man make a film about young, black, lesbian women, I’m going to have to prove that I can make the things they and I have in common count for more than our differences.

That’s fine. It’s my privilage and honor to have the chance to try.

Erika Lust, director of the award-winning erotic short “The Good Girl” is blogging at http://erikalust.blogspot.com/. There are also links to an online version of the movie, but I can’t seem to get it to work right now. But I’ve seen the trailer and it’s pretty cute.

Comstock Films owes Erika a debt of gratitude. She’s the one who sent Esquire in our direction last Spring, and that little PR boost finally tipped this operation over from red to black, so it’s not without some mixed feelings that I say this:

Erika, enough with the man bashing.

With no more than 10 posts so far, at least two of them lay the blame for crappy porn on the fact that it’s mostly made by men.

Sorry Erika, women have been directing porn for some twenty plus years now, and with a very few exceptions, it hasn’t made much of a difference.

Porn is dissapointing for three reasons:

1) Porn cannot raise the capital needed to finance even the most basic of productions.

2) Since “the industry” can’t offer either money or the opportunity for professional advancement, porn cannot attract talented professionals to the creative process.

3) Mainstream distribution channels remain uninterested in poorly made sexually explicit movies (and unless/until someone makes them again, we may never know if they’d be interested in well-made sexually explicit movies). Without the access to the much higher revenues found in mainstream distribution, porn will remain an ultra low-budget ghetto, characterized by shabby, thoughtless productions. (See #1 and #2.)

These are the cold hard facts. What you’ve got between your legs doesn’t change them. Bitchen hair cuts and a badass tattoos don’t change them either. And the gender politics “only women really know what women want” is distracting window dressing at best; devisive, short-sighted marketing at worst.

If Erika succeeds, it’s not going to be because she has to sit down to pee. It’s going to be because she finds an inventive, sexy and financially viable way out of the strangle-hold that porn has (for the most part) put on itself. Judging by The Good Girl, she’s off to a good start!

UPDATE

I got the download to work, and I saw two things I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a sexually explicit film. 1) Scripted awkward/playful moments that worked. 2) Authentic seeming laughter between lovers while they fucked.

I also like the way the sexual explicitness is casually frank. We see cunt and cock because that’s what you’d see if you watched people fuck. The camera doesn’t linger, but it doesn’t go all coy either. Our desire to him in her is joyously indulged (I love being indulged!)

Even the porno cliche reverse cowgirl position looks like “just happened”, and when the de rigor facial pop goes meta (”I want you to come on my face like they do in the porn movies!”) and I’ll be damned, it works – probably because the Good Girl is smiling so happily and lustily while the pizza boy (yes, the pizza boy) unloads on her face, and then he lays a tender smooch on her jism spattered lips!

Bravo Erika!

I just got off the phone with Esquire Magazine, which is trying to answer the age old question “Isn’t there anything out there I can watch with my wife/girlfriend?” They’re pursuing the “porn by women for women” angle, so my first question for Esquire was “It’s Tony with a Y. What brought you to Comstock Films?” Well the answer is Erika Hallqvist of Lust Films, who passed along our name to an Esquire researcher.

If you’re not familar with Erika and Lust Films, you should be. While her approach to filmmaking is considerably more ambitious than ours (real scripts, real acting), her goal is the same – the explicit depiction of real sexual passion. Of course it doesn’t hurt that her erotic short The Good Girl has one of the best looking men I’ve ever seen having sex on camera.

So take a trip over to Lust Films, have a look at the trailer for The Good Girl and her behind the scenes clip, which will show you how much effort goes into her work. While you’re there, why not drop her a note of encouragement. Going against the grain is tough, no matter what you’re doing; and believe me, every little bit of encouragement helps!

-T.C.