Image by elaisted.
In the short NYT piece Lights, Camera, Lots of Action. Forget the Script. they discuss the gradual demise of scripted porn movies and the increase of all-action porn. In the article they talk to Steven Hirsch at Vivid, who blames the short attention span of Internet porn consumers. But I don’t think it’s that simple — porn has been moving away from being able to make really bad scripted porn movies profitable for several years now. Sure, you can blame the Internet and its ease-of-ADD browsing for the death of the porn feature, or you could see that consumers were already moving away from crappy. badly acted, poorly lit, lame, sexist and just generally unrealistic features and toward reality porn long ago. It’s not the Internet — it’s freedom of choice. It’s elementary. Are you going to jack off to something obviously contrived — a very poor film with 5-6 predictable, very fake sex scenes acted out by the same actors and stereotypes — or are you going to look for something you might believe is real? With people who don’t look like porn actors, with no pretense of pizza guys, and a context of “reality porn” spontaneity (even when it’s carefully staged to look impulsive like Bang Bus)? Or how about people who actually look like they’re getting off?
Consumers want context, reality, and ease of consumption. Not Barbie playing pirate and obviously faking it for $59.99 on a DVD. The free market is what’s killing porn’s poor business models (like the DVD feature).
Anyway, here’s the NYT piece:
The actress known as Savanna Samson once relished preparing for a role. “I couldn’t wait to get my next script,” she said.
There’s no reason to look at them anymore, she said, because her movies now call almost exclusively for action. Specifically, sex.
The pornographic movie industry has long had only a casual interest in plot and dialogue. But moviemakers are focusing even less on narrative arcs these days. Instead, they are filming more short scenes that can be easily uploaded to Web sites and sold in several-minute chunks.
“On the Internet, the average attention span is three to five minutes,” said Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment. “We have to cater to that.”
Vivid, one of the most prominent pornography studios, makes 60 films a year. Three years ago, almost all of them were feature-length films with story lines. Today, more than half are a series of sex scenes, loosely connected by some thread — “vignettes” in the industry vernacular — that can be presented separately online. Other major studios are making similar shifts. (…read more, , thanks A!)
I disagree with all these comments. Plot ruins porn. My fantasies don’t have significant story arcs. Do yours? Really?
‘ “Getting it on in one hardcore scene after another just isn’t as much fun,” she added.’
That’s going to have an impact eventually. I’m not very familiar with the feature length films, but clips from old, old porn are almost always more erotic. It’s about the seduction.
Over-promise/Under-deliver is not a long-term business plan, especially not in a day and age when your customers have ever more access to information about what’s actually inside your shiny packaging. Sooner or later you run out of suckers.
I think that’s a bit harsh, though I didn’t agree with the article too much either (for different reasons). I’ve found many features to be a space for progressive and anti-sexist commentary, as well as lampooning porn conventions. Just because the sex is staged, doesn’t mean it’s “bad porn,” and sometimes I can get over the theatrics of the sex if the script and plot are rockin. I’ve always liked DIY filmmaking, and in porn (and other trash genres) there is a plentiful supply with often surprisingly subversive results.
It’s funny that the porn industry is just catching up to this trend. Andrew Blake and many others have been making ‘features’ based on loosely related vignettes since the 90s. With DVDs hitting in the late-90s, people could use scene selection to skip to the tasty bits. Before that, more VHS players and tapes died because of the fast-forward and rewind buttons. Hell, the last time anyone had to sit through a porn movie was during the hey day of blue theatres. (btw – is the one near Turk and Market still open?)
You know, I kinda liked the lame-o “plots” that filled the first five minutes of most porn films, before everyone got naked. A lot of times they had all the clumsy earnestness of a small-town high school production of a serious drama.
In mainstream pro porn, the actors usually struck me as very closed off — walls and defenses up, revealing nothing of themselves even while they’re naked and fucking. Which is not surprising, of course — they’re professionals getting paid to do a job, and baring their souls isn’t what they were hired to do. But ironically, it’s in those ridiculous and clumsy set-up scenes — “Gosh, is there any other way I can pay for this pizza?” — where they tended to be the most open and, in a way, the most human.
I like story. Probably why I tend to read more than I watch.