Bespoke porn: Nothing is too weird. We consider all requests | Hacker News Reader

Bespoke porn: Nothing is too weird. We consider all requests

theguardian.com

105 pointsmathgenius51 comments

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> It is very unusual to find second cameramen on porn sets these days: the internet is killing porn-makers who take pride in production values. It’s because the money is now in the pockets of the tech giants in faraway cities such as Montreal, owners of sites such as PornHub that are crammed with pirated content illegally uploaded by fans; PornHub is currently the world’s 38th most popular site.

So much wrong with this paragraph, I hardly know where to start.

First of all, custom-made pornograhy is exploding as a market because cameras are cheap.

Secondly, multi-camera work is not indicative of high production values. Typically single camera work gives the director more control over each shot, and is more time consuming. So cheap-fast camera work will involve multiple cameras, then post-shoot editing to stitch things together.

Third, people make porn in Quebec. I think the only place people don't make porn is Utah--though it's the #1 place for people to retire to afterwards.

Fourth, PornHub is owned by MindGeek which also owns Brazzers, Mofos, DigitalPlayground, Twistys, RealityKings, and has many relationships with other producers. You see a lot of full length movies on Pornhub, not merely because people are breaking copyright laws but because those movies are the ones released as part of the required relationship (or released on other free site), and thus aren't really worth chasing down and taking offline.

Ahh.. rant over.

I will add though Anatomik does good work, and I'm glad to see the more mainstream media paying attention to them.

> Fourth, PornHub is owned by MindGeek which also owns Brazzers, Mofos, DigitalPlayground, Twistys, RealityKings, and has many relationships with other producers. You see a lot of full length movies on Pornhub...

You really know your porn...

Yes, I work in the industry. MindGeek owns like 80% of it. They even owned Playboy Digital for a little while.

I was just joking around, apparently I offended some people. I don't know anything about the industry and honestly never heard of MindGeek, but now that you're explaining it it's actually pretty interesting. How much is MindGeek worth?

Less today, but discussing at IT conferences with people from the porn industry was awesome.

They had particularly extraordinary solutions for video - this was one of these bleeding edge solutions wher you had to cram a reasonably good steam into a modem+ bandwidth.

>I think the only place people don't make porn is Utah--though it's the #1 place for people to retire to afterwards.

Is this true? And if so, why?

It's kind of anecdotal, but the reason is Utah has good schools, nice houses, inexpensive land, and residents who do not admit to watching porn, much less try to accost people they think they recognize there.

It has historically had a high concentration of Mormons and this has shaped the state's culture.

Huh? Was this meant to explain why ex porn stars move to Utah?

> faraway cities such as Montreal

Loved that bit

> Fourth, PornHub is owned by MindGeek which also owns Brazzers, Mofos, DigitalPlayground, Twistys, RealityKings, and has many relationships with other producers.

There was, a few years ago, an article in the local newspaper abount Mindgeek by a journalist who had just found out about it. Apparently the technical challenges are pretty interesting and they maintain a low enough profile that it's possible to work there without the stigma from the general public.

> custom-made pornograhy is exploding

Where?

one-to-one cam-girls for one.

clips4sale maybe?

http://oglaf.com/shhh/

http://oglaf.com/overbite/

http://oglaf.com/fully-fleshed/

http://oglaf.com/croutons/

The one of these links I clicked on was an NSFW comic strip. Just FYI.

The main title says PORN, the article is about PORN, what are you doing at work?

My employer has zero problem with me reading about porn at work, but looking at it is a different matter entirely.

If this is true, can you expand a bit?

I work for a bunch of cool adults. The porn industry is interesting and makes for fun lunch conversations with the team. My nose is not held to the grindstone all the time and it's accepted that I spend a certain amount of my time reading articles and such.

But having pornographic videos or images up on your screen where others can see is just unprofessional.

It's Oglaf. Oglaf strips are only occasionally SFW (the author specifically marks them, it's that uncommon).

But yes, the parent probably should have said "NSFW" for those unaware.

I should have marked that NSFW, sorry.

Small world... frequent HN reader here, just ordered a custom video recently through Anatomik Media, the company that's profiled in the article.

I haven't received my own video yet but from what I've seen of their work they do have high production values and a lot of attention to detail.

I appreciate the founder's curiosity about the range and the content of different people's sexual interests. That really comes through in the article. People are into a whole lot of different stuff and it's pretty fascinating.

Also, way to go Jon Ronson for getting to the bottom of the nun story. Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty.

Yes, kudos to Jon Ronson for correcting the record and bringing some comfort. It is also an important object lesson that what one person thinks is an unimportant detail (just a picture garnish on a story) can traumatize someone else. Words and images matter.

> Also, way to go Jon Ronson for getting to the bottom of the nun story. Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty.

He even confirmed with the Italian newspaper after speaking with a primary source. That’s what makes this type of personal journalism become great writing in the right hands, and why it’s so fun to read: the narrative recounts a rigorous investigatory followup to us as if Ronson were merely chasing a Sunday curiosity, but also illustrates excellent journalistic method and restraint as a subtext.

Too bad he solved the stamp man coincidence, though, despite it being interesting. That remaining unsolved would have confused the hell out of those producers for the rest of their lives.

It a little weird to me to call it porn, all of the described bespoke videos include nothing of what could be considered a sexual nature (to the conventionally minded I suppose )- you could display them on network TV in the USA when children are watching without the FCC's wrath (unless they showed the women peeing graphically and they really didn't describe the nun video very well). They sound more like customized therapy videos.

Funny, I expect that if one marketed such services as "customized therapy videos," one would confront immediate objections that the service was facilitating heinous pornography.

I suppose they're only "safe for TV" because they're so unusual to be custom-made in the first place. The moment your preferences move away from sex, most of the market abandons you. So long as they have a sexual significance to the people who pay to view them, though, I would call them porn.

What do you mean by most of the market abandons you?

I'm actually confused on this one.

Well there's no "women in heels stomping on stamp sheets" section on pornhub, is there?

Oh, this is with regards to 'porn' still then.

The women stomping on stamp sheets bit is female domination which has always been very niche. Niche sites generally don't find themselves on pornhub because (a) their viewers like the site enough not to do that and (b) since their audience is so small, they can't afford to let it be satisfied 'for free' elsewhere.

Also I should clarify... the women stomping on sheets video likely involved a lot of verbal dirty talking as well, or provocative shots. If you actually watched it, you'd figure out its porn fairly quickly even if you weren't aroused by it.

> female domination which has always been very niche. Niche sites generally don't find themselves on pornhub

You've got to be kidding. If not, then go to PornHub, and type "femdom" in the search.

They are nice because of the volume produced and demanded versus that of more mainstream interests. This doesn't mean their content is non existent on mainstream sites, merely that the majority of it is still controlled under the paysite.

You're moving the goalposts. At first you said it's not on those large websites at all; now you're saying that it is, but most of it is still on paysites, and that's where most of the clientele goes.

Coincidentally, you're still wrong about that latter claim. Do the same experiment, except now do it in Google video search, and disable safe mode. Look at the number of the results. Do you seriously think that this amount of free content is not enough for a lot of people?

> You're moving the goalposts. At first you said it's not on those large websites at all

No. taneq said that. I'm not taneq. In fact taneq said that in response to me asking someone else a question.

I said "Niche sites generally don't find themselves on pornhub because .... ".

I think I equivocated quite a bit there to the point that my goal posts can be mounted on roller blades without changing the nature of the game. :)

> Do you seriously think that this amount of free content is not enough for a lot of people?

No.

Source: The company I work for sells this exact same content to a lot of people.

At least in my head, proprietary data and work experience is going to trump Google video searches and rhetoric.

My apologies for identity confusion

I know that there are companies that sell this type of content to a lot of people. This doesn't contradict the statement that the majority of people who are looking for that type content, can find what they want for free. It still leaves plenty of people to sell paid content to. Based on the amount of content I can see even from cursory looks, this seems likely.

Now, if you have access specifically to market research data that contradicts that - then I stand corrected.

sadly, no

Yeah, I found that confusing, unless The Guardian is just being extremely coy?

I'm guessing it's because the economy of paying people to make titillating videos of somehow-not-actually-sex is far more puzzling (and interesting in a non-prurient way) than the economy of paying people to make titillating videos of sex

I think the idea is that the viewer is presumed to be getting a prurient thrill out of the video, even if it is filmed in a way that only works for that one person.

The graphicness depends on the customer's request, but can of course be very explicit. A common euphemism in the community is colors such as "yellow", "red" and "brown", which I'm sure you can figure out what they correspond to.

Thanks for the clarification. The writer should have been more clear like you - or maybe I was too literal into thinking what was written was everything.

Portfolio for the company discussed in the article: https://anatomikmedia.com/portfolio/

Plenty pornographic.

Precisely because this doesn't even cross the minds of the conventional, fetishists commonly "challenge" teens and young children on YouTube to, unwittingly, create fetish material for them. This phenomenon is up there in the top 5 most troubling things I've learned about the Internet.

I think it is because the only examples in the article are the outliers.

There is a short mention about how you can wing a jerk off instruction, which indicates that other parts of their work is pornographic in nature.

The big problem with this piece is that it doesn't discuss how much fit the bill of sexual porn and how much is hardly recognisable as pornography.

I hope they're careful about the custom videos they make. Just last week the RCMP were searching for the woman who made a video apparently confessing to an Anthrax hoax -- who it turns out was paid to make the video via Fiverr.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/how-a-north-carolina...

With technology like this being developed, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14182262 , we may see more stories like that, at least until law enforcement becomes more aware of it (and hopefully doesn't start locking things down.)

On a more positive note, these "reality editing" technologies would probably find lots of successful application in bespoke porn.

This isn't exactly new, but I think is becoming a larger market. It's something that "camgirls" have been doing for quite some time, but I've never heard of anyone doing it with this kind of production value. Probably the biggest place these days for this is clips4sale, but there are a lot of smaller sites.

Stick to a reputable exchange that you can be comfortable enforces 2257 age records keeping requirements. It's possible to find ads on /r/SexSells and such but this is a terrible idea.

Good timing. I need to create a short porn film for an art project (yes seriously) and been wondering how the hell to actually find professionals who I can work with.

Random emails have not been working but this article provided some new avenues to explore. I'll even pose as a VR goggle fetishist if that's what it takes to get the damn thing commissioned

For an audio version from the same person starting this podcast, an excerpt from This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/620/...

I can't help but wonder if the stamp person really sent his own collection, or if it was actually someone elses, and if the request for a video of it being destroyed was some elaborate bullying thing.

If you want to hear a little more on this, and other aspects of the porn industry, and the effect that PornHub has had, then check out The Butterfly Effect podcast by Jon Ronson, the journalist who wrote this article. It's free to Audible subscribers at the moment. http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html

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