Posing for the cameraman

Here’s an interesting thing about the shoot yesterday: it was the first shoot where I was romantically involved with the person behind the camera.

Now, I’ve done shoots and parties with girls I was dating at the time, so I’ve experienced working with a lover. I’m perfectly capable of putting both randiness and emotions on the back burner while we both concentrate on what we’re supposed to be doing. After the shoot, the build up of tension can make for an explosive reunion in the bedroom, so acting with lovers has been wholly positive for me. (Apart from the occasions when we were too tired to speak. Which was, come to think of it, quite a few times.)

It’s subtly, but deliciously different when your boyfriend is not a fellow model, but the cameraman.

Here’s the thing: I always have to focus on what the camera is seeing. Am I in shot? Is my hair covering up my face? Is my back in a becoming arch? Am I speaking clearly? Am I managing, along with all this, to not actually look into the camera in a fourth-wall breaking manner? Forgetting about the camera is rarely an option.

Knowing that the person holding the camera is somebody I would ideally like to find me beautiful and desirable makes posing for the camera easy and, frankly, quite arousing. My audience is right here, peering in the view-finder. My audience is, hopefully, enjoying the show. It’s like being painted, but with added technology.

I liked that.

Jimmy confessed to me that it was quite hot for him as well, particularly when he was crouching by the wall to get my facial expressions as the belt came down.

I hope we’ll get to do it again.

A shoot out of the blue

Where preparations for shoots are concerned, I’m normally a slightly obsessive perfectionist. Possibly too much of one, considering that few people are likely to notice if my fingernails are not the right length for the character, or if I wear the same hair clip in two different films. Be that as it may, I usually spend at least a few hours on the day before the shoot making sure my kit and my person are both ready.

This time, I was staying with my boyfriend Jimmy when Pandora Blake asked me if I would join her for a spontaneous mini-shoot for her upcoming site. I enjoy working with Pandora, firstly because our vision of what spanking films should be like is very compatible, and secondly, because there’s really good chemistry on set. I said yes without hesitation.

The obsessive side of me was aghast. I was travelling only with my everyday clothes, a reduced make-up bag, dull hair grips and no nail polish at all. Surely I would be struck down by lightning if I turned up to a shoot in knickers I was actually going to wear on the day? This was exactly like your mother’s advice to wear nice underwear in case you’re in an accident, except with added porn.

My rational side soon won over, and I was able to enjoy the spontaneity of the shoot as much as the rest of the experience.

It was pretty intimate. Pandora was directing, Tom Cameron was topping her and me, Jimmy was behind the camera. We made a video about a discipline arrangement between two student girls and a helpful dom.

Everything was positive, consensual and quite light-hearted, and yet squirmy and hot. I got quite into character, and felt a genuine stab of embarrassment when I had to admit to failing to get to my 9 o’clock lectures three times in one week. Tom used his belt, which is an implement of much hotness, particularly when whisked manfully from the loops.

The spontaneity, and the fact we needed to give the venue back very quickly, really added to the feeling that we were doing something almost transgressive and therefore fun.

I’m now pleasantly sore, and in need of many cuddles, which Jimmy is generously providing, despite being fairly tired himself.

Bring on more spontaneous shoots!

SpankingCast Episode 10: “Adventures at a spanking shoot”

So, instead of writing my shoot for Pandora, I decided to talk about it in the new episode of SpankingCast.

Get the episode here.

I wish I had pictures to show off, but they’re not ready yet. Pandora has snapped this one with her phone: me and Jimmy canoodling, about to get into a heap of trouble.

Pain tolerance and spanking modelling

Munchkins, what do we think about the importance of pain tolerance in spanking models?

I’ve been musing about the subject this week, because my own tolerance is not that great right now. I got a smacking with a fairly standard leather paddle the other day, and made so much fuss that the guy spanking me thought I was acting. (No, I wasn’t. I was sending honest signals about the level of pain I was experiencing.) Mind you, the presence of cameras seems to do wonders to my pain tolerance, shooting it straight up, but that’s not where my thoughts are at the moment.

In a normal spanking scene it’s the subjective level of pain that’s important. When I’m spanking somebody, I like to take them to a certain level of discomfort, far enough for them to think, “Ouchie! This smarts! My poor bottom!” How much force I have to use in order to get there, doesn’t really matter to me. It’s the reaction that feeds my sadism, not the energy I put into getting that reaction.

In films, the reaction is, obviously, very important. Yet, if not very much force is used, the film doesn’t look very dramatic. Canings, for example, usually look much, much milder on film than they feel. (I’ve watched couple of my NSI films thinking, “I’m sure that felt a lot harder than it looks like.”) So a model has to be able to take enough pain that, not only can she give authentic reactions, but also the action looks impressive.

Obviously, a model can stop the action whenever she likes. Nobody should have to take more than she’s comfortable with. At the same time, how annoying would it be to book a model only to find that her pain threshold is so low that she can’t produce more than a minute’s worth of film?

I’m glad that I’m not a spanking film producer, because my instinct would be to keep my models happy and bouncy. Pain tolerance snobbery makes me extremely uncomfortable, so I may end up with lots of very underwhelming movies.

You have to be able to take quite a lot of pain, even to work for the mildest companies out there, and that’s a fact of life.

Foreign shoots

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the speeded-up process of establishing intimacy at spanking shoots. What I didn’t talk about at the time was what a completely different experience it is to shoot abroad. (Caveat: my musings are based on the vast experience of whole two Lupus shoots. That’s as far as my international portfolio goes.)

The UK scene, as I mentioned, is really huggy and kissy, but this is only an amplification of what is a fairly huggy culture. In Eastern Europe physical contact is sparser: handshakes are the norm, even with friends; hugs are rare. This was true when I was growing up, and it appears to be true now, even with how the Western culture seeps eastwards.

When working in Eastern Europe, a language barrier is added to the natural reservedness: you can’t talk, they won’t hug. When you arrive on set, it’s easy to think that people just don’t like you very much. This is, of course, as wrong as thinking that the instantly affectionate UK people are struck by adoration as soon as they see you.

I wonder what the atmosphere is on set in other countries. I remember Pandora saying that when she went to hug the Pain4Fem guy after shooting a hard scene, he was nonplussed. Was this an Austrian trait, I wonder, or something he picked up shooting porn in Eastern Europe?

One day I hope to shoot some spankings in the US. I keep trying to imagine how different it might be from the UK, though I can’t really picture it. At least, there’s a language in common there, or very nearly…