Question for the Video producers

[alfredog]

Any advice on breaking into the transsexual porn business on the production side? Is it all just a handful of friends who simply point and shoot? I shoot and edit documentaries and promos for DVD, but I have no connection to the adult industry. And I cringe when I see videos that could have used just a little more skill in lighting, composition and editing to make the scenes that much more hot. Shooting a gorgeous girl against blazing sunlight with the auto-exposure on is just a waste. (Popular companies like Grooby and Joey Silvera are exceptions, but any filmmaker can tell you it doesn't take a ton of money to make beautiful images, just a little skill.)

Any general advice on starting my own productions? I have a DVX-100A, Final Cut Pro and professional ligthing and sound packages but no idea how to corral talent, what to pay them, how to keep everything safe, legit and profitable.

[GroobySteven]

You can find advice of the legal side on places like avn.com which will tell you about the record keeping laws.

Shooting is the easy part. Getting the finished product easy enough also there are companies out there which do great jobs of DVD authoring and cover printing and if you get to that point I'd be happy to give you their numbers.
The most difficult part is getting someone to distribute your product. Video Bob and I spent a frustrated year at AVN show looking for a distributor one year and eventually having no choice but to go with the only available, this cunt currently working for a another company who was starting her own. She took Brazilian Transsexuals Vol 1 and released it and made less than 500 sales before she decided not to go it alone and went back to her old company - this release was now untouchable by other companies and we had to sell them all at a loss over the last few years ($1 a tape!).

We have a decent distributor now but making a DVD profitable still takes a long time. Often you sell to wholesale companies for as little as $6 a DVD - the distributor takes 25-30% and it's cost you around $3 to produce so not much of a profit. Most of our DVD's take about a year to break even and we're lucky owning our own online sales at http://www.shemale-video-direct.com as we can can sell a DVD at $29.95 and not have to split with a dstributor. If we can make $5000-$7000 back there it helps.

Some costs:
1000 DVD's authored (incl master and boxes) approx $3000
Printing over covers (min 3000) approx $400
Models for video approx $1000-$1200 per model.
etc
etc

If you do get something done and can't find a distributor we may be willing to release it under our production company of "Shemale Yum presents"

Good luck
seanchai

[alfredog]

Very helpful advice, thanks!

I was thinking of using Diskmakers for mastering, duplication and packaging--or, as you say, see if an established distributor like your company has any interest.

I got this from an article online (True? Half-true?):

“I look at a lot of business opportunities and (porn) is a great investment,” says a financier who calls himself Reuben.

Reuben recently bankrolled his first adult film. Yet he is not worried about success.

“You’ve got to be stupid to fail,” he tells me.

And Reuben’s right – a porn movie typically grosses four times more than it costs to shoot and the average budget for a porn film is $30,000. An added bonus – porn is virtually recession-proof. AVN’s sales figures for the video market were virtually the same in 2001 as in 2000. According to AVN, more than 756 million videotapes (not including DVDs) were sold or rented last year. Clearly a lot of people are making money."

--Another question: Is there a detailed budget/breakdown for an average porn, viewable anywhere online? I've come up snake eyes so far. How much should someone starting out pay out to talent? Makeup? Since I have the equipment, could I start out with $5-$10,000 (closer to reality for me right now)?

[alfredog]

Ah, the forum at AVN has a lot of solid information too, thanks.

It seems a lot of people in the business are getting spooked by impending obscenity laws. Sounds scary.

[WendyWilliams]

As far as Talent I can only speak from my experience:

A girl who hasnt filmed and or "known" average pay ranges from 750-1000 for a scene.

Next range for "known" talent is 1000-1500
I would think anything higher than 1500 is for those "superstars" but dont quote me on it. THIS IS FOR HARDCORE of course, solo and or masterbations scenes would be much lower of course.


Male Talent ranges from 250-500 a scene anything higher is pretty much for those who are for sure male talent: Christian, Jagger,Tom, etccc


You also have to figure your location (hotel, mansion,etcc), Most ladies prefer to do their own makeup but to ASSURE the ladies for a certain look most makeup artists make 150 a face.

Then as a "company" you would need or I would suggest that your talent have current AIDS test (preferrably AIM ) that will range you around 125 a test, I know that most all of the companys I have shot for reiumbursed me and or had a corporate account at AIM.


I hope this sheds some light for you.

Wendy

[alfredog]

I didn't see your cost breakdown before. Please disregard the second barrage of questions. You've given me a lot to go on. Much appreciated.

[WendyWilliams]

With the new 2257 laws you WILL and MUST need to consult a lawyer its overwhelming.

Ive spent four solid days logging talent url's , locating ID's, IM GOING CRAZY, LOL.

Oh by the way Allanah if you read this since I cant email you, I have alot of model releases from tscenterfold you will need copies of, so just email me and Ill send you the copies.

[alfredog]

Yes, Wendy, very very helpful, thanks.

My biggest concern would be properly compensating the talent and keeping them safe and comfortable during the shoot.

Question: Do exclusively solo DVD's sell as well as Hardcore?

[GroobySteven]

Hardcore will always sell better but is more expensive to shoot - so the return on costs can be similar.

That guy saying "shooting porn can't fail" look at all the DVD's out there that are failing. I don't know who he is but if it was that easy...

Even Silvera tapes which I thought would sell 100,000's per title worldwide only sell in the 1000's over their lifetime (ok maybe his have such a long shelflife that it's in 10,000+) go into a video store and often they'll only have the latest releases.

As Wendy stated, anyone getting into this industry needs to consult a lawyer because of the new 2257 laws.
seanchai

[evil_twin]

Wouldn't it make sense to stream your movies online or sell the movie online first.
So you can get all the die-hard tranny fans.
then when sales slow down, you can rrelease em into the stores for the stragglers.

[GroobySteven]

No but it would make sense to do it the other way round - sell on DVD and then stream a year or so later.
seanchai

[alfredog]

Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems that all the new laws require is that your performers have solid government ID, and it expands the definition of content to specifically include digital media. And they got fussier about the "location of records" notice. Seems like more of headache than anything else for people who have been operating above-board all along.

At any rate: Lawyers GOOD, yes.

http://my.execpc.com/~xxxlaw/2257Table.htm

[WendyWilliams]

Well from what I was told from now on companies based in the US MUST only use talent that can produce a US I.D. actually two forms of I.D. not sure what that means for people who shoot in Brazil, Thailand,Mexico,Russia,etccc

I do know one of my friends was just sent back too Russia since she was here working in LA and with the new law this specific company doesnt know how to work the kinks out so they sent her back,,

ITS A BIG MESS right now with everyone trying to figure out exactly what the terms mean , what you can and CANT get away with.

I do know that if your records arent exactly as they want a person could end up in jail for 5 years.

[Vicki Richter]

Well what this does for the industry is a few things outside of those that have been mentioned.

Sites like this really can't exist from an image sharing perspective. There is no way you can pull ID's in from random people posting pix on your site.

TGP posts put the poster and hosting site at risk as none of these people will have the 2257 stuff typically. This in turn will damage affilliates ability to sell sites. A perfect example is a banner ad with any kind of nudity.

Content swaps between TS will become really rare.

This will also infinitely result in loss of privacy for adult performers. It will be really interesting to see if the industry responds as a whole. I was thinking that offshore corporations would start popping up for some of the biggest companies, even though that puts a whole new legal spin on things.

Personally, I like 2257.com. What a great site!

[Hugh Jarrod]

Eventually the kinks will be worked out, but I think it'll take sometime.

[GroobySteven]

One of the biggest pains in the arse on the new laws is that you have to link every single url or image on the site to the corresponding models id.

So if a model like Vicki is on a website in 4 different sets of 100 images each as well as the preview page each of those url's needs listing next to her id;
ie;
http://www.grooby.com/members/2005/vicki/set1/vicki45.jpg
http://www.grooby.com/members/2005/vicki/set1/vicki46.jpg

etc - that's a lot of work.
I'm using a piece of software called komply which is helping a lot but it's still a hell of a lot of work.

The way the law is set up now is to be as punitive and difficult to the adult industry as possible with the aim of many closing down. What I expect will happen is many companies will simply move to Europe or Canada and re-open their businesses there, taking money, jobs and taxes away from the US.
I'd urge all webmasters to join http://www.freespeechcoalition.com/ who are aiming to fight the legal aspects of the new laws.

I'm all for good record keeping and proving a model is over 18 by holding state or federal id but these laws are going above and beyond that.

seanchai

[Felicia Katt]

Good to know that in the war on terror, the Government sent enough troops to the pornography front. I guess they could spare some manpower after they made the country more secure by popping the guy from Cheech and Chong for running a head shop. You'd think they should be more concerned with pipe bombs then pipes and more involved in public works, than paperwork but what do I know, I voted for the other C Student from Harvard.

Felicia

[GroobySteven]

We actually need to produce more ID on a model that we shoot than that model would need to board an airplane.

seanchai

[Ecstatic]

That is absurd! More id to pose for a site than to board an aircraft which could conceivably topple a skyscraper in a terrorist act?!

And linking every image/url to the model's id? Seanchai, do you need to do that for ladyboy-ladyboy and brazilian-transsexuals as well as the US-oriented sites (yum, black-tgirls, etc.)? How on earth would you obtain--and verify--the id's of all those Thai girls? Especially those who posed years ago?

Yeesh. I knew 2257 was bad, but I'm only getting a glimpse of just how bad it really is.

[alfredog]

This country is really going the whole fascist route, I guess. To have to navigate all these byzantine preconditions just to be free to produce, distribute and even enjoy porn is pure repression.

Until my money is right, I might just stick to documentaries.

[geekmeat]

I personally think the internet WILL overtake video stores as the dominant revenue stream for movies if it hasnt already.
Why give some fucker 30% of your money for nothing.
There are some really good sites that are doing the online porn thing right with original content and hi quality downloads.
Also the VOD market is exploding.
The only thing to worry about is the government.
Right now the christian nazi fucks that run this country HATE sex........

[Ecstatic]

No, the sad part is that many of them love sex...they just want to keep the rest of us from enjoying ourselves. They are THAT depraved.