Production and promotion standards in the TS niche

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Originally Posted by TempestTS

Actually I would guess that there is somebody out there somewhere that for whater reason is completely turned on by someone like her and would pay good money to see her in a movie or pics.

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Cletus the slack-jawed yokel maybe?

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Originally Posted by TempestTS

Go over to the Clibs4Sale site and just take a look at all the strange categories you can buy content for...

Toothbrushing

Sweat Fetish

Ugly

Spinal Brace Fetish

Sneezing

Hiccups

coughing fetish

Nose Pinching

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And you think OUR niche is small? I mean you're talking about amateur stuff on Clips4Sale, not Playboy, Hustler, or even Yum. Ok fine, there IS an audience for everything, but three guys living in a trailer sandwiched between a prison and a landfill drinking moonshine don't qualify as a demographic. The only reason Clips4Sale has those categories is because they don't have to produce content so it doesn't cost them anything to offer them. They're not a production site dishing out money for shoots and expecting to make a profit. Therefore, you aren't presenting any evidence beyond the anecdotal to justify marketing in a manner that is not beneficial to the model and only questionably beneficial to the studio.

~BB~

porn in general has no quality control.... only a few sites do

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Originally Posted by phobun

I have to hand it to the Grooby people though. They have something for everyone including myself focused on a particular niche. Sometimes the girls can seem so far away or larger than life, but Grooby has a way of presenting them like the real people they are who could even be the girl next door. Too much airbrushing or shooting under obviously contrived circumstances can sure make a girl seem artificial or plastic.

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This is one of the pieces of advice I give to my clients about putting ads on Eros and the like but want to use glamor/art shots: there's one thing the guy knows when he sees them: whoever opens the door when he gets to the appointment, it's not going to be the girl in the photograph, because NO ONE LOOKS LIKE THOSE PHOTOGRAPHS. I had several discussions with girls this week about it because more and more photographers are so overly heavy handed in photoshopping the living shit out of stuff that you might as well just paint it instead. Because it would be equally realistic looking.

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Originally Posted by BellaBellucci

Therefore, you aren't presenting any evidence beyond the anecdotal to justify marketing in a manner that is not beneficial to the model and only questionably beneficial to the studio.

~BB~

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A studio in business a long time with a good track record probably knows what is beneficial to the studio.

You lean libertarian/free market, right? Wasn't it the legendary Adam Smith himself who wrote: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages."

I think the studio will naturally always operate with the studio's interest first, but that said, photographers like Buddy Wood sure appear to be gentlemen and first class in how they treat the girls.

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Originally Posted by BellaBellucci

And you think OUR niche is small? I mean you're talking about amateur stuff on Clips4Sale, not Playboy, Hustler, or even Yum. Ok fine, there IS an audience for everything, but three guys living in a trailer sandwiched between a prison and a landfill drinking moonshine don't qualify as a demographic. The only reason Clips4Sale has those categories is because they don't have to produce content so it doesn't cost them anything to offer them. They're not a production site dishing out money for shoots and expecting to make a profit. Therefore, you aren't presenting any evidence beyond the anecdotal to justify marketing in a manner that is not beneficial to the model and only questionably beneficial to the studio.

~BB~

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1) We had a German client who for 2 years had us shooting 1 or 2 scenes a week of girls with the ugliest feet we could find (corns, bunyons, hammer toes) painting their toenails. And their checks came in like clockwork. Sometimes it was so hard to find girls with ugly enough feet we picked up women at the local homeless shelter as "foot doubles" and shot other girls for the beginning and cut to them for the foot shots.

2) www.2girls1cup.com. www.1guy1jar.com , www.kids-in-sandbox.com , www.oldslippers.com , www.crackwhoreconfessions.com , www.anorexicporn.net , www.chubbypokers.com I could go on and on

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Originally Posted by phobun

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Originally Posted by BellaBellucci

Therefore, you aren't presenting any evidence beyond the anecdotal to justify marketing in a manner that is not beneficial to the model and only questionably beneficial to the studio.

~BB~

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A studio in business a long time with a good track record probably knows what is beneficial to the studio.

You lean libertarian/free market, right? Wasn't it the legendary Adam Smith himself who wrote: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages."

I think the studio will naturally always operate with the studio's interest first, but that said, photographers like Buddy Wood sure appear to be gentlemen and first class in how they treat the girls.

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Excellent point. Except that you neglect to mention that there's too much politicking that goes on in our niche so sometimes the best thing for a studio to do is to make a short-term sacrifice in order to neutralize a long-term threat.

In my case, I tend to challenge the major players in this game in an effort to improve the situation for both myself and the younger models who dare not speak up. Is it really that far fetched to believe that there are some who wish that I would just shut up and go away and who want to keep me and others like me from getting any more modeling work by marketing us improperly? It seems like a pretty simple solution to the problem of those who would question the authority of the supposed hierarchy.

Girls tell me all the time that porn and activism don't mix and I argue to the contrary because what they are saying is only true if one cares about their modeling career more than they do about making a difference. I don't.

~BB~

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Originally Posted by slinky

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Originally Posted by BellaBellucci

And you think OUR niche is small? I mean you're talking about amateur stuff on Clips4Sale, not Playboy, Hustler, or even Yum. Ok fine, there IS an audience for everything, but three guys living in a trailer sandwiched between a prison and a landfill drinking moonshine don't qualify as a demographic. The only reason Clips4Sale has those categories is because they don't have to produce content so it doesn't cost them anything to offer them. They're not a production site dishing out money for shoots and expecting to make a profit. Therefore, you aren't presenting any evidence beyond the anecdotal to justify marketing in a manner that is not beneficial to the model and only questionably beneficial to the studio.

~BB~

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1) We had a German client who for 2 years had us shooting 1 or 2 scenes a week of girls with the ugliest feet we could find (corns, bunyons, hammer toes) painting their toenails. And their checks came in like clockwork. Sometimes it was so hard to find girls with ugly enough feet we picked up women at the local homeless shelter as "foot doubles" and shot other girls for the beginning and cut to them for the foot shots.

2) 2girls1cup.com. 1guy1jar.com, www.kids-in-sandbox.com, http://whoresblog.com/dtr/galls/150817/ , crackwhoreconfessions.com I could go on and on

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One or two scenes a week? Well of course you were making money. You were limiting the content. What's more is that all of the fetishes you can list are part of the broader 'fetish niche.' So if a TS girl has ugly ears, that means she should be marketed under the fetish niche instead of the TS niche? That's certainly not what I signed up for. Sure, we all sign away our rights to our photos but that's because we presumably trust those who would control the content. We should be able to reasonably assume that our photos will be used in the most flattering way possible. I for one would not sign a model release if I thought for a second that that wouldn't be the case - and I didn't. Sure, it's all legal, but for many of us models, it's still a betrayal of our trust in the producer.

~BB~

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Originally Posted by slinky

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Originally Posted by phobun

I have to hand it to the Grooby people though. They have something for everyone including myself focused on a particular niche. Sometimes the girls can seem so far away or larger than life, but Grooby has a way of presenting them like the real people they are who could even be the girl next door. Too much airbrushing or shooting under obviously contrived circumstances can sure make a girl seem artificial or plastic.

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This is one of the pieces of advice I give to my clients about putting ads on Eros and the like but want to use glamor/art shots: there's one thing the guy knows when he sees them: whoever opens the door when he gets to the appointment, it's not going to be the girl in the photograph, because NO ONE LOOKS LIKE THOSE PHOTOGRAPHS. I had several discussions with girls this week about it because more and more photographers are so overly heavy handed in photoshopping the living shit out of stuff that you might as well just paint it instead. Because it would be equally realistic looking.

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I gotta co-sign this. I always get a kick out of girls who shop their pics to death but the truth in the escorting biz is that the most important thing to do is just to get guys to call and work the rest out later! lol

~BB~

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Originally Posted by BellaBellucci

So if a TS girl has ugly ears, that means she should be marketed under the fetish niche instead of the TS niche?

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ok.

www.oldtransexuals.com

Well if you don't mean Grooby, then why don't you point the finger at the site's you mean, Bella instead of being an "activist" against nothing.

I totally disagree that Shemale Yum goes on quantity and not quality, that's absolute rubbish. What we do go for, is a wider range of transgenders than most websites. Model's like yourself who don't fit into the typical "shemale pornstar" category are given an opportunity and I doubt many of the models that we feature, would have been given an opportunity by other companies until they'd seen how they'd photographed.

As far as the number of photos in a set goes, we roughly delete about 25% of them as they're unusable. We then retouch each image individually, generally trying to take out unwanted pimples, blemishes of other problems (mostly skin) including sometimes nipple scars. We don't usually touch other scars or do too much face work other than above. Other companies, use the same feature on photoshop to blanket the whole set, giving them the conformity that works for them and their members. It might be easier on the eye but it looks false and takes a lot away from people looking for the real models, in my opinion. Each approach has it's own place in the market.

As far as some companies working with makeup artists and hair stylist, then good for them, I'm happy that they can work that into their budget. We generally do this only on one site, http://www.shemalepornstar.com which has a higher budget per shoot. It wouldn't work on our other sites and frankly, I don't want to see over made-up/styled shoots either. If a transgender model can't at least get her makeup and/or hair right, then she's probably not worth working with. (yeah, yeah, I know, we've some models with bad makeup and hair, but they don't get reshoots).

I don't know who politics you are thinking about in this niche. I can tell you what Grooby politics are exactly.

a) To work with any models who can perform within our guidelines whom I think would fit the sites well. I get the photos of every model before we shoot.
b) To reshoot models who've had great feedback, either in our ratings, our comments or on our forums.

That's all. No other subterfuge. Sometimes we get models who are unhappy as we can't work with them as much as they'd wish but we go off what keeps our members happy and what will bring in new members.

As another poster mentioned, why on earth would a site want to promote photos that weren't complimentary to the model or her assets? I can't imagine one site doing this as it wouldn't make any business or economic sense whatsover. Often models have an self-awareness that is very different from how they actually present themselves. It's up to us to find the most marketable shots to get interested people, into the site.

seanchai