Hi Everyone,

The results are in and while there were a few concerns expressed regarding censorship, 75% of respondents would prefer to see the horror-inspired sets in their entirety rather than have cut-down “RE/SS” friendly versions on the membership sites and the complete sets only on the eStore.

Since this is also significantly less work for me, that’s what we’ll be doing.

The sets will be clearly labelled.

As always with any new idea or feature or the site, I should reassure people that we’re not talking a radical change of direction here. We’re just broadening the site remit to include a wider range of subjects. Scarlett and Faye are huge horror fans, and Chloe wanted to give it a go for something different.

As one RE member put it “Horror and fantasy were the means through which I discovered my kink for barefoot damsels in distress.” It was the same for me, and it feels wonderful to have the chance to explore those original inspirations with enthusiastic models.

Thank you all again for your wonderful support, and I look forward to showing off what we shot over the coming months!

Hywel

Hello everybody! I am just back from an amazing week-long location shoot with Chloe Toy, Faye Taylor and Scarlett Foxett. We hired a cabin in the woods location to film some horror-inspired photosets. My idea for the shoot was that the photos should be like publicity photos from forgotten horror films that never were – the sort of lurid shots that were used on movie posters, box covers and magazine articles back in the day that would suggest the story of the horror film and make it look as sexy as possible.

Of course this wasn’t all we shot- we shot some regular RE sets as well. But the horror-inspired theme was the main
aim of the trip.

I’m absolutely thrilled by how well they came out. The best working pattern turned out to be lighting and photographic style decided by me and Faye in collaboration, Faye taking the photos with me as creative director, then me stepping onto set as the monster/shape/stalker/possessed person to menace the girls. That worked best when Faye figured out that we needed to use me like a prop for the models – so Scarlet and Chloe would tell the story, acting and posing themselves, then Faye would position me to enhance what they were doing and make sure I was in the right part of her shot. It was a really enjoyable collaboration, especially with models of that calibre so all we had to do was enhance the storytelling that they were doing and
make sure we tailored the lighting, props, costumes and the like to suit.

I have a dilemma now as to what to do with these sets. As with the Kitsune Battle set that’s just gone up, some of them have fake blood, prosthetics (thanks to Scarlett Foxett for all her hard work on those!) and they generally have a darker tone than regular RE sets. They are mostly of the 1970’s Hammer Horror film vibe rather than anything too realistic – not least because it’s HARD to do practical effects without dedicated crew. But it’s certainly a departure.

We decided the thing to do was to shoot an RE set within each storyline – so there’s a point in each story where one or both of the girls get tied up, but before anything bad happens to them. We shot at least 100 shots of the pure bondage part like that, so that if everyone hates the horror film aspects we still have a saleable RE set from each storyline. Similarly we have shot a few sets with the horror theme that might sit well on SilkSoles.com too.

I’ve decided as with some of the other RE side projects like Elegance Studios or the D&D film that I should spin off discussion and promotion into a little mini-site: BrideOfDarkness.com. All the sets we shot will be available in full from the usual RE/SilkSoles/ElegeanceStudios eStore in a new category, I will just be linking to them from BrideOfDarkness.com so they’re all accessible in one place for Horror fans to find.

But BrideOfDarkness.com is NOT going to be a membership site, just a store window for the eStore individual photosets. If you want to see these sets as part of a membership, they are going have to go up on RE/SS. I will be putting up the “cut down” versions of the sets for sure, maybe with some setup shots for storytelling as well.

What I don’t know is whether I should put the sets up on RE or SilkSoles in JUST their cut-down form, the 100-ish bondage/foot fetish shots (maybe with a few of the set-up storytelling shots as well). Or should I put up the whole set, horror aspects and all? We promise that the cut-down sets look very much in keeping with regular RE sets, albeit on the more stalker/darker end, but nothing that you’d not expect to see in a regular set.

So the question really is – if you’re NOT a fan of the horror elements, is it going to freak you out to have the whole set including those later shots in the storyline on RE? Or should we just put the cut-down RE friendly sets on the RE members’ area and leave the full set to BrideOfDarkness only? You can always download and throw away the parts of the set you don’t like – and that way is less work for me on several levels. (I won’t have to maintain partial sets on the eStore or keep explaining it). But I don’t want to freak out existing members!

What are your thoughts? You can comment on the blog post here to let me know:
http://elegancestudios.com/wordpress/?p=29377

Hywel