What Ho, Producer Head On

Good heavens, I am indeed alive.  I actually have proof of this, having done a million things in the past 3 weeks. I think I’ll tell you about some of them now 🙂

First of all, oh my goodness, I scripted and directed a bastinado movie.  Bastinado is something I have an uneasy, love/hate type relationship with.  I love the BDM .  He loves bastinado.  I, therefore, have experienced lots of it, with various implements.  Foot caning works beautifully for me, hooray, but I absolutely hate, hate, hate anything with leather straps involved. The BDM loves leather strap bastinado beyond all other things as a result.  BDSM’s awfully complicated, isn’t it?

So writing and directing my own bastinado movie seemed like a good opportunity for me to explore my feelings for and tolerance of bastinado.  With me as the lead actress, it was inevitable that I’d have to.  (I know this is horrifically Kevin Costner-esque but I don’t know any other models who’re keen to try foot torture). I hoped that, by writing a story that appealed to me, I’d give myself the best possible chance of making it through the painful scenes.

So that’s what I did.  I’ve been exploring the ‘visiting professional disciplinarian’ idea in fantasy and play over the last couple of years and it appeals to me massively; I love the idea of an incredibly detached, disinterested professional being in charge of administering carefully calculated punishments, so that’s the role I wrote for the BDM (I think it suits his scientific nature, so I had a good excuse for it).  His character appealed to me enough to help me through the most painful bits of the movie.

I’m not clever enough to be able to capture the peculiarly cumulative, inescapable fire-y pain of bastinado in words alone, but in my experience it can be far, far more all-encompassingly painful than any kind of spanking I’ve ever experienced.  If the potential success of a BDSM movie could be measured in the tears of pain shed during the shoot process, then we might have a blockbuster on our hands.

Here is a teaser trailer;-

(For a lovely big version, go directly here)

We shot a final scene today, and I’ll be editing the whole thing myself over the next few weeks.  I’ve been editing videos for Restrained Elegance for the last 6 months, but a feature-length movie will be a fab new challenge.  It’s particularly exciting because the BDM has upgraded all his equipment, so the whole project was shot on a super new camera called a RED which frankly I don’t understand awfully well.  Except that;

a) its really easy to use, so I can operate it and get the shots I had in my head without feeling all sweaty and asthmatic.

b) it makes everything look absolutely beautiful, even suburbia in the rain.

c) it has a touch screen so you can pretend it’s a phone.

Lordy, that was a lot of talk about only one of the things I was planning to talk about.  So I’ll finish (I’m baking our wedding cake at the same time as blogging, and I don’t want to burn it) by talking about last week, when Restrained Elegance kindly took me on a week-long location trip to a lovely (except for the strangely ill-equipped kitchen) old house in the English West Country.  And here are some frame grabs from the movie we started making there.

 The girls.  From left to right – Hannah, Sophia, Scarlot, and meeeeeeeeee.

 Scarlot is failing her slave-position test, and it’s my job to tell Mistress Kate…

Here I am, considering whether I can face cleaning a customer’s shoes without the use of my hands.

It’s  all about slave training; I’m the ‘resident slave’ who belongs to the auction house, and it’s my job to get the new girls ready for the sale.  We were joined by the luminous Sophia Smith, delicious Hannah Claydon, patrician Anita de Bauch, and ingenuous Scarlot Rose, who got the lead role of the uncertain newcomer into the hedonistic auction-house world… Hooray, Temptress Kate appeared too, as the icy-cool head slave-trainer!

It was a splendid week (punctuated by trying to prepare food with knives that’d probably be blunt enough to be sold at the Early Learning Centre ) and I’ve got high hopes that the videos we shot will be as fun to watch as they were to make.

Thanks as always for reading, and I’ll update again within the next few weeks with news of various extra-fun projects I’m working on.

All the best,

A/a

PS Re-reading this post, I discover that I’ve forgotten how to write anything that makes sense.  And how did I end up writing such lonnnnnnnnnng sentences? I need some sort of strict tutor to help me with my grammar.  Mmmmmmmmmm.

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Not Dead, Just Busy

‘Ariel’ from The Tempest. Courtesy of William Shakespeare, Dangerpics and Evie Wolfe

Hello everyone! I’m sorry that this’ll very likely be a horrible dull post, because I’m freakily busy and my head is a bit buzzy and confused. So I’m probably going to write nonsense. But I didn’t want to abandon my blog for too criminally long a period of time after everyone’s lovely kind comments about being engaged to the BDM. So I’m writing to tell you that I’m alive, still being tied up and spanked a great deal, and enjoying making wedding dress prototypes.

I think I’m going to write about something that concerns me quite often. As my profile as a fetish model has grown (which I’m not complaining about in itself, nope, I’m very happy, thank you) and I’ve become busier and busier as a result, I frequently feel as though I’m almost drowning in busy-ness. I know this isn’t unique to me, I think lots of people in the busiest period of their careers probably feel similar. But I do feel guilty that there are lots of things (both personal and work related) that I simply don’t have time to do. Here’s a list of the work-related ones (I’ll never stop loving lists).
1) Link exchanges. Oh God. I know these are probably important, but it’s too, too slow and boring…
2) Writing about recent shoots. Actually, I’d love to be able to write about pretty much every fetish shoot I have, since almost all of them are great experiences. And yet, I hardly ever have time, or by the time I do the shoot’s so far in the past that it feels a bit mental. And I’m scared of insulting all the producers I haven’t written about. So I’m abysmal at this.
3) Buying outfits. That really would be a lot of fun; searching eBay for fun clothes to wear at shoots is something I love doing, but I hardly ever have time. Fortunately for me, I’ve got a good wardrobe built up already and I do grab new clothes whenever I’m going through airports or have a few hours free between shoots, but I’d love to devote more time to it.
4) Writing scripts. I already do write scripts, most often for Restrained Elegance and for Firm Hand Spanking because both companies have a budget to pay for script-writing time. But when I started BDSM modelling, I used to contribute ideas and fantasies to many shoots during the pre-shoot process. I’d love to be more helpful, but increasingly I have to answer requests like that by saying ‘I’ll give you ideas on the day, honestly; but I don’t have time to write anything now’. Which is absolutely true, but I don’t feel great about it.
5) Doing interviews. I get asked for these a lot, and I’ve got nowhere near enough time to fulfill every request. I tend to choose to do them for people I have an existing relationship with, or people who’ve put the most effort into the questions they want me to answer. But ideally, I’d do every interview I was offered; it’d feel more polite and it’s always nice to be asked.
6) Probably most importantly; socialising with the lovely people I’ve met through working in this industry. I count some of them amongst my closest friends, but it’s rare to see them unless we’re doing something work related. And it makes me feel very sad sometimes, that meeting the super, kinky people I now know as a result of my job is one of the best things that’s come from being a BDSM model; but it seems to have come at the cost of not actually having time to see any of them regularly.
7) Oh GOD; emails. I feel like I’m drowning in them. And somehow Twitter, Facebook et al seem to have turned into extra inboxes for me. I dream about them.
At home, it’s also tricky; the BDM is super, and I’m so happy to be marrying him. I just wish I saw more of him, and I wish that I could promise him I’ll be home a lot more once we’re married. I’m certainly trying; I’m cutting back on long trips abroad and I’m taking a day every couple of weeks to do admin so I don’t have to catch up with it on on days off cos that feels rude and intolerable. Gosh, but wouldn’t it be lovely to be an aristocrat or something? I feel as though I could fill a whole lifetime doing nice things with the BDM without getting anywhere near bored enough to need another form of entertainment. I’m sure lots of people would feel the same; when did we all start working so bloody hard, I wonder?
At present, these seem to be the things I do most;-
1) Answer emails. And many of them are to lovely people, discussing tremendously fun projects, but golly, it’s hard work staying anywhere near up-to-date if you also want to get enough sleep.
2) Pack suitcases. Every job requires different clothing, and hours a week of my time are spent unpacking, laundering and packing again. I’m wondering about instituting a personal policy of permanent nudity, and not bringing any clothes to any of my shoots at all.
3) Drive. Actually, I love driving, which is a blessing. And audiobooks save my sanity. But it turns 8 hour shoot days into 14 hour marathons, quite often.
4) Book hotels. Like, every day. LOL, I’m sick of it, do any fetish models have managers, I wonder?
Ohhhhh Lordy, I sound like such a victim. I do apologise; bleating about relative success is a ridiculous thing to do and I do love my job. But finding the energy to do all the things associated with shooting is hard at the moment. And as a result, a lot of my fantasies are pet girl related. Very little responsibility sounds like just the thing.
Happy Easter everyone, am hoping that you’re a bit less stressy than me at present. I’m wondering about how to simplify my life a bit in order to achieve a clearer head 🙂

Grownupness in 2012

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for your continued support of my blog. Throughout my life I’ve failed utterly at keeping a diary, and its only because people like you kindly visit and comment that I manage to stay interested in writing. Thank you for visiting!
In case this is your first visit, here is a very quick history of me, so you won’t have to bore your way though previous postings.
I’m an English girl who trained originally as a ballet dancer, got a) too tall and b) a bit too injury-prone to continue and so trained in classical acting instead, at a drama school in London.
I’d had fantasies about being tied up, ill-treated and (still sort of hard to admit) spanked all my life, and didn’t think anyone with similar interests existed. Then a poor Conservative MP in England was found dead in circumstances that suggested he’d been playing BDSM games which had gone wrong, and the teenage me thought ‘Oh, bloody hell, there were maybe two of us, but now one of us is dead’.
So I went into good old denial, joined The Campaign Against Pornography and decided not to date anyone.
After drama school, I started working as an actress and was approached after a theatre show by a photographer who suggested I tried modelling. So I did, and loved it so much that I ended up doing far more modelling than acting.
Then I discovered that there was BDSM on the internet, and started being offered bondage photography bookings. I was very happy, realised I wasn’t alone after all, and started having a splendid fun time.
One of the photographers I worked for was Hywel Phillips who ran a beautiful bondage site. Very gradually we became friends, and much later, we fell in love, moved in together and started running the site together too.
This Christmas was our third together in our house, and it was very lovely and peaceful. We opened our presents together, and my last one was from Hywel, a DVD of The Princess Bride which I’ve loved with a great passion for years and years, partly because I hoped someone would love me properly one day and marry me too (although I also kind of wanted to be held prisoner in a castle, in all honesty). I was very happy that Hywel had remembered how much I liked it, and thought Christmas was generally being a great success.
Then Hywel proposed to me.
And I cried all over him, thought I’d maybe misunderstood, cried more and then remembered I was supposed to say something.
So I said ‘yes’ and we’re going to get married later this year.
And I really am thoroughly happy and grateful that something so lovely could happen. I wish I could go back in time to my worried teenage self and show her this blog post, with the picture below, which Hywel took to celebrate our engagement (he didn’t want to be in it, even though I really, really tried). I’d love to explain to teenage-me that there ARE sane people who like playing at BDSM with the people they love, and that you don’t have to make a choice between liking BDSM and having conventional romance in your life too. I’d like her to know that being submissive doesn’t mean that you can’t choose to be with people who’ll respect you. And while I’m time-travelling, I’d like to visit the teenage Hywel and reassure him that he’ll one day find a girl who thinks bastinado sounds like a good idea.

I know there no magic, happy ever-afters, and I don’t expect 2012 to suddenly turn into a year of magical unalloyed joy, but I’m very happy to think that I’ll end this year married to a kind, clever, generous man who happens to be a dominant sadist (they seem to actually exist, teenage-me) and I hope there can be lots of romantic happiness for lots of other lovely people this year, kinky or not. If you’re reading, I hope one of them will be you 🙂