Bastinado – finished principal photography! Trailer Up!

Hi All

We recently finished the principal photography on our next movie, Bastinado!

I’ve just put together a first teaser trailer: check it out here: (right-click, save as to download it):

http://www.elegancestudios.com/page23/page24/movies-5/files/page25-movie-0.mp4

This was the first outing for our digital cine camera (a RED, as used on Hollywood blockbusters like The Hobbit, Prometheus and Contagion). It was very exciting to discover how easy it was to use- actually easier than the HD video cameras we’ve been using for the last couple of years.

And wow- how good does the footage look? It is awesome even down-converted to full HD for the web- you should see how the original 4K footage looks! I wish everyone had a cinema grade digital projector in their house so we could distribute that way… ah well, maybe in the future we will, and we can re-issue all our films for theatrical presentation 🙂

It was a very intense and sexy shoot, with Ariel having written and scheduled so many bastinado punishments to be inflicted on her in the course of 36 hours that we weren’t sure if she would be able to take it. Hywel somehow bore up under the strain of inflicting them all… and Ariel took her punishment like her character in the movie- with great fortitude despite the intensity!

We still have a few set-up exterior shots to grab. It was lashing with rain and blowing a gale on the morning we were due to shoot them, and the rain hasn’t really let up since. When we get a day with Ariel around we’ll grab those shots, then we’ll be ready to really get stuck in to the editing.

With a long film like this (we shot over 5 hours of footage) the editing will take quite a while to put together, but we’re planning on releasing the film in the summer. Until then, enjoy the trailer! And we’ll get a stills gallery up soon too.

Predicament Bondage and Bastinado, oh my!

Hi All,

After the grand rush to get Slave Auction and Haunted edited and released last year, I know it all seemed to go quiet around here.

Actually we’re in the pre-production phase for our next crop of movies, and for the first few months of any project that largely involves the scriptwriter and director throwing a bunch of ideas around and thinking about the film in the bath, etc..

Possibilities for later this year include a sequel to Slave Auction (probably slated for Autumn shooting- Merlin has written a story draft and Hywel has some ideas to follow up on too). Hywel’s also working on an outline for film about a sexy, manipulative white collar criminal businesswoman who tries to get away with a fortune, but gets caught in the act and blackmailed into submitting to a weekend of depraved BDSM sex or she’ll be heading for prison. And there’s a long-standing idea floating around for “a day in the life of a Restrained Elegance master”.

Before that though we have two very exciting films in a more fully-fledged state of development- an idea based around predicament bondage, being written and directed by Steve, and a film concentrating on bastinado and foot fetish bondage being led by Ariel. We’re hoping to shoot these just after Easter, so we’re pushing forward on the pre-production of these now.

Steve and Ariel are putting together their outlines now, and we want to invite you to throw in some ideas for cool scenes, cool shots, or sexy stuff you’d like to see included. Once they have a brief outline, I’ll post again to announce an open production meeting via chatroom so hopefully everyone can throw ideas into the mix. This worked really well with Slave Auction, so we’d love to have your thoughts and input!

Watch this space- announcement of the chatroom session dates shortly!

Cheers, Hywel.

Slave Auction is done!!

Wheeee! It took an extra three long days at the computer and a couple of burnt DVDs to check out how it looked on TV to fine tune the rough cut, but I can finally declare Slave Auction to be done! There’s one or two things could still do with polishing, but without shooting more footage, I think I’m happy with how it has come out.

Hooray! Just in time for a much deserved holiday, too. My poor Mac won’t be getting a break though, it is hard at work number crunching to export the video and encode the MP4 and DVD versions. Should finish overnight, ready to upload tomorrow.

Here’s a few extra frame grabs to whet your appetite…