Category Archives: EleganceStudios.com

Models for Custom Shoots

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Thought I’d let you know of a few models we have working with us soon in case anyone wanted a custom video or photoset shot with them while they are here.

We are due to work with:

Helen Stephens

Helen Stephens

Helen Stephens

Chloe Toy

Chloe Toy

Chloe Toy

Sapphire Blue

Sapphire Blue

Sapphire Blue

 

We’re planning shoots with Sammie B, Hannah Claydon, Tillie, Janey, Penny Lee, Natalia Forrest and Sophia Smith soon too. And of course the Restrained Elegance resident slavegirl Ariel Anderssen is always keen to shoot your ideas any time!

(We’re also working with lots of new models but I don’t think it is fair to launch them into a custom shoot for their first time working with us!)

So if you are interested in having us bring your fantasies to life with one of these lovely ladies, please drop me a line on webmaster@restrainedelegance.com.

The first British Fetish Film Festival

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The film festival went very well. About 25 people attended. First of all we heard about the draconian new regulations affecting internet producers in the UK, courtesy of Pandora Blake. All was not dismal, we have the beginnings of a plan for how to take them on.

Then we had a workshop session on making a fetish film. I set a challenge- to make a short film, in one-camera, indie film shoot style, in under two hours. Thanks to the skills of Ariel Anderssen and Zoe Page, and great collegiate suggestions and camera-work from the people attending, we made it. Our intern Pippa even quickly cut it together for us during the tea and cake break so we could even show it at the festival screening that afternoon.

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I’ll put the film up on Restrained Elegance once we’ve fine tuned the edit.

Then we settled down to watch the films which people had kindly submitted. There were some very funny ones, and some very intense ones, and some very sexy ones- and all was very positive and fun. If we have one regret it is that most of the films were mostly female submissive. Primarily because the circle of producers we contacted for this first film festival are the ones who work with my wife, who is a female submissive!

Our main goal for the year was to run something at a public venue, which we’ve now done.

Our main goal for next year, assuming we’re brave enough to run it again, is to broaden the scope and make sure we make contact with other sections of the fetish community, so we can show a wider variety of fetishes and orientations next year.

Cheers, Hywel Phillips

Letter to a fellow producer

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A fellow producer emailed me today about the new regulations. This is what I said in reply. I need to blog about yesterday’s porn protest and other recent developments but I thought I’d put up this letter in the meantime.

Hi,

The situation is pretty dire, yes. We know several producers who have decided to emigrate. We’ve decided to stand and fight. There are a few things you can do in the short term to help. Sign the online petition here:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/72693
(your name doesn’t appear on the website once you’ve signed).

And write to your MP- Julian Huppert MP tabled a motion to get the laws repealed. It won’t happen (for now), but at least some of our elected representatives are against this massive extensive of censorship to the internet.

Follow Myles Jackman, @ObscenityLaywer on twitter, and look at his blog here:
http://obscenitylawyer.blogspot.co.uk
He is a lawyer specialising in defending sexual freedom cases and his blog is a mine of good information.

Follow and contribute to Backlash, who are organising the campaign against this and who operate a legal fund- contributing to them now fills the fund so whoever of us gets picked on as the test case has the chance of expert legal representation.
http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk

Also follow Pandora Blake, @pandorablake on twitter, and her blog here:
http://pandorablake.com/blog/
She is a UK spanking and bondage model and producer who has also decided to fight the new regulations and her blog is a good central information point.

In terms of what we can do, first… don’t panic. Unless you have been contacted by the regulator already, they’ll have to find you first. As far as we are concerned we are not operating a TV-like video on demand service- in our opinion 5 minutes of video a week is hardly comparable with the output of the BBC or Netflix. This was successfully used as grounds for an appeal by a small fem-dom website recently:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/web-dominatrix-wins-david-and-goliath-battle-with-regulators-9672463.html

One can take some steps to make it less likely that they will pick on you. Hosting outside the UK and changing any overtly UK-centric text on the website, and domain name settings. Moving operations to a non-UK based company is a further step- our site always has been operated by a US company, for example. The regulator may still rule that we have editorial control in the UK, it is in their interest to say everyone does so that they can charge a fat regulation fee each year. Other EU countries have clearly not interpreted the requirements of EU directives in such a punitive, wide-ranging and censorious way. But no-one really knows.

If they do come calling, we have a few fall-back plans, the main one of which is to split the video and stills content of the sites and make the video one inaccessible from the UK by a combination of GeoIP address lookups and the simple expedient of refusing payment from UK credit cards. That’s not an attractive option but it is better than closing down entirely, which some sites have been forced to do.

You could move operations out of the UK entirely- we believe that if you are resident in another country (51% of the time at least), and the website is hosted outside the UK, you should be without the scope of their regulation and can carry on business regardless. We have decided not to do this, but others have already taken this option as I said.

On the plus side, the mainstream media response to these regulations has been entirely negative, with many people expressing disbelief that we’re censoring so heavily in the 21st Century. Public comments are almost entirely negative too whether at the Daily Mail online, The Telegraph, The Independent or whatever. If we stand up for ourselves and point out the absurdities in the regulations being imposed by unelected bureaucrats talking to other unelected bureaucrats with no form of public input, public consultation, or procedures for review… we might just get these laws changed and be allowed to go about what has been our legal business for the last 14 or so years.

Save BDSM in the UK

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Hi Everyone

SIGN PETITION: SAVE BDSM IN THE UK

As you may have heard, most forms of BDSM have just been banned from UK websites, despite the fact that it is legal to peform, legal to film, legal to own and legal to buy from a website outside the UK. It’s just not legal for a UK-based producer to put on their website.

The regulations are ignorant of BDSM safe practice, ignore the consent of the performers, and also prohibit many other forms of sexual expression and enjoyment, especially those involving women actually taking pleasure in the activities. For more details, see these posts by lawyer Myles Jackman and feminist film maker and Restrained Elegance and Silk Soles model Pandora Blake.

Please help us repeal this ridiculous censorship. Sign the official UK government petition here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/72693 and share with everyone you know. Enough signatures and the government is legally obliged to respond. (For UK residents only- sorry, only just found that out).

You can also complain about the new regulations to the censor directly (more details on that from Pandora Blake).

If we cannot get these regulations revised or revoked, fetish production in the UK will cease and your favourite UK models will no longer appear in bondage and spanking films for your pleasure. RE model Nikki has already had to close several of her websites. Virtually all of Pandora’s scenes have suddenly and unjustifiably become illegal. Northern Spanking, AAA Spanking, Spanking Sarah and others have been forced to leave the country – and that is just in the last four days.

Killed it stone dead for me…

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Hi Everyone,

Does anything kill a website stone dead for as soon as you get through the door?

I started my own site because no-one was making exactly what I wanted to see. Lots of people were making interesting stuff, and lots of people still are. I still join websites that I like. I joined a couple recently, solo model foot fetish sites that looked fun. The photos on both sites looked nice.

One site had nicely arranged sets in ZIP files so I could download them. The other had some ghastly Flash-based gallery system. So not only no ZIP files, but I couldn’t even easily set a web spider to download galleries I liked.

That killed the second site stone dead for me. They’ve got years and years worth of content… but I’m never going to see it. Even though I’ve paid for it. It’s just too frigging painful obtaining the photos in a suitable form to view where and when I want to view them. They had an option to download the videos but I prefer stills.

I’ve explained before the dilemma that all adult websites face to balance the bandwidth bills with the membership fees. That’s why we have a rotating members’ archive rather than leaving every set from the last 13 plus years up all the time. It’s not an ideal solution, but it reminded me that there are worse ones!

This could be why that second site is set up that way: making it difficult to just grab everything or flick quickly through sets is one of the ways websites try to limit each members’ bandwidth usage. Or maybe it is some idea of “You want to see the pics? You need to stay a member FOREVER”, which I think is misguided. It’s a little incoherent with being able to download the videos. Maybe they think that people will use less bandwidth downloading videos once rather than repeatedly streaming it to watch it every time? Videos are big compared with stills. Maybe they are right, I don’t know their usage patterns or their business strategy.

What I hope that it is a misguided attempt to make the site user friendly by presenting photosets in nice galleries to click through shot by shot. Maybe I’m unusual in preferring to download the lot and do that on my local machine, flicking between shots with only the delay from a fast SSD rather than having to download the next picture each time by manual intervention. I spent too long at the computer already- when I’m signing up to something fun like a website, I want it to make it easy for me.

Whatever the reason, it killed that site stone dead for me, which is a shame because I was looking forward to seeing, saving and enjoying their work. Sad face.

The first site had a daily download limit, which was mildly annoying, but since the limit was quite generous I downloaded all the stuff I was interested in in a couple of days. I only joined for a month but if they keep producing fun new stuff I’ll very likely go back.

I’ll never go back to the other site. So they’ve potentially lost a fair amount of money, and I’ve not got value for money from my one-and-only membership of their site, either.

I have two questions for you.

1) Is there anything that kills a site stone dead for you? I mean flaws on legitimate sites, not rip-off sites which don’t provide what they advertise. (Those I’d ask for a refund/chargeback for- I haven’t needed to in YEARS).

2) Is there anything about any of our sites which kills it stone dead for you?

I’ve tried to make our sites support the way I like to use sites I join myself, but you may prefer to use them a different way. If I’ve made it impossible for you to do so, I’d really like to know about it. So if you could post a reply here it would be much appreciated!

Cheers, Hywel