For the last few years we’ve been trying to make our website videos more dramatic, exciting and compelling. More like a proper movie you’d see at the cinema and less like home videos.

The problem is that the “proper” way to do this involves a large cast and crew. What the mainstream film world would consider a low budget may be our whole turnover for the year. So we can’t just adopt Hollywood or BBC practice everywhere, we have to be SMART.

I don’t for a moment pretend that we’ve got all the answers. We are way down the food chain and the learning curve from Hollywood. But I hoped other people would find it useful to hear some of the tips that have worked best for us so far. I’ll be fleshing out some of these ideas in future posts, and posting video clips to illustrate what I mean, too.

We’d love to know your experiences and what tips have worked well for you… and if you try some of our ideas, do let us know how you get on!

1) Story

Hot fetish scenes in mainstream movies are often over in a flash. Think Princess Leia in the slave-girl costume or bondage scenes in horror films. The scenes are often portrayed in a very negative light, too.

If you have the fetish, you want the movie to dwell a lot longer on those scenes. An eternally extended catching of the breath to concentrate on the bondage, the whipping, the bare feet, the domme, the satin blouse, the rubber catsuit. Sometimes the characters are vanilla, but sometimes we want to show people enjoying it as well.

The danger of the website videos we mostly produce is that we go too far away from storytelling to capture enough of the fetish action to satisfy.

Our top tip for films that are for viewing by a more general audience is to put the story back in pride of place. Our experience of viewing films with people who don’t entirely share the fetish is that a good story will carry them along and let them enjoy it almost as much as if it was their kink.

2) Characters

The most important component of storytelling is who, not what. We should care about the people on screen, at least enough to be curious to see what will happen to them.

So it is important to spend a few seconds establishing the personalities on the characters on screen, and know how we want the audience to feel about them.

3) Visual Storytelling

The most natural way to do that is through dialogue. But having each character announce their personality profile like they are on a dating site is very clunky. Similarly, there’s no need to broadcast the whole plot of the film in long swathes of improvised dialogue. A little goes a long way.

It is better to do the storytelling visually. A picture is worth a thousand words, and all that.

Suppose our leading lady is a lovable scatter-brain, nervously on her way to meet her boss. We could start with them meeting in the office and having a few minutes of talking. But we can establish their characters much more elegantly with a few shots:

• Employee dropping her keys on the floor, says “Oh fiddly fidge!”
• Boss taps fingers on desk. Clock behind says 9:31 am
• Employee frantically checks phone as she rushes along. 9:35 am. Snoozed alarm goes off on phone screen “meeting with boss”.
• Employee gets out of car, clothes dishevelled. Adjusts them using windscreen as makeshift mirror. Rushes off.
• Door opens. Employee enters. Boss says “Ten minutes late, Miss Anderssen…”

Total running time probably 20 seconds, to tell us lots about the two characters very elegantly.

Sadly, it will take more than 20 seconds to shoot but the filmic effect is well worth it.

4) Sound

Nothing screams cheap video like bad sound.

Get the best microphone you can and put it as close to the mouth of the person speaking as you can.

There’s a lot more to it, but clean audio of dialogue and the action is the main thing.

5) Lighting

Porn, it turns out, is brightly lit. Some movies and TV shows are too (comedies, especially). So it is OK to get some lights and point them at the scene, then shoot. But we want the lighting to tell the story and serve the characters, and we want drama. We don’t want the tacky associations.

If you want it to look dramatic, you need to shape the light. The best starting point is three point lighting.

The hardest, brightest light source is the key light- that should be the main source of shadows. Try putting it up-stage of the actor for drama, and throw the shadows off-camera rather than against the back wall.

You’ll need a second, softer light to fill in the harsh shadows. That’s the fill light, usually on the opposite side of the camera from the key light.

The third is the backlight, rim light or hairlight, shone from above and behind the actor to separate them from the background and get them to “pop”. Also makes girls look very glamorous.

6) Single Camera. Shorter Takes.

When you are trying new stuff it is hard to get it right on multiple cameras. A lot of us use multiple cameras and shot in long rolling takes, cutting between angles like a live TV broadcast.

For making something more cinematic, shoot in shorter takes.

Make each shot tell you something new, reveal some new information.

Use just one camera – it focusses the mind and saves you thinking “oh the other guy will have got it”.

Look at mainstream films and count every time the shot cuts. Compare with the pace of cuts in a typical website video. Notice that pretty much every shot is there for a reason.

Movies are life with all the dull bits cut out. Fetish videos can be too- make sure enough happens through the scene to be showing new information regularly. Maybe not at the pace of a mainstream film (that’s why mainstream films only have very brief fetish scenes in them) but pick it up a bit and don’t go back to shots which are “dead” too often.

Yes, mainstream films and TV are increasingly using multiple cameras. We find it easier to figure out with just one first, then thinking about adding the second camera back in.

7) Production Design and Framing

I’ve seen films shot in beautiful houses where the characters are shot sat right in front of a plain white wall, throwing really ugly shadows everywhere. You wouldn’t know for a moment it was in a gorgeous location.

Try to show more of the world.

Shoot into corners and across rooms, not against flat walls.

Get your actors away from the walls, put them in the middle of the room. Also makes it easier to get hairlights in.

Shoot through things (open doors are good) to create a feeling of space. Have the characters move around.

Dress the edges of shots with little details that show there’s a wider world out there. For stills, you usually try to remove distractions at the edge of frames. For movies, cultivate that. Anything which helps lend an impression of depth is to be encouraged.

8) The Rodriguez List

Robert Rodriguez made his early films on micro budgets by writing his stories around a list of cool stuff he could get hold of. If you have a guitar case and a fast car, make a film about a guy who drives a fast car and carries a guitar case.

9) Open Framings and Camera movements

An open framing is a shot which only shows part of the scene (leaving “open” what else might be there).

A closed framing shows you everything about the scene- for example, a traditional master wide shot that shows everything.

Open framings build drama by asking questions. There’s a report on the table, a hand reaches in. Whose hand? It is dark, are we in an office?

If you gradually reveal the answers to these questions as the arise in the viewer’s mind, you can build drama and tension.

Showing the whole scene in a master wide kills the tension- there’s nothing more to show.

Try to build sequences of shots as questions-and-answers-and-more-questions.

Once you’ve started doing this, you’ll find you naturally want to move the camera. Start with pan and tilt, and soon you’ll be craving dolly shots and crane shots and steadicam! 🙂 (One day, if we get rich enough… but a simple dolly is inside almost everyone’s reach and is very effective if you plan your shots).

10) The camera, if you must

Given how much of a camera nerd I am, you’re probably surprised that this wasn’t number 1. That’s because it isn’t anything like as important as the first nine on my list.

Ariel shot a captivating documentary on her iPhone.

There’s plenty one can do to help create the film look (progressive scan, 24/25 fps. control your depth of field, shutter speed 1/48th or 1/50th, reduce sharpening, shoot flat with reduced contrast, grade with a film-like curve).

But it won’t do you any good if you don’t have a good story, good sound, good characters, nice lighting, good production design and good cinematography.

So only improve things on your camera as you work on the rest of your production too. They’re only one part of the equation.