For the last week I’ve been on creative retreat, taking time out from the day-to-day running of the websites. It sounds pompous but it is hard to concentrate on writing whilst editing films, processing photos and answering emails. Some dedicated time was in order.
I want to figure out how to make our films better. For the bondage and fetish work specifically, I want to make the films more intense, more compelling, better stories (and hotter, too).
I also want to make some movies with fetish elements that will appeal to a wider audience.
Firstly, to send to the British Fetish Film Festival. It was clear from the producers’ screening that the stronger the story progression, the more compelling the film.
Secondly, I’d like to make a film showing BDSM as we think it is: positive and fun, one part of a fulfilling sex life if it happens to be your kink, not something to be scared of. The portrayal in mainstream media is lamentable- even laudable ones like Secretary have to have a self-harming, slightly broken sub and a dom with so many personal issues he can hardly function.
I’d like to make films with stronger story lines for Elegance Studios and sometimes RE and SS, too.
(Only sometimes. Not every film needs a big old wodge of story. There’s nothing wrong with short, sharp, sexy BDSM videos with lots of hot action and we’ll still be making plenty of those, and improving the quality and the impact of those too.)
I think the element that’s most lacking in our longer storytelling efforts to date has been the ending. We do OK at beginnings- we’re quite practiced at sketching characters and situations quickly without a ton of exposition. We do good middle sections- that’s where all the sexy stuff and the fun stuff happens. We just usually tail off with a fade to black or a “girl gets too tired to struggle” instead of a proper ending.
The obvious ending for bondage is either the tied up person gets untied (which is not very hot to see) or the characters have sex (which would turn into hardcore porn, which we don’t want to make). So we need to figure out how to make impactful endings which bring the film to an emotional, satisfying conclusion without seeming lame or a let down.
The tool I most need to do that is a script, a proper screenplay.
We’ve been getting closer and closer to that with the shoot plans for our longer and more complex films anyway, but so far we’ve stopped short. We’ve worked from shot lists, shot lists plus a few storyboards, and written essays which are plans for screenplays but with the dialogue to be improvised on set. And again, that’s a great way to work for some things.
I’ve concluded already this week that I can’t write comedy screenplays, but comedy comes about naturally with improvisation. So my bondage comedy ideas are going to be done in the “story plus improv” mode.
What I’m really settling down to do now is to flesh out some ideas into proper, fully-scripted format so we can shoot them that way. I think the advantage will be that with tighter control, you can plot more tightly. And you need the end written, so you have to think about it before you start shooting. That lets you feed the set-up more tightly so that the beginning leads inexorably towards the emotionally satisfying ending.
I set myself several challenges.
Stage one was to come up with ten log lines. A log line is a one or two sentence summary of what the film is about, to try to explain why it is a good idea and why I would want to make it (and hopefully why you will want to watch it!) I decided to tweet mine, so they have a 140 character limit, which is STRICT.
Tick: here are the ones I came up with
- Too old & too tall, lifestyle BDSMer Audrey must defeat the horrid fashion models to be crowned million-pound face of metal bondage fashion
- Wylie Coyoye Bondage. Incompetent kidnapper keeps trying to grab her victim with bondage traps but keeps trapping herself in bondage instead
- Autocratic ruler tries to be good man. Only indulgence- sadistic fantasies with captive slavegirls. Until he meets true love among slaves…
- Good time girl provides service: perfect embodiment of any fantasy. Kidnapped by mob pimps, she must escape; her only client is her husband!
- Some day my prince will come. But when he does, he’s an arse- I think I’ll stay with kinky evil captor.
- Journalist mistakenly invited to BDSM scene. She goes, intending exposé, finds own fulfillment. Now she must battle tabloid exposé herself
- Nymphomaniac Zombies. Contagion turns young women into sex fiends. Capture and bondage the only option until a cure is found!
- Dating Epic Fail. Ditzy girl installs Bad Idea Bear app to make all date decisions for her. Ensuing adventures lead her to sub identity BDSM
- Ditzy blonde intern must run business when boss breaks his leg. Only trouble: business is running bondage website!
- Service orientated sub girl must learn the difference between affection and abuse to escape the prison of “I don’t deserve anything better”
Some of these feel like short films for RE, some longer ones for ES, some mainstream-ish, some not, one or two may even be worth considering at feature length.
The intern one I had a go at, and discovered I couldn’t script funny dialogue, didn’t know where to start. But I can see that as soon as I get the right people on set, comedy will ensue. So that one has become a “standard” shoot plan.
The fashion world one I’ve turned into a short script. Two drafts so far. It’ll need tuning, but I quite like it. It feels satisfying.
The Good Time Girl one had the strongest number of hot mental images associated with it, so despite the fact that no-one on twitter liked it, and that I thought the logline was poor, I’ve written a short script for that one too. It’ll need revisions.
I’ve made quite a few notes on several of the others.
Which ones sound most interesting to you?
Honestly, I really like the Wile E. Coyote idea! Didn’t you guys already do something akin to the journalist storyline?
We’ve done a few journalist ones, but I’m thinking of this one as quite serious and real-world, possibly even a mainstream feature that just happens to have bondage in it (with the bondage and BDSM community being portrayed in a positive light for once). Working on this one at the moment- might be a long term project to write and bring it to the screen. But I’m keen to try a film which does have a more positive portrayal of BDSM as something fun, and the people who enjoy it as nice, normal and well-adjusted.
I also like the Wile. E. Coyote idea. Might be a little tough to devise the bondage traps, though. Nymphomaniac zombies also seems pretty good. I see potential for lots and lots of women being roped and tied here (and gagged, because they spread the contagion by bites, of course). And, with arms tied behind their backs, shambling mindlessly around in search of victims to try to bite (even through their gags). As for endings, well… could be as simple as an old reversed roles-ploy, where a female antagonist has been hired to break into the house of an attractive woman, in search of some documents she’s in possession of (This is not right of course, the victim doesn’t really know anything about those documents. Could be that the burglar has gotten the wrong address). Anyways, the burglar ties and gags the victim securely, preferably nude (grabs her getting ready for a shower?) and uses various methods of torture (nothing really serious, more like tickle tortures or spankings and such) to make her reveal the whereabouts of the documents (which she can’t of course, not knowing anything about them). As the burglar takes a break, our victim makes her move. She finds a way to free herself, then attacks and disables the burglar. Our victim turns out to be a bondage enthusiast, and for some payback, she strips the burglar naked while unconscious, then proceeds to tie her up very securely AND handcuff her. She intends to call the authorities and turn the now helpless girl over to them, but the burglar insists that she finds herself very excited by the concept of bondage and being with another woman, and begs our heroine to let her stay on as a lover. They end up kissing with the roles reversed, and the ending promises more bondage in the lives of the two women, but of the consentual type. I guess that is a good way to end, I mean hinting that it’ll be a lot more bondage in the future… and that the participants are enthusiastic about this.
Or that the antagonist is really carted off to jail, but spends her time reminiscing about the episode, even fantasizing a bit about how it would feel to go a bit further and do a bit more than what actually happened… and when she is getting out, she’s surprised, but happy to find our heroine – who was earlier a bound and gagged victim – standing outside, waiting for her… leaning against her car and twirling a pair of handcuffs around her index finger. A sight that also holds a promise of more bondage. For whom? Let the viewers make up their own story in their minds.
Well, that’s MY two cents’ worth anyway. Hope it’s of any help.
J
Gor. Or Gor-light, at least. “Modern woman (as JN would have it) goes on date with handsome strong man, falls into drugged sleep and awakes to find herself chained, along with others, in a different world. The plot could centre on how she struggles to adapt while the other slaves try to teach her.
I think there’s a fine line to tread. The majority of viewers will tune in to watch ‘fetish films’ because it involves their fetish or the girl is hot or some combination of the two. The scenarios can change and the production values can vary but ultimately that’s what it comes down too.
When you start writing scripts and approaching something along the lines of a lengthy short or feature it becomes a different animal. Even well done, the fetish component becomes just another element of the story and its incredibly difficult to marry the two successfully.
That’s not to mention the added production challenges. The best models that are beautiful on screen aren’t necessarily the best actors in the world – but it would hard to find an accomplished actress to commit herself to a project with fetishistic overtones.
It’s certainly an interesting prospect and one I’ve thought a lot about for my own project for ‘The British Fetish Film Festival’
Hi Cole,
We’ve had a good response from our attempts to do this thus far- our http://www.elegancestudios.com films.
We’re blessed with some models who are good actors- being married to one helps 🙂 One of my main concerns about scripts has been getting people to learn lines and rehearsing them, though, and now we have a couple of scripts to work on it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out.
My approach the to fetish + story = diluted fetish is to make the fetish not just another element of the story, but central to the lives and the emotions of the characters. So having hot scenes, but scenes which have an emotional arc for the people in them and which change their relationships with each other. It is definitely true that this can become a distraction: there’s a balance to strike between emphasising the hotness and showing the story arc, and I don’t claim to be able to strike that balance perfectly.
That’s why we make a steady diet of “pure” fetish scene videos, with unobtrusive story lines for hotness. The storyline led films are an expansion in a different direction, experiments to see if we can get them to work.
I think if I can come up with a well-observed and well-written script where the fetish scenes have heart as well at hotness, the characters seem vivid and interesting, and the tone is right, I’m hopeful that I will be able to employ professional actors in some of the roles, too. And maybe more of my non-kinky friends will be able to watch, enjoy and maybe even understand if we make the film about sympathetic, interesting characters they want to know more about.
I know it is a tall order and there’s no way we’re going to hit the mark first time out. But if we can make experiments in that direction and not lose the hotness completely, learn our trade as film-makers as we go, it is something I think is worth shooting for.
Cheers, Hywel