Angelique wearing a lot of rope!

I have a huge box full of mismatched pieces of rope that just gets bigger. In fact, I've thrown away entire garbage bags full of rope pieces on a number of occasions. I don't mean kitchen-sized but 50 gallon bags. Where do they come from? Well, shooting involves putting together a lot of rope and all rope is not all created equal. Crisp white rope gets stained, yellows over time and just plain gets all manner of gunk on it. I won't even talk about lipstick! Every time you use rope the fibers break down a little and the diameter gets just a little bit bigger. Regardless, you can put all the skeins together and they all look like they came from 100 different lots of rope.

I had another bunch of ropes ready for the garbage bin when it came time for my regular Friday shoot with Angelique. We decided on a 30s or 40s vintage wool outfit and wonderful shoes for her attire and that's when it hit me. I had seen so many images of the bondage from that time where the ropes were somewhat mismatched. I decided to go for that style but with oh so much more rope. The idea was that she is accosted and her captor just keeps using rope after rope after rope until her body is covered with it. If you asked me it worked. After long minutes Angelique is wearing several pounds of ropes over a wool outfit. She sweat, she strained and she got one hell of a workout. You can see it at http://www.clips4sale.com/studio/38048/4301943... it is aimed at fans of abduction scenarios, on-screen binding, rope, vintage outfits, high heels, ultra-strict restraint, ballgags and punishing bondage!

It's part one of two. The next segment has her in another hogtie ... naked, breast bound and wearing a, well you'll have to wait and see.

She wore red and I made her ass cheeks match!

I sat down a bit back and decided on some themes I'd wanted to be consistent in all of my work. Spanking was one of those things. Am I a huge fan of spanking? I'd say not particularly, but I do so love to make a girl squirm. Spanking certainly does the trick. That's when I began experimenting with crops, floggers and mild spanking.

It's an element that works for me on a couple levels. The obvious is that in a damsel in distress video you can guarantee a lot of distress! Equally as important you now have a way to extract compliance or information from a damsel. "I'll never tell you where the key is!" WHACK!!! "The key is in that drawer over there!" Finally, man-handling has always been on my list and having your hand on someones cheeks is a great way to get that element.

I will fully admit that I'm not the greatest spanker. I will also admit that a favorite girl of mine is not the best at setting limits for me. We warmed her up, and I told her I'd spank until she said it was too intense. We set the limit and then away we went for the video. I told her to take as much as she could but say enough when it was too much. And so ten minutes later she said enough. The next day she emailed me about the bruising, the trouble sitting and some canceled shoots. Now before you think I just beat people's asses raw I need to say this was a test between two people that trusted each other and wanted to see how far the spanking could be taken. She wanted to know her limits as much as I wanted to push them. However, I have pulled back the level of intensity I use slightly since this :)

If you want to see a very pretty gal getting groped, mauled and her ass reddened like you'll never see anywhere, check out Angelique in Spanked and Mauled.

She Drooled All Over Herself

One of the things I notice about some models is that they drool .. a lot. Almost every one of them apologize for drooling and say something like, "I can't help it, the gag makes me drool and I try to keep it in but it leaks out." I then says something like, "no, let it flow and the video will be awesome!" They look at me like I'm a weirdo, and I can't blame them; it's an odd request.

Angelique did that the first time we shot. She kept swallowing the drool. A little while back she asked what people liked in clips, and I mentioned big gags as one of those things. She made a comment about not being able to hold back the drool with big gags, and the little guy on my shoulder who twists his mustache while a damsel is on the railroad tracks whispered, "jackpot" into my ear. I whispered back, "no crap!" Angelique said, "who are you talking to?" We have a lot of conversations similar to that.

The other day she got all dolled up and looked unbelievable. She asked for the big, blue ballgag purposely, and the second the camera rolled she started drooling. In the video you can see it streaming out of her face, glistening on her bosom and strewn across her thighs. It was everywhere, and it looked sweet. That gag is going to make plenty of appearances from now on, and poor Angelique is going to be drooling ... a lot!

Oh, and if you care to see proof check out Angelique in She Drooled All Over Herself.

Tight Skirts and Ropes That Hurt

The last couple of days have been fun and exciting, and interlaced with some oddness as well. We've been hosting the charismatic Kerri Taylor while she's shooting in NC, and that means we got a big chunk of her time. I shot a boat load of maxed out bondage before anyone else got time with her. Sorry everyone for the rope marks! We got in a requested set of a bikini and belts, a storyline video where Kerri gets tied up for an insurance scam, a hogtie variation that I think was tough based on her continuing to say, "ow ow ow" and capped things off with a pile of rope, electrical tape, duct tape and a stocking hood position. That was day one of of her visit!

Yesterday we shot for Angelique's store where Kerri Canary rescues Wonder Kithos from a vicious chair tie only to end up subdued and in a cranked hogtie. When there are no visible gaps from wrists to elbows you have a tight position. Later two rival crime fighters tussle over who will capture a villain but the villain ends up getting the drop on them. The reveal scene is priceless as well as their bickering at the end!

Tomorrow Jack McNaughton stops by with his big box of super heroine goodies. I get to play the bad guy. Experience has taught me that Angelique will most likely draw blood because she gets me back for all the tight ties when I play the villain in Jack's videos. I'll still have a chance to grapple with both gals and tie 'em up tight so I can't complain.

Other than that it snowed, I got to use my new lights, my ankle is hosed again, I ran out of gas taking Kerri to the car rental place; oh yeah, I almost forgot. I tied Angelique and Kerri together in a very unique two-girl tie. Elbows welded, they both dealt with a tough one. I'll put up the video in tomorrow's update, but I'll give you a sneak peek tonight :)

Angelique Kitos, JJ Plush, Kerri Taylor, Savannah Costello ... Oh My!

I am in the middle of a satisfying week. Why is that Ted you may ask? Hell, even if you didn't ask we're going to invent a fake person named, um, Bob. Again I say that I am in the middle of a satisfying week. "Why is that Ted?" asked Bob. Why thank you for asking Bob, I'll let you know!

The very lovely Ms. Kithos was having a conversation with the very lovely Stacie Snow and suggested she come by to shoot with me. Before you know it we've settled on a weekend in February and are almost done hammering out the details. For those of you that do not know, Stacie and I share the same birthday and get along like peas in a pod. The shoots are always fun and she never fails to deliver on the type of content that I do. If that's not enough, Ms. Kithos also set up a shoot for me with Kerri Taylor. Kerri is incredible to work with, and we have this odd working dynamic. I can get her into just about any bind without issue or without her needing pain-killers for the next week. It always brings a smile to my face getting a model into a predicament that others cannot seem to convince her to do!

On the equipment front, I tested out my new lighting and love it. The easiest way to light is to use shop lights. They're cheap and pump out a lot of light which is great for video. They also pump out a lot of heat and roast the model like a turkey! The new lights are cool lights (no pun intended); they generate next to no heat. That means the models will last longer in the ties, I won't sweat like a pig and I'll be doing less color corrections in the post-processing. On top of that, I finally did some test video with my main camera. Yes, a couple years ago I bought the first SLR digital camera that also shot HDV 1080 video. Holy crap does it shoot great video! We'll be putting that baby on a tripod for extra angles and footage in the future. Ms. Taylor will be the first to be filmed with it.

On the health front, not many people know that I severely sprained my ankle and had a minor sprain with the other ankle. The short version is for a week I couldn't walk. I had to cancel two shoots that broke my heart. Well, I can walk again, have no more bruising and the swelling is down enough to allow full mobility which means I'll be doing on-screen rigging by Friday.

Last but by far not least, I just finished the most successful online month of my very short career. My sales hit an all-time high, my C4S store has quadruple-digit hits each day, my website is almost up to the amount of hits where I will start updating it bi-weekly, I finished my store-front revamps (that almost killed me) and I released my first DVD video.

Since I've blathered on a lot today, I'll make the rest short and sweet:

Best of the Breast: Big Titters in Bondage is available at http://www.videos4sale.com/38048 if you happen to be a fan of Angelique Kitos, JJ Plush, Kerri Taylor or Savannah Costello. It features lots of drooling, breast bondage, crotch rubbing, groping, welded elbows, on-screen tying and pure hotness! It was shot in 1080 HDV and the quality is stellar!

There are bees in my head!

My brain is buzzing today from working it at all levels. I'm in the middle of a complete re-mastering of my C4S store front, and the level of activity has been full throttle. I'm having to create new preview images, stay in email touch with tech support, update descriptions, re-master videos and create new sample images. Since re-masters can take anywhere from 5-30 minutes, I'm trying to stay busy while those churn by working on all the rest. This means that my brain is switching between lobes constantly, and I'm burning on about 8 things at once at any given time.

I needed a bit of a break to let the buzzing in my head calm down, so I'm updating my blog while I sip wine and have a couple of slices of cheese! I will say that Shannon at C4S is a God-send. She acknowledged a tweet I made within minutes and jumped on the problem I was having. The short version is that previews sell clips and they were broken for my store. She's hand-generated previews for me and cracked the whip at programmers for several days now and after 8 days of issues my store is acting like normal. Phew!

I always like to make whiskey sours when life throws me lemons, so the revamp continues and I'm loving what it's looking like: better formatting, clearer descriptions, less typos (so unprofessional) and FULL-RES previews. I'm not done though. There are still more images to generate, more previews to render and more full clips to re-render. The end result though is bigger clips at higher bit rates, better color and no more issues with people having codec issues with MPEG2.

My second favorite video clip I've put up just got remastered. It's Angelique in Hooded Hottie Groping Hell. The clip was put up while C4S had stricter guidelines on clips dimensions and file sizes. Those have changed and I've re-mastered in 720x540, 2000 Kbps and stunning color. Oh, and poor Angelique gets the lotus tie of her life and my hands all over her tenders. I love my job!

Finding the groove

Does anyone else constantly fiddle with things? I do. I think it's an integral part of the creative process. Sure, I need to brand myself but evolution of style is important as well. When I started publishing it was after a period of trying to decide what was the best resolution, post-processing effect, bitrate and such. It turns out I was wrong on just about everything lol. The viewer of the material always shows you what works best. Hey, the clip with that lighting sells the most and people prefer this format over that format.

Viewers like 720x540 and 720x480 better, and that is what they should get. Viewers like higher bit rates, and that is what they should have. Additionally, I found a nice way to get lighting similar to how I edit my images which I love. Why shouldn't all my clips look the way I prefer? That creates a dilemma though because I already have dozens of clips up. Do I just leave them and put up new stuff with the revised quality? Do I take the ones that sell the most and re-do them? Do I take the ones that sell the least and re-do those in hopes that the higher quality will get them selling.

I didn't have to face any of those choices though because fate intervened. A number of people who like my clips have been asking for special versions of clips in WMV format. On top of that my previews keep going down which is KEY for people getting a glimpse at the clip. I'm not the type to sit on a broken system or ignore a valid request. The only way I could have reliable previews is if I provided them. This is great for viewers; they get to see full quality previews that contain snippets from a larger portion of the clip. Talk about try before you buy!

In the process of doing previews I realized I had the opportunity to remaster ALL clips while I was at it. I mean, I needed to do previews of EVERY clip so why not spend the time remastering all the clips in the new format and quality. And that's what I'm doing. Slowly, surely I am remastering and swapping out EVERY clip that isn't 720x540 or 720x480 and isn't 2000 kbps. It has taken days so far and will take a couple more, but the long hours are worth it. By this Wednesday I will have 100% revamped my entire storefront on clips4sale. Was it necessary? No, people would have kept buying clips as long as I kept putting them up. But it was the right thing :)

The first clip I remastered and put back up was Angelique in Bed Bound & Busty. It was a snippet of a play session that we decided to film where she is jacked out in brown rope, red panties and killer heels.

How to know a gag is tight

I've been waiting on resolution of an issue with my C4S store for a couple days. It seems that the previews are breaking left and right, and I'm having issues when I update the store. They're working diligently on it, but I need to find something to do when C4S slows down. Luckily for me I keep a list of things longer than I'll ever be able to complete.

Something that's been hanging heavily on me for a while is that the Hogtie from Hell series seems to be very popular. The reason it hangs heavily is that the most popular clip of all with Angelique Kitos only has the ending portion where the hogtie is final. Imagine 20 plus minutes of binding and gagging something so delectable as Angelique sitting on a HDV tape gathering dust. When the store issues cropped up I decided it was great time to resolve that issue.

The clip was originally a custom request that for some reason fell through. The request was to show the tying, gagging, interaction between model and rigger and finally the completed position. The two things I noticed in reviewing the footage were just how long she had to deal with something so tight. This wasn't a case of quickly tying someone up and getting the footage. It was long and languishing. Her arms were red, and her face was red.

That's how you know a gag is tight. The ballgag was bad enough but a full roll of co-flex was stretched out and wrapped tightly over her face. That stuff is like rubber, and it squeezes when it's stretched out. After six or so layers your face is in a vice, and that ballgag is in the back of your throat. The worst part is the strain of not choking. The saliva builds up with nowhere to escape making it a true physical and mental challenge. Face red, veins popping out, eyes closed and dimples not only between the eyebrows but over them. Than my friends is how you know a gag is tight. I quite frankly don't know why the gal still gives me the time of day! Regardless check out Angelique in Hogtie from Hell - Full over at C4S ... if things are functional enough to let you :/

Don't Go Anywhere

I pulled out the big kitten eyes yesterday and suggested a tie-em-up. Angelique had an outfit on that just said to me that she should get grabbed and tied up. It wasn't like it was a vampy outfit or anything; she just looks hot in anything and it made me want to do an impromptu clips. Imagine my surprise when she told me that the big, pleading eyes worked and I should try it more often. After shooting the clip I plan on just that. It wasn't long before she was tied up on camera, had a vibrator jammed against her most protected areas and was hogtied to struggle, drool and, well, do things that vibrators help make happen. I'll have it up on the store soon.

A big thing off of my list was getting an iPod clips store up. It only has five of my best-selling clips so far, but I'll let you know that they look wonderful on my iPhone. It's great to have portable, um, entertainment! I plan on updating this store just as regularly as my regular store! I also want to thank everyone who has visited my regular C4S store and most importantly purchased clips. This has been my best month so far, and I'm encouraged enough to continue putting up content :)

I managed to shoot a custom with Angelique and will go into the editing phase soon. I keep mentioning customs, but this was one that was really fun to shoot. Nothing against anyone, but the communication aspect of shooting customs is the most difficult aspect. The customer always has a very real image in mind and my translating that image properly is a challenge. This last custom was a case of me and another person thinking in the same way ... we communicate visually and through storyboards I was able to nail it. I'm sure he'll be overwhelmed with the results. I'll put up a sneak peek of it as I get time to work on things.

Last but not least, my top-selling slip is still Angelique Kitos in Hogtie From Hell. Others are coming close, but she reigns supreme as the overall clip champion and the champion in total sales!

Still champion ...

Today has been a cluster of odds-n-ends. After being sick for 3 days with some sort of crud, I've still been muddling through on a dozen projects at once, all high priority. I got the site up and live only to discover that the way it was being handled sucked big and hard and needs to be reworked. I have a work-around and have my fingers crossed it goes into place before the site actually gets crawled ... otherwise the search engines will see two duplicate sites and I'll look like a spammer (and I hate spammers).

I did manage to finish the pole tie rig or more specifically the mechanism to attach it without marring the walls. That baby is gonna get some use! I also took some pics of it for the custom requester along with the outfit he'd like to see. I dropped the ball on contacting him about things this weekend, so I hope he'll still want to proceed. I'll shoot it one way or another, either for him or for a video and some C4s ... I'm hoping it's for the customer though. I hate when things fall through because I get away from my checklist.

As usual I did some stats checking and my #1 clip from week one of the store and every week following is still Angelique in Hogtie from Hell. I don't see how anything is going to dethrone it because it sells once a day.