An oldie but a goodie

One of the only reasons I considered starting a clips store was a huge backlog of "vintage" material. Now by vintage material I don't mean movies from the 80s, everything I have ever shot has been DV or higher. It isn't up to the same standards I hold myself to now though with lighting and other equipment. Plus I've learned a lot from the many mistakes I made during those days. Therefor I call them vintage just to put a line between shooting as a hobbyist and shooting professionally.

Back then I was fortunate to work with Sammie Sparks several times. One of the reasons my shoots with her always gave me great material is that her husband was a fabulous cameraman. There was no wasting the model's energy moving tripods around with allowed me to be rougher in my handling of the "damsel" and her husband just knew where to have the camera pointed at all times. He knew how she struggles, so he'd be ready when she'd change positions and get just the right shot.

It still stands out though as a hallmark in someone actually trying to get away.

He Made My Tits Bulge The Take-down courtesy of Ted Michaels Damsels.

I'm detecting some patterns :)

I'm a numbers guy. I've always been great with Math, loved puzzles and watch trends carefully with everything I'm involved with. The really odd thing about that is I hate fantasy football. I guess I should correct myself in saying I like numbers and trends when you can maximize a productive result. Fantasy football is a fun result ... number crunching sales is productive :)

Ever since I first started putting out material I've watched things closely. I change how I do updates and watch the trends. I look at how certain models are received both when they are being published by others and when I'm the only one putting material out with them in it. I'm a bit of a geek because I wrote a heat map program that I export my sales data into. For anyone unfamiliar with a heat map, it's basically a grid of where you color-code values. The cooler and darker the color, the less the value and the hotter and brighter the higher the value. The end result is that every time a clip of mine sells those keywords get weighted into my heat map application.

Now what does all this mean? Well, I know that you like the models I've shot with that people haven't put any material out of or any material in the last 5 years. I know you like elbows that are jammed together. I know you like a lot of things. I'm not giving anything away but suffice to say that out of the last 10 clips that I have put up, they have performed in a manner that I expected. That's great because it lets me put up what folks like and gear future shoots towards those trends. And when the trends change I'll see it!

My latest clip is part of that. Every clip with the girl in it sells well. She's cute, her elbows can be glued together, she can take a huge gag and she makes the most adorable noises. She shows up as orange in my heat map which is respectable being so close to red. The content of this clip is a bit different, so we'll see if that changes the trend. But so far my heat map on this model shows good things. Check out Elita in She Came for a Story and see what happens to a nosy reporter trying to get a scoop on a serial kidnapper!

Tale of the Tape

Everyone has their strengths when it comes to bondage. There are girls who can wear ballgags and girls who can wear huge ballgags. There are girls who can drool and girls who have strands dripping off their chin like somebody left a faucet on. There are girls who can wiggle and girls who flop around like a fish on the deck of a boat. There are girls who moan pitifully and girls who sound so distressed you have to stop shooting for a moment just to be sure everything is okay. There are girls that do well with rope, girls who do well with straps and girls who do will with stockings; then there are the girls that can really handle tape.

Ultra-strict restraint is a challenge in itself both mentally and physically, but nothing really compared to ultra-strict tape restraint. Rope has several qualities that tape can never have. First, rope is fairly rigid; we call that a low coefficient of restitution. Second, rope isn't sticky as hell. Finally, rope breaths! Why does that make tape so challenging?

Skin gets uncomfortable when it can't breath. Rope, even tight rope, lets some amount of air in and increases the comfort level. Tape blocks air out completely. Your skin can't breath and you sweat like hell which is doubly discomforting. It is uncomfortable to be pinched. Rope shifts a little as you move but tape is welded fast. When you move the tape pinches and pulls. Last, and in my opinion the worst, some tape like electrical tape stretches and then compresses with a rubbery quality. This is called a high coefficient of restitution. Electrical tape wound tightly is like a huge rubber band. Let's combine all those now. Imagine a huge rubber band that squeezes into your flesh tighter than any rope could be pulled. Image that rubber band sticks to your skin like glue; every movement pulls, pinches and hurts. Finally, imagine that on top of this your skin starts itching from lack of contact with the air. It's not fun.

The easiest way to put it is that I've tied up a dozen gals that could have their elbows welded and be put in a back-arched hogtie and make it through a video set under hot lights. I've taken some of those same gals and done a tight tape restraint and they don't last 1/3 of the time. Tape wears you out and separates the tough from the down-right indestructible damsel.

That brings us to Elita. I have a TON of video of her. We worked together for about 14 months, and we ALWAYS used tape at least once. She loved take down sequences and for a quick tie-em-up, electrical tape is always a great choice. The picture speaks for itself really. Her elbows are smashed, there are no gaps at her knees or anywhere between her legs, her ankles are so close her shoes are flared out and the tape cuts in deeply. She never went away bruised. She never went away hurt. She just had the body and skin that could deal with that sort of thing, and I'm not talking about a couple minutes; she could deal with it for a long time. Need proof? Check out Elita in She Knew Too much ... apparently snooping around in the wrong files gets you taped up, roped up and far worse!