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!

Kendra James what were you thinking?

It's always fun to go through video and pull out the odd things that happen during a shoot. Like when the dog gets loose and gets into the scene or UPS picks the the perfectly wrong moment to need a signature on a delivery. I should do a blooper reel someday! I do actually have a piece of video where the model told me her boyfriend would be checking up on her once an hour and if she was indisposed I should pick up and tell him she'd call him right back. Sure enough in full restraint and tape-gagged the phone rings, I pick up and I say the classic, "she's a bit tied up at the moment, she'll call you back." He said to put the phone by her ear and she mmmphhs four times. After the shoot she told me they agreed that any number of mmmphs other than four would mean call the cops. I find that funny until this day! Why four? Who knows, still damn funny though.

My first shoot with Kendra had some funny moments as well, mainly because she's a hoot to be around. I still have a vivid recollection of her in a naked lotus tie, neck to ankles, and hearing, "little help please." I know I've told the story but turning around to see nothing but feet and you-know-what was a bit shocking, very funny and just plain awesome from a perv point of view.

Some of the things that really get my wheels turning though are when I see expressions and wonder what is going through their heads at the time. It's fairly obvious when the expression means "just get this over with idiot!" Other times it's a bit harder to read. I was working on screen shots and just had to put up this one from Kendra James in Vintage Vixen Hogtied. I had recently re-mastered it for better color and a higher bit rate. I took the screen shot because it had drool, and I LOVE drool. Nobody plays a character in distress better than Kendra, so it could just be play-acting. The more I look at it though the more it seems to say that she knows the only way I'll get the camera out of her face is to drool. I can't even view it anymore without knowing she's thinking, "here, it's all over my bra now, happy, now film something else already!"

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 :/

Where did she go?

So many people waft in and out of the business. It's no different that any other business, but I've worked with people that just model for a month. For that matter, I've heard of people leave after their first shoot. I can't really blame them though. You think it's one thing and then you get the ropes on and you decide that going back to school isn't such a bad idea! Then there are people that cycle in and out.

I met Renee years ago when I was shooting stock photography for comic books. She had never shot bondage before but had done some wrestling videos. I remember laughing to myself because she said the idea of being tied up seemed a bit rough but had already told me she'd done a dozen or so female wrestling videos where breast punching was involved. Call me crazy but I'd go for jacked restraint over getting punched in the Jimmy a dozen times. Regardless, after several emails we had our first shoot set up and ready to go, and it went great. Not only did her elbows touch, but she felt is was much less rough than she had originally thought. The material looked great, she was a great wiggler and the camera loved her. I immediately signed her up for a second shoot with video.

Then she disappeared. Well, she didn't disappear, but she worked under a manager (I can picture all the producers out there rolling their eyes) and they parted ways. And so our second shoot was foiled. To my surprise, I sent her an email just to touch bases about two years later and a shoot was back on courtesy of her new manager lol. Manager or no, we had two more shoots with some fun video. My style back then was based on cuts to provide drama and minimal moving camera work, mostly due to a crap motion sensor on my camcorder. I sometimes go back to that style because it really does make for good drama. I also tended to add more story to the shooting, so Renee got to play the part of a model that continually promises a bondage shoot but never comes through. Unfortunately this tactic only works so long before she becomes an Unwilling Bondage Model.

Left Elbow, Meet Right Elbow

The first time I saw somebody's elbows together behind their back I couldn't fathom how it was even physically possible. I grew up in a small town. Hell, we didn't even have a gymnastics squad ... sure, some of the cheerleaders could do splits but there was nothing like this in the routines. These were the innocent years before I knew about forward and backward facing shoulders, double-jointed gals and overall flexibility.

As I became exposed to more bondage material though it became obvious that it was possible and that it looked shit hot. The majority of your hand mobility comes from the shoulders and the elbows. When you weld them together that equals a whole lot of helplessness. The first time I ever got elbows to touch on a gal was with Julie Simone about 12 years ago. I looked so young she actually joked about wanting to see my ID. She said she needed some tight stuff for possible work in California, so the floodgates had opened. Over the next two days we shot and her elbows were welded every which way: strappado, hogtie, chair ties and even taped wrist to elbow. That sold me on the concept, and it's been a staple from then on.

Angelique introduced me to Kerri Taylor a while back and I've loved shooting with her ever since. Tough as nails, her elbows weld without any issue and she can hold it for a long time. That makes for great video. As you can see I seldom miss an opportunity to get into the shot and inspect my handy work. In the clip this screen shot was taken from she struggled so hard that the chair did a complete 360 and moved all the way across the room ... but those elbows stayed glued the entire time. Check out Kerri Taylor in Chesty and Chair-tied to see for yourself ;)

In other areas, last night I managed to get an iPod store up on C4S featuring five of my best sellers. All of them are on my iPhone and the quality is incredible! Check them out at Ted Michaels Damsels - iPod ... or don't,