Porn Valley- Of course to truly appreciate Audrey Hollander fisting herself, you'd have to see it in hi-def. And that's what the purpose of Skeeter Kerkove's, www.bkmax.com shoot last Saturday was. To see ass tonsils like you've never seen them before. Skeeter shot the movie for Lurid Entertainment, www.luridentertainment.com and I had a chat with Stuart, who heads up the company.
"We recognized right away that with Skeeter's style and passion http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=8032 that we needed to take it to a new level," said Stuart. "The only way we knew how to do that was to add a tremendous amount of clarity to his vision. And that obviously is through high-definition."
According to what I had heard, the technology is so new that many of the software programs to accommodate it have yet to come out. Stuart agreed, noting that there are a couple of things made difficult editing in native high-definition which his company does. "It's the amazing amount of storage space required," he says. "And the speed of that storage. It's definitely in the evolutionary process right now, but we have it down to a science. We've been doing it for almost a year now.
" We have two fully equipped HD editing bays in our studio," Stuart goes on to say. " We're putting out product just as quick as we can. We're looking at a second shift for editing right now to support our aggressive production schedule."
Skeeter's shoot is by no means Lurid's first attempts in the XXX market. "This is Skeeter's first shoot," Stuart clarifies. "When we met Skeeter not too long ago it was obvious that his style and the quality of the talent cried out for high-definition. What we did is equip him with high-def cameras, some new wide angle hi-def lenses for the camera and we've also tried out some new, additional technology which is live streaming for behind the scenes. That streaming was available to certain members of the press."
I tell Stuart I've been hearing word in the business that hold off on high-def at least until later in the year when the really good cameras are going to be made available on the market.
Stuart agrees that shooting in high-def is fraught with pitfalls and very expensive learning curves. "Then there's always the resident experts that say, oh yeah, I can do it because I have my big AVID system but I've never done it before," he says. "I heard a story just the other day from the owner of a company that said it took her eight months to get her film done. If you're spending a $100,000 for the camera and you got another $50,000 for the hi-def deck and you're editing on a quarter million dollar editing bay, you got no problems. It's simple. It's easy. They do it every day. Broadcast TV has it. The Super Bowl had it. It's not rocket science. The key is doing it affordably so that it's practical for gonzo and wall-to-wall. We want to do it at a fraction of the cost so that gonzo and wall-to-wall can be the highest quality."
I ask Stuart to address another argument that porn doesn't lend to high-def because it makes body flaws way too evident. Stuart thinks the argument is absolutely true. "I read an article from Nina Hartley- I think she brought it up not too long ago and she's absolutely right," he says. "The high-def camera's going to bring up every little flaw. At AEE we showed some clips that we had done with Brittany Skye. I've got to tell you- the goose bumps on her ass were probably one of the highlights of the clip. If you want something that looks airbrushed, where somebody takes out all the imperfections, fine. This isn't it. But what we've done, is, we're very selective which talent we use for high-definition. Makeup is a whole game because now we're talking about full body makeup where necessary. We're looking at other areas that's not just the face any more."
In the product Lurid has coming out, Stuart will tell you the quality is great, the girls look great. "Yes, there's imperfections," he agrees. "But if you're staring at the pimple on her ass, we haven't done our job in bringing you good sex."
There are a number of issues on the table regarding high-def including the Blu-ray Disc vs. HD-DVD formats. http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=7729
"The FCC has mandated High-Definition for over air broadcast coming up in the next couple of years," Stuart says. "But the Blu-ray DVD and the HD-DVD are different formats that are now competing and are not necessarily compatible with one another. But here's the thing. What we're doing, we're able to render our content in whatever format and on whatever media that's the chosen media. So we're not locked in any way shape or form."
"So, in other words, you can go back and fix whatever you have to accommodate the standard of choice?" I ask him.
"Absolutely," says Stuart. "We store and archive all of our editied scenes so we can then re-render to whatever format. A good example is that today we have two competing high-def formats that we are able to put out on DVD or over the Internet- WMV HD [windows media high definition] is a true high-def source that we do put on our DVD's. But DivX has come up with a high-def HD source as well and there are DVD players today that will play WMV HD or DivX HD. We just got a couple of them this week to start testing. But I don't care what they choose. Currently today we can provide WMV HD, DivX HD. We can lay off the digital VHS for those people that want a true High-Def source. They say 40% of the people who buy DVD's are using them on their PC. We're adding WMV HD files to all of our DVD's so that the computer user will not only get the DVD quality but then he can go and actually get true native High-Def content on his PC. These players are going to be widely available real soon and they're going to be able to get true HD content on their TV.
"There's also things in the works for Set Top HD," Stuart adds. "So we don't care what formatis going to be used. It's not going to hinder us. It's just going to help us."
Lurid Entertainment started shooting about a year ago when they did a movie called The Toy Factory. "It took us nine months to get it edited after some real serious missteps," Stuart recalls. "That's when we realized we had to come up with the technology in-house. It wasn't going to happen any other way. It's cost prohibitive to have an outside source to edit high-def content.
"Big studios all shoot in high-def," Stuart points out. "They down convert it to standard definition. They edit it. They then up convert it back into Hi-Def. But each one of those steps gives you generational loss. So when you look at our content up against some of the other stuff that's shot with very expensive equipment, you'll see that the quality of our stuff as far as the resolution and quality, is far superior."
