Out in the wilds of Calabasas (Spanish for “pumpkins”) lay a business called VideoSecrets, which for years has hosted cam shows featuring Balkan women touching themselves in little studios throughout former Eastern Bloc nations.
It also provided white label services for studios like Vivid and Hustler. When I ventured there six years ago this month for a Hustler Live session featuring future Penthouse model Angie Savage and future Christian Crissy Moran, I found the two of them in a little red “Fire Walk with Me” room.
Porn sets, what with the 12 or so people standing around, have an element of live theatre about them, where performers can feed off the energy in the room. But I have respect for webcam performers who just perform for a bank of cameras, a keyboard, and an engineer.
So it was with Savage and Moran, who made the most of an artificial situation. Seriously: if you walk into a home that has one of those silly chairs: Run, Dorothy Stratten, run.
Now that home broadband service is so affordable, performers can really maximize their earnings by performing at home in 1:1 sessions with fans from faraway places. I think this is the future of porn, since studio jobs are increasingly undependable.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Angie Savage and Crissy Moran in different underpants
I think you’re right.
While there will always be avenues for erotic storytelling (parodies are storytelling, right?) I do think a large percentage of “pornstars” will never have stepped high-heeled foot onto a set, but will have made their bones (to abuse a phrase) by being a camgirl.
I think we see it nowadays with some performers really embracing the cam lifestyle, and I can only imagine it’s as profitable (if not more) than doing studio-based scene work…
I also think that the majority of fans really like the performers themselves and their sense of accessibility. If the majority of porn movies, by their own poor production or poor storytelling, muddle the attractiveness of these performers, it seems like eliminating that vehicle and allowing girls to be themselves—or their more mercenary selves, anyway—might be more of what the fans wanted in the first place.