Two half-naked women stand beside a vintage, cherry-red Mustang convertible on a remote hill in Calabasas, California. The smaller, dark-haired woman hitches her cowboy boot on the car's hood, while the other, a blonde with bright green eyes, bends to kiss her partner's leg. Things heat up rapidly, but something is off.
Director Holly Randall, an athletic woman in denim cut-offs and a gray V-neck tee, calls cut. She announces that one of the actresses needs a Wet Wipe for a lipstick stains between her legs. The makeup artist dashes over with a touch-up kit. A straight-faced male crew member steps into the frame to adjust the lighting "on the downstairs."
Randall tosses out a few suggestions for the next few minutes of foreplay. Then she calls action, and the kissing and moaning resumes.
I used to think all you needed to make a porn was a bed and one or more naked people. The shoots took place in grimy basement studios, with mustached men in gold track suits looking on and smiling.
Randall and her crew defy this stereotype, and they're making a steady living doing it.
Their glamorous approach may in fact be the key to how Randall's productions make money, even as the porn industry struggles more than ever to compete with free content on the internet.
"You have to carve out a niche that people are interested in, that people are willing to pay for," Randall says.
In her case it is high-end erotica: Watch any of her films and you'll see models framed in intimate close-up shots with romantic lighting on their faces or other body parts. Scenes are often scripted, and feature elaborate sets and props. The end result could be called a work of art.
Over the summer, I was invited to spend a day on Randall's set and unravel my perceptions of adult film production. If there's one thing I learned, it's this: Making good porn isn't easy.
***
A few hours earlier, the entire crew gathered in a white ranch house atop the hill to eat lunch. Randall's assistant, a bubbly twenty-something who says she found the position on Craigslist, arrived with a buffet of falafel, chicken shawarma, pita bread, and salad.
In one corner, the tan blonde actress, Nicole Aniston, sat picking a morsel of Mediterranean food out of her cleavage. Her hair fell in barrel rolls down the front of her white robe, and she laughed swapping stories with the crew. They had spent most of the morning constructing a Gothic-style lair for a Halloween shoot later in the day.
The mood was hearty. Twistys, a pay-for-play site known for its softer, more glamorous approach to adult content, commissioned Randall to shoot its big Treat of the Year package. The feature celebrates the company's most popular star of 2015. The recipient's photos and movies receive special promotion on the site.
Across the room, Randall hardly paused during the break. She conferenced with the makeup artist on how to style Aniston's hair, suggesting they use a bandana for the "Thelma & Louise" inspired scene. Then she chatted with the wardrobe stylist, running her hands and eyes over denim booty-shorts and a fringe jacket.
Of course, those clothes would come off and the hair would likely come undone in minutes. But Randall's attention to detail and high production quality are what set her videos apart — and keep her in business.
***
Today, there up to five million adult content sites on the internet, as discussed on a recent episode of "Codebreaker," a new podcast from Marketplace and Tech Insider. But a lot of them struggle to make money, especially since the rise of YouTube-style "tube sites."
Internet porn: Is it evil? Listen to the full episode:
PornHub, YouPorn, RedTube, and others (many owned by industry-giant MindGeek, which also happens to own Twistys) profit from slapping ads on the amateur videos users upload themselves, as well as on adult clips syndicated or occasionally pirated from the web. Advertising now makes up a whopping 44% of revenue in the $3 billion US porn industry, according to market researcher IBISWorld. Subscription-based sites' contribution has fallen to 18% of revenue.
Los Angeles County, an area that at least used to be called Porn Valley because so many adult films were shot there, has been hit particularly hard. A 2012 county law requiring performers to wear condoms contributed to a 90% plunge in production permits the following year.
Like the music world at the dawn of Napster, the industry has had to adapt.
"Gone are the days when you could just build a website, put up whatever, and make money," Randall later tells me over the phone, explaining that her original material will inevitably by torrented and made available online for free.
"You have to be really competitive, and you have to be good at what you do," she says.
Fortunately, Randall is both. She comes from a family of pornographers: Her mother, Suze, came to the US in the '70s to become the first female staff photographer at Playboy, and later, Hustler. Randall joined the business as a college student, helping to run her parents' website, and now leads one of the most illustrious careers in the industry. Her clients include Playboy Plus, Adult DVD Empire, and Twistys.
She explains that when internet porn first exploded in the early 2000s, its availability was coupled with the arrival of a consumer, professional-grade hand camera. Anyone could buy an affordable video recorder, shoot decent quality content, and share it to a platform that transcended distribution laws. She calls it "a perfect storm."
"You saw the beginning of this really hard-core, 'Gonzo' type material, where it was almost like the porn Olympics," Randall laughs. She rattles off examples of sodomy feats that are far too lewd to name here.
Now, poor quality content along with pirated videos make up the majority of online porn.
Fortunately for Randall and the crew she hires, some consumers are getting bored of that old smut.
***
My household coughs up close to $40 a month for access to Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime. Why? Because we choose to pay a premium for spectacular content. Of course, we still know many people who often torrent episodes of their favorite shows, or movies that have yet to hit streaming sites. Many folks do both.
The same breakdown applies to porn. With so much outdated, low-grade content circulating the internet, consumers are tired of throwing their weight into searching for something new they know they'll enjoy, Randall says.
Some of those porno-connoisseurs will shell out subscription fees for glamorous, well-lit, HD videos, because they appreciate their quality. Pay sites like Twistys, X-art, 21Naturals, and Girlsway exist to cater to that audience.
"There has been a movement toward more high-end, cinematic porn ... in the last few years," Randall says. "It's the pendulum swinging in the opposite way."
Magali Rheault, pay site director of adult media conglomerate Gamma Entertainment, tells us high-end, scripted videos have emerged as the most popular content genre in the last few years. The company manages several brands specializing in "stunning erotica" and "passionate sex."
Some of Gamma's partner studios are investing more in production in order to tap into this niche, often called erotica, according to Rheault. The videos feature more light and overexposed scenes, slower pacing, and scripted scenarios. Directors look to hire actors, not just people capable of having sex on-screen.
"The trick is to find the sweet spot that people are willing to pay, a bit like [what] Netflix does," Rheault says. "Basically, our motto is, 'Delivering Porn That People Want To Pay For.'"
It's a mission she shares with Randall.
***
During my day on set of an adult film shoot, I saw this shift in action. I expected the director to bang the clapboard, and the actresses to lunge at each other like cats in heat. Randall would shoot one long take, to completion.
Instead, every moment of human intimacy was meticulously crafted. The crew seemed to speak a second language made up entirely of euphemisms.
"Let me check the downtown" or "downstairs" preceded a lighting technician sliding up next to an actress and holding a light meter — a remote control-shaped gadget used to determine proper camera exposure — to her private parts, which had to be well lit.
If Randall asked an actress to "give me a spread," the performer would slip one hand south to spread her vagina open. "Give me a search" implied a little more digging.
Not only did their code dictate what happened next but also it stripped the experience of any intimacy for the people watching and partaking in real-time. It looked like work, not pleasure.
"One of the most common questions I get is, 'Do you get turned on while you're shooting porn scenes?'" Randall says. "When I look at what I'm shooting, it's not people having sex. It's almost like this geometric equation. [I'm thinking] What are the angles like? What's the lighting like? How is the wardrobe falling off?
"It's all these tiny, meticulous details that I look at, as opposed to people actually having sex in front of me."
Later in the day, the crew and I gathered around an outdoor, Gothic-style set fit for a vampire. Two of the designers worked most of the morning preparing it, hanging vintage lanterns and swaths of red fabric on the trees. A fog machine blew puffs of white off the hillside. The technicians joked about what Randall's neighbors must think.
Then a pint-sized, brunette actress tiptoed her way to set in a red, faux leather bodysuit, à la Britney Spears in the "Oops!... I Did It Again" music video. Her black lipstick matched the rims around her eyelids.
Randall took position on the ground, her camera in hand and her pit bull mix Khaleesi sitting beside her. She instructed the actress on how to pose, and waited for the fog to clear.
