Category Archives: RestrainedElegance.com

Bumping Updates…

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Hi Everyone

I hope most of you are coping OK with lockdown. A global pandemic is a very worrying time and I hope we can add a little sexy distraction and entertainment in for you to enjoy in the meantime.

As I said in a previous message, we’re lucky enough to have lots of material on disk and an in-house shooting team, so we’re not in any danger of running out of content. But we’re already missing working with our friends and getting hot stuff to share with you.

I decided that maybe we could get them to share some of their creativity with us even in lockdown. Thus was the idea for the “lockdown selfies” series born: RE models self-shooting sexy ideas to keep us all going until we can get together to tie them up again! We’ve already had a couple of stunning videos sent in, and I thought it was worth sharing them sooner rather than later.

So I’ve decided to bump them up in the update schedule and shuffle a couple of “regular” RE videos for a bit later than planned. This is just to let you know that one or two clips I have posted previews for on the forum might get bumped into a following month so we can show you the lockdown selfies – I think it makes more sense to show these as they are fresh and keep the regular RE update videos spaced out a bit.

Watch this space – Sophia Smith’s sexy bondage selfie video will be up in a few days!

Hywel

Celebration in a sombre time

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Hi Everyone

Today marks the 19th birthday of RestrainedElegance.com.

Given the global pandemic it feels a bit weird to be sending out a cheery message about what a wild ride it has been, celebrating our harmless little funny kinky fantasy photosets. I wasn’t even sure whether to post, let alone what to say.

I decided that I should because what is keeping me going is in large part light-escapist-fantasy books, films and TV shows. So we hope that our light-escapist-bondage and barefoot fetish fantasies will help keep you going, too. Art is important because it can keep us sane and raise our spirits, perhaps especially when it is looking a bit bleak outside.

I was going to do this anyway but it seems even more important while so many of us are on lockdown- we’re running a SAVE 50% OFFER on all purchases on our Classic Restrained Elegance and eStore shopping carts. I was going to run it for 24 hours, but instead I’ll leave it running for a full week.

Now is a great chance to catch up on sets of favourite models and themes you may have missed from the 1150 videos and 4500 photosets we have produced over the last 19 years. Go stock up and enjoy with 50% off and our immense gratitude. We hope things we make cheer you up and help you get through.

If you want to see all our latest updates on release day, memberships at RestrainedElegance.com and SilkSoles.com remain the most economical way to support us and see everything we produce. The three-month membership for RestrainedElegance.com in particular is fantastic value.

Thank you for being with us for the last 19 years, and we look forward to sharing our kinky escapist fantasies for a long time to come!

Lockdown

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The UK is heading towards lockdown, and not the sexy sort.

Ariel has just cancelled her next modelling tour. RE shoots with anyone except Ariel (and at home) are on hold until further notice.

We’ve just finished a long run of shoots and have over 18 months of video and two years of stills on disk. We were planning on a working holiday in Ireland for a month which we’ve cancelled. We’re going to have the same thing, but at home. We’re going to catch up on editing. So updates on RestrainedElegance.com and SilkSoles.com will proceed as normal. I upload the updates a month or two in advance anyway so if one or both of us gets ill the site will update as normal, so long as we don’t get it really badly.

We hope to avoid getting coronavirus, or if we do get it that we’ll have a mild case and recover. Obviously we hope the same for all of our lovely friends, colleagues and customers too! Please stay safe, follow health/government advice especially to protect vulnerable people even if you yourself are not particularly at risk.

We will be filming customs starring Ariel (and me as on-camera dom/rigger if you need me) – contact her at askarielstudio.com if you have an idea you’d like us to shoot for you.

I hope we can avoid panic-cancelling of luxury things like website memberships. Obviously we’ll completely understand if you are ill or have lost your job! But for the rest of us, the closer we can keep things to normal during the pandemic, the less the economy will collapse and the quicker society and the economy can recover afterwards. I’m going to chip in a bit more to my favourite artists and creatives for as long as I can to support them and I urge you to do likewise.

Models are likely to be switching to platforms like OnlyFans and Clips4Sale and web-camming for the duration, since they won’t be able to go to many or any photoshoots. Please consider chipping in to help your favourites if you can afford to do so. Be kind as people find new ways to work. And be patient with these big platforms if a sudden influx of newbies makes their systems a bit unreliable for a while – remember that they will be operating with reduced staff on lockdown too, and data centres and internet service providers don’t run themselves. If stuff is a bit patchy and unreliable for a bit, be kind, you don’t know what sort of stress the operators might be working under.

And I guess that’s my message to everyone: be safe, be kind to each other, support the people you can support, obey the medical and government advice, and I hope everyone stays well. We’ll do our best to cheer you up with some glamour and sexiness in the meantime.

Lucy Lauren Cosplay Dungeon

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Hi All,

I’m in pre-production for the next cosplay dungeon shoot, this time starring the lovely Lucy Lauren. I made a handout of notes/script for the start of the shoot which Lucy and I will go through on camera – putting it up here so Lucy can read it and thought I’d tag it in case anyone else is interested in what we have planned!

Lucy Lauren Cosplay Dungeon

Slave of the Sorcerer

We are going to improvise a script between us, using a table-top roleplaying game to narrate what happens.

We will film us doing that in 30 minute chunks. At the end of each 30 minute segment we will pause, scribble lots of notes on what just happened and some ideas for what we can film to illustrate the story. We will decide if there’s anything we don’t want to film, or if we have to step back and rewind any of the events – and either of us can always call cut to discuss as we go, too.

We’ll tell a story around the table shooting on day one, then on days two and three we will film a bunch of short movies to illustrate it. I’ll edit it together with the footage of us talking to spin a tall tale of fantasy and magic and kinky sex… hopefully!

The idea is to describe the adventures and experiences of a very sexy character in a fantasy world of elves and orcs and ogres and wicked sorcerers in towers keeping girls as sex slaves.

An unspoken rule of this world is that any intelligent creature can and will have sex with any other intelligent creature – so by all means seduce the ogres or chat up the elf archer!

We’re developing it interactively as we go so you can shape what happens to make sure you’re happy to film it. This makes it so much easier for shy Hywel to actually film some more explicit stuff with toys. I’d really like to have fantasy hand-jobs, foot-jobs, blow-jobs, fake sex on screen with orc-cock toys too if you are up for it. Having described the scene together beforehand in the game means I won’t die of embarrassment suggesting that we film it. Or do what I usually do and wimp out of shooting it on the day – I won’t be able to as we have to tell the story we wrote!

Each scene starts with me telling you where you are and what you see – maybe that you are being held prisoner by a band of orcs. Then I ask you what you do (as your character). You could try to escape by stealth, by killing the orcs, by seducing them, talk to them to get information or maybe you want them to take you to whoever is in charge. There’s no right or wrong answer. Ask questions about what’s lying around – maybe there’s some oil in an oil lamp you can use to lubricate your skin and get out from the shackles you are in. I’ll always try to move to story along for you as I tell you what happens next… and ask you what you do about it. Maybe one of the orcs caught you in the act… now what?

Our job is to tell an interesting story and get your character into lots of scrapes – unlike regular D&D we’re going to have a lot of bondage, torture and sex going on as well.

The whole thing is a big experiment and a bit of a treat for me to shoot something different. If it just doesn’t work as a way to shoot for you we can just shoot regular RE instead, but I’m sure you’ll be great! We just need to find ways to get your character into trouble with a BDSM and sexual element and it’ll all work out!

The one thing we need is for you to throw your character into stuff. To be afraid or over-cautious. Whatever happens, your character will come out the other side safe and sound in the end. In the game world even if she’s killed she can be brought back to life. She is going to have a happy ending.

If I ask you a question to which you don’t know the answer… make something up, or say you have no idea and we’ll brainstorm something together. Don’t be afraid of doing it wrong- do something rather than nothing and the story will quickly move on.

I’ve been running games like this for almost 40 years and I’ve got lots of tricks and techniques to keep the story moving. I’ll keep throwing situations and characters at you and we’ll see what turns into an interesting event to film.

Because the back-story of the character is interesting and has lots of possibilities for sexy stuff, we’ll roleplaying through it together. That’ll also give you chance to get used to the idea.

Setting the Scene: Escape from the Sorcerer’s Tower

You don’t really remember much about your past, just that you had one.
You weren’t born here, didn’t gown up in this nightmare place.
Somehow, you came here, probably in the chains and shackles that still bind you.
You had a life before being made into a sex slave of the Sorcerer.

But such is the oppressive weight of magic in this place that you remember nothing about that life. Just that you had one.

You have been here for months, possibly years. Day follows day in a haze of forgetfulness and sorcery. Your life is an endless procession of serving the sordid whims of the wicked Sorcerer. Chained, naked, you tend to his bed-chamber. You particularly hate that one spell he favours casting upon you above all others- the one that drains your will.

Sometimes the spell forces you to remain agonisingly paralysed in position as he uses you for tasks that most men would have furniture to fulfil. A book-stand. A candle-holder. A place to hold his staff. An erotic statue.

Sometimes the spell compels you to actively participate in your own enslavement. He rarely deigns to fuck you, but he often forces you to suck his cock while he works his magic or reads from books of magical lore. When he does fuck you, it is to extract the power of your orgasms to empower his rituals. You come on his command and yet the pleasure of the orgasm is denied you, sucked out so that you do not really even experience your own climax. All satisfaction stolen, denied to you.

With your stolen sexual power he conjures cruel demons of lust from the vast starless skies, bartering with them for arcane knowledge and power, constraining them to the summoning circle on the floor of the chamber where you lie bereft of pleasure as the demons form in the air above you.

You know there are others within the tower. Human guards and magical statues. Other slave girls, some of whom meet their end screaming in the ritual circle as the sorcerer tires of them and gives them to the demons.Noblemen, elves, orcs, ogres, trolls and far stranger creatures visit the tower. Often you are given to them as a sexual toy so the sorcerer can curry favour.

You don’t even know the sorcerer’s name.

You don’t even know your own name, for sure. You think it might be… (ask for a character name. Lucy Lauren is fine!)

Your Vision

Through it all, there is one vision from your past that stays with you, makes you determined not to just give in and lose yourself to this life. It is a vision of… what? A few ideas – a person – maybe a sister? A place that was home. A vision of yourself crowned in fire, taking revenge upon the sorcerer. A mission, perhaps you were a spy send here to find out the sorcerer’s secrets? A fellow slave girl with whom you have shared stolen pleasure and whose life you vowed to save, but who was given as a prize to some noble of a far-off land? Or something less selfless… like a huge buried treasure to steal or a kingdom to conquer? Maybe you are a princess with a throne to re-take. Or a vengeful warrior queen with a realm to conquer.

We are looking to establish a motivation for you to escape, a motivation for you to have adventures outside and a motivation for you to one day return and take revenge on the wicked sorcerer. (The motivation to have lots of sex is below!)

Tonight, for once, things are different. The sorcerer is unexpected called from the tower whilst preparing a ritual. The spell upon you fades as the hours pass. What thought is it that makes you resist the magical fog that clouds your brain and decide to act?

You are kneeling on the floor in the wizard’s chamber. Forbidden books line the wall. You are at the edge of the summoning circle, the book and staff you have been holding for hours causing intolerable pain and cramps from enforced immobility as the spell wanes and you can finally move.

There on the desk is the vile sacrificial dagger intended for the heart of another innocent slave. Perhaps this is the night he was finally going to slay you?

What do you do?

We’ll explore a few options here – but in the end to move the story to the proper start point you decide to use the spell book yourself, casting the summoning ritual with your own orgasm, summoning a demon of lust.

You cannot believe how strong the climax was, after so long denied the ability to feel it.

What do you ask of the demon? Freedom? Power? Rescue? Recall of your past?

The demon offers you a bargain. It gains its power from carnal lust. It will lend you that power (and even bring you back to life if you die).

There’s a catch – to use that power on a creature, you must have sexual knowledge of its blood-line or source of power. If you make a creature orgasm, the demon gains carnal pleasure, power and insight into all who share its source of power, and in turn that lets you channel that power to overcome the creature and those similar to it.

So for example you cannot successfully cast one of your spells on an elf until you have gained carnal knowledge of elves by making an elf orgasm. You will have advantage using your powers on a creature you have personally made come, and normal use of your abilities against those who share the bloodline. But if the creature draws more power from another source – for example a wizard who draws primarily from the element of fire – they will be immune. At least until you manage to bring them to orgasm, or find a powerful fire genie to wank off and gain access to the power of fire that way.

Unfortunately, the reckoning of powers starts from the moment you enter into the pact with the demon… so you will not be able to affect the sorcerer until you find out his source of power – and he might have several. You’ll need to find them all. Or you could hang around and wait and bring him to climax tonight, but the chances of him not noticing the change in you and killing you out of hand seem pretty slim. You can have some life outside the tower. And your vision calls to you. Vengeance on the sorcerer will just have to wait.

You seal your pact with the demon in the only way a demon of lust ever seals a pact – with wicked hot sex!

The demon grants you some powers which you can use at will (see cantrips) and some of greater power; you can call on any two of those powers (or the same one twice) within a battle or within the space of a few minutes, but must then rest a short while before being able to channel them again.

You cannot kill the sorcerer as yet, but can you shatter the magical chains that bind you (dispel magic). You draw your power around you to clothe and armour you (mage armour) and steal the staff. After a moment’s reflection you take the spell book and sacrificial dagger, too. It might be useful… and it means the sorcerer can’t use them.

You light your way with another cantrip.

Escape The Tower

Now… how to escape from the tower? You know you are quite high up, but you can find a window and try to climb down the rough walls. Or you could work your way down to the front door, finding ways to tackle the human servants and magical guardians as you go. Or blast a hole straight through the wall and jump, relying on your borrowed demonic power to shield you.

Now what?

The tower lies beside a lake, surrounded by forested hills and mountains beyond. In the far distance at the end of the lake you can see twinkling lights – a village, perhaps? A track leads up to a raised road which looks well-travelled, although there is no-one in sight at the moment.

The sorcerer is sure to return soon – he will notice your absence and that you have stolen staff, spell-book and sacrificial dagger. He will want them, and possibly you, back.

Even if he isn’t back for hours, the guards in the tower will be after you soon.

What do you do? Where do you go? What is the priority? Does the vision pull you one way or the other, or does the need to make good your escape pull you most strongly?

Do you need to seek out nobles? Gold? Maybe you need to seek out lesser Wizards to drain their powers for yourself? Or just start bringing as many different sorts of creature to orgasm as you can for now? Remember that your powers are great, but they won’t work on any new sort of creature at first. You will probably get captured often in new situations. Turn it to your advantage and to matters sexual as soon as you can- they sooner the come, the sooner you have the power to escape or to get what you need from them!

2020 Plans

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Hi Everyone,

I mentioned recently that the world has moved to wanting bondage videos rather than still photosets. Recent custom commissions drive home just how much so- we’re getting about 15 video commissions for every 1 stills set commission.

As a result I’ve decided to change the RE update schedule as of the site’s 19th birthday on 1st April 2020. It’s really important to me that I make sure I deliver exactly what I promised when you signed up. The longest membership period you can sign up for is currently 3 months, which is why I’m giving so much notice of the change.

We will move to updating with new material every other day, plus at least two archives every day.

At least one update in three will be a video, and at least one update in three will be a stills photoset.

For the moment I am planning on one video update then two stills, so it will go video update, stills update, stills update, video update, etc. Plus at least two archives every day as at present.

I reserve the right to vary that in future (e.g. if we’ve got a huge number of videos to get through) but guarantee that at least one in every three updates will be a video and one in every three will be a stills set.

To compensate for the overall slight reduction in the total number of updates, I will no longer be trying to split videos when they reach the 10 minute mark and so the videos will often run longer than I’ve allowed them to at present. This fits better with the average running time of the story-led custom videos we’re currently shooting.

If you’re interested in why I’ve decided to do this and the business and artistic case for it, see below. But the short answer is
that I’ve not changed my prices since 2014 and since then we’ve gone from 7 minute HD videos to 20+ minute 4K videos as the norm, as well as making stills sets bigger and longer. Something has to give and I think this re-orientation best suits the way we’re shooting today- we can spend longer shooting each stills set and shoot more complex story-led videos better this way.

Why Are We Doing This? Business and Artistic Case.

Pricing

I have managed to hold our subscription prices the same for the last six years. Inflation in that time has raised prices at least 10%, including my main expense (paying the models). In 2020, something has to give.

One possibility was to keep the update schedule or even add extra videos, but that would have meant a substantial price hike, and hiring a video editor (which I may still do but I’m nervous about taking staff on in the current climate- I’d like to see how things go for a while and maybe hire indie contractors for specific jobs instead).

I know times are tough in my major markets and just don’t think an increase would be affordable for a lot of people. Refocussing towards video and a gentle reduction in the frequency of stills updates is more sensible.

Regular Updates

One of the things that has always kept me coming back to my favourite sites is regular and frequent updates. I want to be encouraged to come back often because there’s always something new to see. Every other day (plus archives every day, as now) seems to keep that, which I really like.

Sustainability

Videos take longer to shoot and WAY longer to edit than stills. An increase in video production was only something we could do temporarily to see if it looked like a better way to go- and it does. To sustain that increase rate of video production, the stills have to come down. This also makes the update schedule feel more sustainable as I get deeper into my fifties (my aching back will thank me LOL)

Every other day feels like a really nice way to go. I know how to do things better now, and I want to allow the time to do it. My burnout at the start of 2019 also shows that fewer, but better, is the way to go for me at this point in my career. A gentle reduction and refocusing is necessary and this seems like the best way.

Time for other projects for art’s sake

As we ramped up custom video production, all the side projects (like Elegance Studios long movies) had to be put on the back burner. It’s really important to us to have at least a bit of slack in the production schedule for personal artistic projects.

That was driven home to me by how much I LOVED being able to set aside a week of prep and production and shooting time to do the recent Cosplay Dungeon fantasy story with Faye. I really want to shoot more in that series and get back to shooting some longer and more ambitious projects “in our own time” (i.e. not based on custom commissions).

The whole RE team really love doing the location shoots as well and this change will allow us to have a greater fraction of the shoots on location and fewer just trying to meet the update schedule. It means the guys and girls who come on location can spend more time on crafting each set and less time making the numbers.

The change to updating every other day will make this difference: it’ll let us concentrate on doing fewer things better, both for the membership site and for the extra self-contained projects which this will allow us to bring back into production for 2020.

Fits in much better with the custom shoots, longer clips on RE

As well as having to fit in more shoots, it is noticeable how many of the customs are coming in substantially longer than the “regular” short RE clips. Many of them are more like Elegance Studios film length! Moving to this update schedule will let me deliver more of those at their natural length, or split sensibly into two, rather than trying to force a split into 10-15 minute long segments to keep the site in its bandwidth limits.

Takes account of the big changes in what we deliver

The last time we raised prices back in 2014, a typical RE video update was about 7 minutes long and we’d just started updating in 1080p full HD. There were longer videos, up to half an hour, but once a month at most.

Of videos due to go up on the site in the next couple of months only one of them is under 10 minutes long, and most of them are over 20 minutes. And we’re now delivering in 4K.

These are VERY different beasts to shoot, edit and upload than the 7 minute HD clips of six years ago. I had to buy an expensive new iMac this year just to be able to physically process the video footage in the available time each month!

Since these 15-30 minute 4K videos are the new normal, for sure something has to give. And since customers are paying us to shoot videos, it has to be stills.

We still love stills. We’re doing them better and will continue to improve.

Since the last price increase in 2014, we’ve moved up to 42 megapixel shooting for stills with a sack of expensive lenses to get the best out of the sensor. Not that the Hasselblad was bad, but it couldn’t deliver in available light, low light or mixed lighting scenarios. We’ve got a lot more strings to our bow photographically as a result.

I hope you’ll agree that we’re shooting more interesting, varied and sexy stills than ever before… but doing four stills sets a week is a drain. The new iMac helped a lot with the physical processing and editing time, but that’s still quite substantial. What’s more important is the drain on creativity. It sometimes feels like a bit of a production line. We REALLY enjoy it when we can take more time for each one and put more creativity into it as a result.

The every-other-day update schedule will allow us to so this. We can go from an hour per set to shoot to an hour and a half easily, even two hours for some sets, and still leave time to film more videos each day than we do now.

As a result we will be able to do an even better job of every stills set we shoot by taking the time to make each one that bit more considered, varied and special.

Reduction in length of time stuff stays on the members’ site

One thing I will have to monitor over the next few months is the total bandwidth as we move to more and more of these monster video updates. For most of the last six years updates and archives have stayed on the site for six months from release date.

I’ve recently reduced that to five months. I may need to reduce it further to four months. This won’t have any effect on those of you on recurring subscriptions, since you’ll still see everything, but it will mean those who only join occasionally are more likely to miss out.

Well, sorry – I do need to encourage you to stay as a recurring member as that’s the whole basis of the business model. It spaces out the bandwidth usage much more for example.

Change is exciting (and a bit scary)

I didn’t realise myself how much things had changed on the site since 2014 until I looked up the numbers to write this post. I thought that the reason I felt so stressed out and overloaded earlier in 2019 was just me not working very efficiently.

But looking at what we put out in a typical month now, compared with what we were putting out in 2014… the difference is stark. Photosets have got longer, and at 42 megapixels, bigger. Each one takes longer to process as a result. Video have got a LOT longer, and a LOT bigger – it’s no wonder I ended up working so inefficiently. I needed to be working to 10pm a lot of nights to queue up exports and video compression jobs, at least until I invested in the new iMac.

Now the question is more about editing time- editing video scales roughly linearly with video length, so a typical 28 minute video now takes four times as long to edit as a 7 minute from 2014. No wonder I was feeling the strain – I literally have about four times as much video to edit as I did in 2014! Adding probably 25% to stills editing time even with the new iMac as well it’s no wonder I suddenly ran out of time to shoot Elegance Studios videos.

I’m excited to get working on shoots for 2020, because of the extra leeway this will give us to improve each one… and that makes me think that this is the right plan for me moving forward. I hope you’ll agree with me that it’s an exciting prospect! I really look forward to showing you the results in 2020!