>Test post from the Blogger web interface. Don’t mind me…
>Second post
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>Welcome!
>Welcome to Elegance Studios! We’re just getting set up with the site, so I’m testing the blog first!
We are a new fetish film company creating bondage, spanking and fetish movies. We’ve got experience producing shorter films (on RestrainedElegance.com for example) and we’re very keen to turn our hands to producing the very best DVD-length kinky movies for your viewing pleasure! This blog is to let you know some of the things we are working on- check back for news about shoots, previews, production stills, trailers, and much more!
Hywel Phillips
Diversity
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the aesthetics of the spanking scene. So have some of my friends; Leia Ann Woods wrote a thoughtful post on her blog, which I commented on, and then realised I wanted to say more. So here goes.
When I started thinking about doing spanking work, I thought it would fulfil some long-held fantasies. I’d never had the chance to be spanked, and I thought it would be brilliant to experience CP in a safe environment, with an experienced top. I was worried I might be too old, too tall, not tough enough or not pretty enough to be accepted by any producers, but it turned out I was wrong. Since I was already working as a nude model, I was also very grateful to discover that spanking production companies were prepared to pay me well enough that I could afford to work with them and take time off afterwards for the bruises to heal.
Being paid to do something I’d always wanted to do was remarkable; liberating, sexy and very exciting. But the best thing about it was totally unexpected. At my first shoot, the absolute joy of being able to talk freely to other people who shared my fetish actually made me feel drunk. I couldn’t sleep after my first shoot – the feeling of finally connecting with the spanking world was incredible.
At my next shoot, I met other spanking models for the first time. I’d been very nervous about it – my fantasies didn’t involve other girls being spanked too and I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy myself. But I’d reckoned without the pleasure of being able to discuss being a submissive/bottom with other girls who shared my perspective. Again, it was such a high to find so much, effortlessly, in common with these girls. Although I’ve enjoyed the company of other models in my mainstream career, this felt different – we could talk about the stuff that felt really important immediately – I loved the feeling of intimacy.
As I did more and more shoots, this feeling of belonging to a community grew. I met girls who had proper jobs, and whose only modelling work was for CP productions. I met scene players who didn’t do any CP production work at all, but wrote extraordinary, intimate blogs about their lifestyles. I met men who offered their considerable skill at no cost to top for CP productions – just for the love of it. And when I was invited to play with some of these people, just for fun instead of for a movie, I realised I was actually becoming part of a real community, not just an industry.
And one of the things I love about this community of producers, bloggers, models, aficionados, anonymous commentators, fans, photographers and writers is the diversity of the fantasies they share. And the fact that this carries over into the way that the performers in CP movies can look.
If I look at an average catwalk show, I see models who are between 5ft8-5ft11 tall, and UK size 6-8. If they’re caucasian, they won’t be tanned, and they’ll rarely have breasts above a B cup. They’ll have long limbs and slim hips.
In an average glamour magazine I’d expect to see lots of girls with C/D cup breasts, even, symmetrical features, long, full hair and small waists. They won’t have any body hair, but they’ll have super-long eyelashes.
When I look at successful spanking models, I see diversity. Of course, there are lots of conventionally pretty girls in this industry too, but the rules of prettiness seem more fluid to me here. Our height can range from below 5ft to over 6ft. Size 6 is ok; so is size 16. You can be 18 years old, or you can be in your 50’s and still have people who love your work. You can be soft and vulnerable, you can be toned and ripped. Of course, different people will have different favourites, and no one model will suit everyone’s tastes. But I’m very happy to have found that in this industry, my looks are not the only thing that makes me bookable as a model – my fantasies, ideas and ability to take fairly hard CP are as important as my good skin or my toned abs.
So, thank you to all the people who help make this community/industry so inclusive. And well done to everyone (top and bottom, male and female) who has the courage to play their fantasies out on film. I’m sure I’m not alone in doing this despite having physical insecurities, rather than doing so because I have none.
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Levels and Limits and Professional Ethics
Image courtesy of fabbo Rope-topia.com via the beautiful and talented Kinky Clover .
I’ve been wondering for a while about writing a blog post about how you’d go about booking a BDSM model, if you wanted to. I get lots of emails from people interested in working with me, and while most of them are perfectly normal, business-like and unremarkable, the rest often fall interestingly into two types. The first (and favourite) type is from people who seem rather hesitant about asking me to do anything so vulgar as a photo shoot, and apologetic in advance in case their shoot concept doesn’t appeal to me. This is the sort of concern is something I’m entirely sympathetic about – I worry about offending people too and I understand that a photo shoot can seem like a very daunting thing to organise, especially if you haven’t done it before. Some of these tentative first contacts have turned into wonderful shoots, and long working relationships. Which is lovely. Some of them come to nothing of course, and that’s fine too (although I do hope I haven’t scared new photographers off too often).
The second type of email is mercifully less common, but can be rather startling. Emails requesting shoots and sessions of a type that are far beyond the limits of any of my existing work, requests for my services as a domme and occasional offers for mainstream pornographic work for example. Sometimes these emails make me feel a bit upset and offended, but more often than not I just feel baffled as to why the writer could have possibly thought I’d be a good choice for their project. Here are some examples of offers I almost wish I’d taken up, simply so that I could demonstrate the monstrously bad judgement casting me would have entailed;-
Last year, a polite-sounding gentleman contacted me, asking if perhaps he and his wife could hire me to dominate them both. How to begin? I pointed them in the direction of a couple of pro-dommes – surely a more obvious choice, I thought?
‘Would you dominate and suffocate me?’ enquired another gentleman. ‘Why, of course’; I thought to myself. ‘I did something very similar for www.spanked-in-uniform.com . Oh, no; actually I didn’t’.
‘Will you submit to me via email, even though you don’t know if I’m a man, woman or a child?’ enquired another. I thought I was probably safer staying home with the BDM.
‘Can I film you peeing? No? I thought you were a fetish model?’ Well, I am. But you know, there’s a world of fetish out there, and being a spanking model doesn’t mean that everything else is automatically ok too.
‘I’d like to shoot something fetishy – can you bring some fetish outfits?’ Indeed. Shall I just choose at random from the thousands of fetish options? Would you, perchance, like me to turn up wrapped entirely in cling film? Or as an adult baby? Or covered in fur? Encased in steel? Many of these would be fine, but a little precision would be welcome. And you might need to give me a budget.
I could continue, but I’m starting to feel a bit unkind. What’s needed, possibly, is a little education for people who are considering booking a model. So here’s my attempt to help; of course, I may not be representative of the modelling population but I hope this might be of some use to somebody.
Almost all models have limits related to the type of shoots they’re happy to do. In mainstream work, this often relates at least in part of levels of nudity. A catwalk model might be perfectly happy to wear a sheer top, but would be unwilling to pose topless. A Page 3 model would be likely to be super-comfortable topless, but might be insistent on keeping her knickers on at all times. A model who poses for artists would be likely to be brilliantly comfortable nude, but might feel exploited and offended by a photographer trying to get her into provocative or striptease type poses. And some models would be aghast at the idea of shooting video of any type (or they might charge more money and would want to negotiate a different rate in advance).
I’ve always been happy to work up to fully nude, but not explicitly ‘open leg’ as is the uncharming description of more sexual poses . For spanking work, this has sometimes been a bit hard to explain (though mercifully, many spanking producers have an almost magical instinct for not pushing nudity limits). It’s sometimes impossible to avoid glimpses of intimate areas in nude spanking videos, but I aim to avoid any deliberate attempts to focus specifically on genitalia either in BDSM or mainstream work.
Happy New Year!
After seeing the new year in with the BDM, who very kindly gave me 12 strokes of the cane (which had been my idea because I have a very short memory and had forgotten how much it would be likely to hurt) I’ve woken up in 2011 feeling very energetic and ready to have an interesting and good year. Thank you to all of you who visit my blog. It is a constant source of surprise and happiness when I find people who know what I’ve been thinking because they’ve read about it here. So I’ll try to share more of what goes on in my life here in 2011.
Good heavens, I’m also very happy to have been nominated as Spankee of the Year over at http://thespankingspot.com , along with some very super girls. So if you like my spanking work (or the work of one of those other beastly girls) do go along and vote for one of us if you feel like it.
I’ll try to write more often but not write quite such freakishly long posts this year 🙂
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