Let's Face It – Faces Are Important In Porn Too!

by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com. 

Over the past couple of years, there has been an impassioned debate and many lively conversations in the adult film industry of “how to make better porn”.  Stances and ideas from adult film directors and commentators range from “better production values and lighting”, to “more fleshed out storylines”, “webisodes”, to all kinds of other frameworks to improve porn to in general, or specific to some audience demographic (i.e. “feminist porn”, “porn for women”, “ethical porn”, and even stretching it a bit and going into psychological “Gaze Theory“) for guiding principals.

Read on…

All of that aside and not to get into some lengthy wall of text of “what specific genders want” (when, in actuality, people are as diverse as snowflakes and simply can not be easily put into a box),  this thought comes to mind: “is there any one thing that might, in general, help adult films be a bit sexier and hotter”?

I think there are many, but at least one comes to mind:  Faces.

One hallmark of a lot of generic porn is the camera framing in a way that cuts off the man’s head, and focuses on the woman’s nether regions, and then pans up to her face periodically to either deliver a wanton gaze at the lens, or covered in cum.

In a recent article by Dan Gutierrez at Badoink Magazine, he seems to be onto something, observing:

A lot of us are often looking for realism in our porn. Our fantasies work better when they’re grounded in a more believable scenario. That’s what brought success to gonzo porn and amateur sites, the fact they could create a situation where bad acting skills and a cheap budget won’t ruin the credibility of the scene for our brains.

I’m an avid porn watcher – more so now that I write about it for BaDoink – and one of my biggest criticisms of the whole industry is the obsession with genital close-ups that take way longer than they should, while often neglecting facial expressions.

Some of the hottest and most realistic images of a sexual experience happen in those rare candid moments when we witness another person’s honest facial expressions…

Well stated, Dan!

Porn Star Lacey Blake in her “Wish List To Porn Directors 2014” at the beginning of this year, stated:
“1. SO, WHERE’S THE FUCKING GUY?– Do you have any idea how frustrating it is during the pop shot to actually hear a guy moaning or grunting while jerking off and then having to watch his little penis head jerk around on the side edge of the screen, but we never actually get to see the guy? Hello? Females watch porn too, you know?”

Since the early days of mainstream film making, directors have known the power of the face and its ability to increase drama, provide meaning and context in the pursuit of creating compelling and entertaining movies.  A great example of this is Clarke Gable and Vivian Leigh in “Gone With The Wind”. Beyond the amazing acting, action and cinematography in this epic, the really memorable moments are the facial expressions between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara.  If a picture says a thousand words, here are two as an example:

Mind you, I’m not suggesting that porn actors all develop the Stanislavsky type range of Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, Marilyn Monroe et. al,  but coverage of facial expression is, IMHO, just plain HOT when filmed correctly!

Drawing from 15 years as part of the film crew at Sssh.com, I found a nice example of one of our works we shot back in 2007 – “Interlude” starring Daisy Duxe and Rob Gadling It’s a story about a chance meeting, connections and passion. (The Story Behind the Movie: We had shot this movie in 2007. After a drive crash, we thought the footage was unrecoverable. Last month, as we were backing-up and moving data around, we came across the masters. So here is the more-or-less-safe-for-work trailer released 7 years after filming.)…

Sssh Original Erotica Film “Interlude” Trailer  – Full feature movie premiering at sssh,com on April 16th, 2014.

I’ve been noticing a lot more of this sort of coverage of the faces from many adult film makers these days and applaud loudly and enthusiastically!  It doesn’t require having a massive budget, shooting on location on an exotic island, or having a Dostoyevsky-length storyline that dominates the sex. But, filming and including that extra footage to show the actors really enjoying themselves makes all the difference for many viewers.

Dan at Badoink also covered a VERY interesting film project related to this topic:  Beautiful Agony.

“Beautiful Agony started as a multimedia project developed in 2003 by a group of Australian friends, based on the hypothesis that eroticism in human imagery rests not in naked flesh and sexual illustration, but engagement with the face. A few more curious friends who connected with their theory made a handful of videos that showcased unscripted, genuine orgasms while masturbating. The experiment worked, and soon after they started accepting more and more submissions, paying their contributors and charging for subscriptions.

While you’ll hardly see any real nudity, there’s more intimacy than you’re likely to find anywhere else. Mostly you’ll see women and men masturbating on their own, but there are also plenty of videos of couples and even groups of people together. It’s a simple and brilliant idea that captures very intense human moments.”

According to their website “About Us” page (which is just a “little” preachy, but informative nonetheless):

Beautiful Agony began as a multimedia experiment, to test a hypothesis that eroticism in human imagery rests not in naked flesh and sexual illustration, but engagement with the face. We wondered whether film of a genuine, unscripted, natural orgasm – showing only the face – could succeed where the most visceral mainstream pornography fails, and that is, to actually turn us on.

Considering porn has had a few thousand years to evolve, alongside other streams of culture – you’d expect it to be refined and sophisticated. Yet instead of developing in sophistication and nuance, it has become a brutal and charmless rendering of human sexuality. It’s like the people who make it, don’t really understand it. While they’ve been very entrepreneurial and driven the uptake of new technologies, pornographers have forsaken the essentials of eroticism in favour of clichés and an obsessive pursuit of extremes.

Not taken seriously as a valuable cultural genre, the porn industry has lacked real production talent and been, for the most part, exploited for short term profit. What other industry has invested so little in the quality of its product and the customer experience?

Well, this might be just a little too NYU Film School high-minded and judgmental for me, but Beautiful Agony is a fascinating film project representing a unique genre in porn (well, kinda-sorta porn!)

So. Face it. It’s all about the face!

More Sex commentary by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com – Porn For Women, By Women since 1999