Since I started my career in front of the camera, I have always had a desire to create. As an adult actress, I have been fortunate to take on many different roles in over a hundred productions by well-known porn companies. Still, I wanted to explore my own fantasies and passions on video and getting to that point has been an exciting learning experience.
I love coming to set and performing for my fans. By watching crews in action countless times, I learned the basics of set design and production. But when I started shooting my own content at home, I realized there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. I quickly grew frustrated with my lack of equipment and technical skills, which resulted in no content being produced. I didn’t want the content I shot and the content I wanted, I couldn’t shoot!
There wasn’t one right way to light the set, but there sure were lots of wrong ways.
For over two years, even as I declined content trade shoots, I marveled at the ability and skill of every director for whom I worked; watching them light the set, block the scenes and simply have a plan of action for the entire day made me hungry to start producing my own content again.
As I started feeling more confident, I drilled down and got honest with myself. "Why wasn’t I shooting anything? When would it be the right time? So I decided to get serious about making my own higher quality content at home where I had complete creative control. If you know me personally, you know I’m a perfectionist, so you can only imagine what I put myself through in both the mindset of a director and a performer.
At first, it wasn’t easy. Creating a semi-professional shooting space at home comes with its limitations. There were behind-the-camera considerations I hadn't thought about during those days on studio sets, when all I’d have to do was show up and fuck! My equipment was not nearly as advanced, my space was not ideal, the sofa squeaked and I often cut my head off for part of the video.
When I received a request from a fan to shoot a custom video, I saw this as the opportunity to film a fully produced video. It was frustrating and challenging, but I had finally filmed my first homemade scene! I was proud, I was excited and I felt on top of the world. Then, I watched what I had filmed and holy shit was it bad! The lighting was awful, with shadows everywhere. I used the front-facing camera on my phone, which I later learned was not as capable as the rear camera. The audio sounded like I filmed it in my car. How could I not notice so many things had gone wrong?
Over the next few years of trial and error, here’s what I learned…
For starters, my initial equipment consisted of a ring light for camming and my cell phone camera, since my budget was limited. After turning to YouTube to gain some knowledge about why that first video wasn’t successful, the most important thing I gleaned was the importance of lighting. There wasn’t one right way to light the set, but there sure were lots of wrong ways. Based on the research, I purchased three LED panel lights and, guess what? I had horrible shadows. What the hell? So I went back to YouTube and learned about light positioning, diffusion and direction. After a lot of trial and error and many curse words, I finally figured it out!
I wasn’t in the clear just yet, though; I still had to fix the video and audio quality. Since I had heard great things about GoPro cameras, I bought one … and while the video quality was definitely better, the audio was terrible! This was my biggest mistake. I had assumed a very expensive camera would magically produce a beautiful product, regardless of my skill, but I was wrong.
A new challenge then emerged as I looked around at my available shooting space. What I thought would look great on camera often didn’t and I would have to perform every position from one angle because the room could only be shot from one direction. I failed to pay attention to the limitations of my shooting frame and would often cut off my arms, legs, head and tits out of the shot. One time, I almost lost a pop shot after a 17-minute blowjob and barely got it back into frame to save the scene!
So, I went back to YouTube to solve my spatial dilemma and learned to get creative with my space. Since my living room was tricky to shoot in because of its layout, I put my “living room” in my bedroom and my “bedroom” in my living room! If you come into my place, the first thing you’ll see is my bed right in the middle of the room. Go into my bedroom and you’ll find a pristine living room set shoot-able from multiple angles.
As I started liking my content, I made more of it on my own. Mostly, though, I shot from start to finish without cuts. It was easier to use a simple video editor app to add my watermark than it was to piece together multiple parts of a scene as not everything goes as planned during filming when you’re upside down, choking on a cock.
Pretty soon, I headed back to trusty YouTube to learn some basic editing skills like transitions, cutting out mistakes, color correction and audio adjustments. I practiced and watched a lot of porn to see how other editors did it. I mean … like … a lot of porn! There is so much I still don’t know or understand about video editing, but after almost four years, I have learned enough that I’m not only liking my content, I’m loving it.
