Storytelling is a skill as old as mankind, providing compelling looks at life and the issues that surround it — and this is no less true for the porn industry than it is for any other endeavor or social stewardship.
Although there are many facets to adult content production, perhaps the highest expression of the art comes in the form of feature films — which, while lacking the budget and resources of their mainstream counterparts, can exhibit the highest levels of creativity and emotional impact — with skillful storytelling being a key ingredient in the equation.
On my sites, the love of the story has transcended from an appreciation of our ideas to an entire community of writers — members who submit their own stories that they want to bring to life.
To gain some fresh insights into the world of storytelling in adult cinema, XBIZ sought out the expertise of a collection of renowned XBIZ Award-winning directors and producers. Their comments were most enlightening and underscore the perennial value of meticulous messaging — even in porn.
Storytelling Drives Brand Loyalty
Delving right into the importance of storytelling in porn, Gamma Films Head of Production Bree Mills, the 2018 XBIZ Director of the Year and producer for studios such as 2018 XBIZ Best New Studio Pure Taboo, with its renowned title, “Anne: A Taboo Parody,” along with mainstay studio Girlsway, tells XBIZ that for true fans of story-driven content, the story and characters are paramount to the experience.
“These viewers want to watch the whole episode, not just a few minutes they need to get off,” Mills explains. “On my sites, the love of the story has transcended from an appreciation of our ideas to an entire community of writers — members who submit their own stories that they want to bring to life. At least half of the stories we produce for Girlsway, for example, are generated from user submissions which is a key part of our experience and retention strategy.”
TrenchcoatX Director Kayden Kross, 2018 XBIZ Awards winner in two of the highly competitive vignette categories for her movies “Sun-Lit” and “Sacrosanct,” says that when storytelling is done well it can grab user engagement in a way that improves the experience of the sex scene that follows.
“The story puts a filter on the sex that can’t be achieved by simply rubbing bodies together with extra energy or prolonging looks,” Kross says. “It immerses the viewer before we get to what they came for.”
Stills by Alan, a director under contract with Gamma Films and assigned to exclusively produce content for the Girlsway site, tells XBIZ that a lot of viewers enjoy storyline-driven pornography — such as that seen in his highly acclaimed feature, “Fantasy Factory: Wastelands.”
“[Fans] want to be immersed in a fantasy world where they live vicariously through the characters they see in the scene,” Alan explains. “When they find a site that provides that type of experience, it can lead to some fierce brand loyalty.”
As evidence, Alan says he has been interacting with the same long-term members in the Girlsway forum for years — illustrating the value of community feedback for driving storytelling ideas forward.
As for Kay Brandt, a bestselling author, screenwriter and director for popular brands including Adam & Eve, Digital Playground, Girlfriends Films and more, tells XBIZ that storytelling is everything in her movies — even if there’s not a formal script to rely upon.
“Storytelling can simply be a theme that is acted out and conveyed through the performances,” Brandt explains. “I sometimes create a scenario, as I did with my XBIZ Award-winning X-rated cooking show, ‘Forked,’ and then direct the cast to act accordingly. For example, Mercedes Carrera played an ‘elevated’ version of herself in that film and the majority of her dialogue was improvised.”
Brandt says “Forked” tells a fantasy story of what happens when porn stars get together and cook, without following a solid script, but following more of a structured outline.
“I knew how I wanted all the cooking segments, sex scenes and dinner party to flow and there was no reason to script all the dialogue,” Brandt reveals. “The natural, spontaneous, adlibbed conversations that happen in the kitchen and in the bedrooms are part of what makes the movie so special. A script would have taken away from the end result I was going after, but yet, there’s still a story happening.”
For her upcoming feature “Submissive Wives,” Brandt scripted the themes to be acted out and the voiceovers to accompany them, but emphasizes “anything heavier than that would have been too much.”
“Sometimes, less is more, and that’s certainly the case for this kinky romance all-sex movie,” Brandt shares, noting her enthusiasm for creating fan-engagement through storylines.
“I know for a fact that the majority of my fans and regular buyers of my movies (and books) expect a certain level of storytelling. They know that my films can’t simply be treated as jerk-off material because the story is a turn-on, too; especially when the story is derived from an erotic source, like books,” Brandt says. “When I adapt books, I’m also engaging the attention and interest of the author’s fan base, which has proven to be a very successful way to introduce potential consumers who are avid readers of erotic books, to story-driven porn.”
MindGeek’s Dick Bush, a director for popular brands including Brazzers, Digital Playground and most recently FakeHub, says it’s arguable that storytelling isn’t that important in porn, but notes the porn that gains a following or goes viral is more often than not story-based.
“Coming up with new ideas for movies can be tough because we make so many,” Bush reveals. “But it’s incredibly satisfying to construct a real story with interesting characters and a three-act structure!”
Mile High director and producer Jacky St. James says that for the people that like her particular films, storytelling is critical.
“There are always going to people that just want to jack off, and for them, no story is necessary,” says St. James. “They can log onto a tube site, watch 30 seconds and then go on with their day.”
St. James notes there’s a certain expectation that she sets as a storyteller in this business.
“People will know there will be an arc, often a twist, and always motivation for choice,” St. James adds, exclaiming, “I labor over my scripts because to me it’s so important that what I put out there I can confidently put my name behind — I want to be proud of everything I put out — even if it is something like ‘Cum Inside Me 2!’”
MissaX of AllHerLuv renown tells XBIZ that when she started a bespoke video business more than half-a-dozen years ago, she learned so much about what turns on an individual and why, and about the type of work that makes her happiest to produce.
“I was happiest when I had the creative freedom to add in my own ideas,” MissaX explains. “All my early work was adlibbed, but when I hired actors, it was difficult to explain to them all of what I have learned from the customers and impossible to expect them to perform all that I’ve learned on the spot.”
It is a level of control and vision that can be hard to share with others.
“When we worked with actors, our scripts went from basic direction to detailed dialogue, choreography, and emotion direction, and we saw the video products improving as the years passed,” MissaX reveals. “With the more thought and work that when into it, the stories themselves improved so much to where it embarrasses me to look at my work just two years ago.”
MissaX says that after a year or two the emails started to trickle in with customers revealing how certain stories or characters stuck in their mind, haunting their fantasies, and how they wanted more of her.
“Think of how thrilling this idea is: the customer can watch a sex scene but the character can linger in his mind after the scene is finished!” MissaX exclaims, explaining, “This is powerful. This was a turning point for our business.”
This experience led to the “MissaX Taboo Playhouse,” her promise to MissaX and AllHerLuv customers to keep evolving and learning, with the director telling XBIZ she hopes that in two years’ time, she can be embarrassed by the work she is proud to create today, saying, “[My fans] deserve the best and I will give them all my love.”
It is all part of how MissaX uses storytelling to cultivate brand loyalty.
“If a MissaX story, or character in the story, plays in his mind when the scene is finished, and begs him to recollect his own experiences in his own life … real-life people that he knows or had known, and the story triggers him to dream … I hope that he paints himself into my story. I want him to think about what he would do if he was in the scenario,” MissaX confides. “These are the types of questions we ask ourselves when we read a really good book, or watch a great movie … can porn be just as thought-provoking as a dramatic book or movie story? I would scream ‘Yes!’
“If I can collide a memorable story with porn, a story with emotion that is thought-provoking, then I can be satisfied that my effort is worthwhile,” she adds, saying there is another way that storytelling can cultivate loyalty in regards to branding, pointing to creative special or practical effects or shooting techniques that creators innovated; noting these techniques can and have been copied — but no one can copy another’s voice.
“When you tell a story, you’re translating emotion to the viewer, using characters that you’ve dreamt up, and you know the characters as well as if they were real-life people, as if you’ve had conversations with them, shared their joys, and experienced their troubles,” MissaX explains. “The goal is to make the viewer feel — to pull on their heartstrings so they feel empathy, love, tension — and sometimes fear and horror.
“I believe it’s impossible for someone to duplicate a good story, impossible to duplicate the characters you know better than anyone. This is comforting, it’s really sweet, no one can duplicate your unique voice or mine. It’s a beautiful thing that every writer and director has her own original voice, and it makes storytellers different and unique from the rest of the porn industry,” MissaX adds. “A good storyteller has opportunities to compete with brands who impress by big budget casts with several actors in a role, or an expensive shoot location. This means there is an opportunity for anyone to be a successful filmmaker. A good story focuses on the characters, their relationships and evolution, and it makes all the extra bells and whistles look trivial.”
Wicked Pictures’ Contract Director Brad Armstrong, the creative hand behind the acclaimed release of “Camgirl” earlier this year, tells XBIZ he’s always been into plot-driven movies.
“There have always been tons of gonzo and ‘all sex’ type movies out there. I’ve done a fair share of high-end vignette style movies myself, but my bread and butter has always been storytelling,” Armstrong says. “I like to think of them as low budget mainstream movies that just happen to have sex in them.”
Armstrong says Wicked Pictures has always focused on these types of movies and has built a strong and industry-wide reputation as a leader in the feature movie game.
“Our fans are as loyal as they come,” Armstrong adds. “If viewers and fans are looking for ‘plot-driven porn,’ they know Wicked is one of the few places they can still find it and they can always be sure of what they’re buying ... quality.”
Favorite Storytelling Techniques in Focus
Tackling the topic of her favorite storytelling techniques, Kay Brandt tells XBIZ she enjoys making books into movies.
“As a writer who always loves a challenge, translating a manuscript into a screenplay is the toughest and most rewarding work I’ve done so far,” Brandt reveals. “There’s the painstaking job of reading through the source material and deciding what will work well for film and what won’t, then transferring the story to a totally different format — the screenplay. Writers often stick to one format, manuscripts, screenwriting, long-form blogging, articles, press releases, short stories, etc., but I prefer to stay fluid.”
For his part, Dick Bush always tries to have main characters somewhat changed by the end of the story.
“If they’re changed because of the sex they’ve had, then that’s all the better. It takes a good writer to make the sex a part of the story,” Bush tells XBIZ. “I also enjoy writing about underdogs. In ‘Hand Solo’ and ‘Power Bangers,’ our main characters are losers who must go on a journey of self-discovery and become heroes by the end.”
Jacky St. James says that within adult, narrative and voiceover are powerful tools that help overcome the lack of acting experience in the business.
“I studied acting for over 20 years ... I know every technique under the sun for getting an actor to emote, but at the end of the day, there are some people that can’t go where you need them to go. When you have voiceover, you don’t have to rely on someone’s inability to go to places they can’t go,” St. James says. “I’m not talking about crying or screaming, I’m talking about the subtlety and nuance that sometimes only highly trained actors can emote.”
“Pretty much everyone in this industry can cry on cue (it’s not a gigantic feat to get anyone to cry), but getting people to really react and to comprehend the subtleties of the story can be much more difficult,” St. James adds. “Voiceover allows me to capture moments and choose the most believable if the actor cannot embrace the more cerebral, nuanced parts of the role.”
When it comes to her favorite storytelling techniques, Bree Mills says it all really depends on the brand.
“For Girlsway, we take a playful, almost ‘soap opera’ approach to our stories … with lots of recurring characters, meta-moments and inter-connected plots. For Pure Taboo, it’s all about the slow build,” Mills explains, asking, “How can I hook my viewer into the story early and allow them to watch the characters and situations unfold from a voyeuristic vantage point?
“With some of my upcoming brands, my storytelling approach is more about the visual experience,” Mills adds. “The ‘mise-en-scene’ we create in our stories and the environments and universes we imagine for our characters.”
Keeping it straightforward, Kayden Kross advises content creators to simply “show, don’t tell.”
“Don’t even tell it with dialogue,” Kross says. “Just show it.”
This showing is becoming easier, as Stills by Alan notes that with Indie film equipment and technology improving at light speed, in 2018, pornographers have an incredible array of tools available to them.
“Things that only big budget mainstream movies had in the ‘80s and ‘90s are routinely available to filmmakers and hobbyists today,” Alan tells XBIZ. “Drones, gimbals, miniature cameras and VFX are all affordable tools in a modern pornographer’s toolkit. The question facing adult cinematographers today is ‘How to use these tools to tell an erotic story?’”
Despite the improvements in technology and tools, Brad Armstrong says adult feature directors have an incredibly difficult task ahead of them.
“They have unbelievable time and budget constraints that can often make storytelling almost impossible. They need to build characters, backstories, conflicts, story arcs and, of course, realistic reasons for everyone to be fucking at regularly timed intervals ... not always the easiest task, especially in three to five days,” Armstrong confides. “I remember one year when Michael Bay sat at our table during an awards show ... his eyes focused on the big screens as he watched the clips of my movie. He then asked how long it took me to shoot and turned to me with his mouth hanging open as I answered ‘four days.’ I looked at him smiling and said, ‘The Struggle is Real.’
“I like to use voiceovers to convey a large amount of explanatory information in relatively quick short bursts to move the story along and alleviate a bunch of necessary plot-related dialogue,” Armstrong adds. “They help to build a stronger, deeper narrative without burning through a lot of pages. And no, I’m not talking about the cheesy, ‘super porno’ VOs that have become the mandatory opening to every gonzo scene shot nowadays.”
How Acting Pushes Storytelling
Bree Mills calls herself “an actor’s director” actively seeking to cultivate excellence in her performers, while Kayden Kross tells XBIZ that acting skill will make or break a production.
“My main focus on set is to help guide my performers into their characters and workshop with them to bring the story to life,” Mills says. “I don’t write any traditional scripts anymore, because I love seeing what happens when we actually allow our adult actors to improvise!”
“Bad acting will pull a viewer out of the story and good acting will pull them in,” Kross adds, noting, “I’d rather have no acting than bad acting.”
As with his peers, for Stills by Alan, acting expertise is everything.
“You can have the best script, the best camera, the best sets, the best wardrobe and if the actress can’t become the character then it will come out shitty,” Alan says. “However, if you have a good, talented actress she can make even the worst script work and come out great.”
Kay Brandt, meanwhile, points to the importance of a performer’s acting ability as a means of pushing believable storytelling, calling it “essential,” while Dick Bush agrees that good acting skills are important if you want to elevate the project to a higher level.
“Nothing takes a viewer right out of the story like bad acting,” Brandt says. “I really try to do my best to hire the right performers for the roles, as in, those who actually can act and have some range.”
“The same script shot with completely different actors would give wildly different results,” Bush reveals. “I always try to play to the performer’s strengths [as much as] possible by veering towards comedy or drama, depending on the actor.”
Calling believable acting “critical” to a project’s success, Jacky St. James highlights the need for casting the right person to believably convey the scripted words.
“Believability is everything. On the page, you can have the best story, but if you don’t cast the right people [you can’t] bring it to life,” she says. “I always say that without the actors, the story falls flat.”
“The best story in the world requires the best portrayal of its characters — otherwise, nobody will believe it. The viewer won’t be invested,” St. James adds. “A lot of components go into making a memorable film that is driven by story and so much of that involves the acting.”
For Brad Armstrong, good acting is incredibly important in plot-driven movies, and along with the quality of the script itself, an essential element in a scene’s success.
“I can write the best script in the world, but if the actors can’t say the words with meaning and conviction then the words are worthless. If they spit out lines that are flat and unbelievable the character him/herself will also be unbelievable,” Armstrong tells XBIZ. “One or two unbelievable characters in a movie and the whole movie becomes unbelievable.”
“Thankfully,” Armstrong adds, “we have some pretty amazing actors and actresses in the business, with some newer talent already showing some great promise.”
Even if the talent is up to the task, trusting someone else to embrace your passionate personal vision is not without its challenges — with MissaX telling XBIZ it can feel very vulnerable sharing one of your stories with an actor.
“If an actor believes in you, she (or he) can make the character. When she is excited about the role, the viewer will see it in her performance,” MissaX explains, lamenting, “I have heard ‘this is stupid,’ from an actor reading my story and it stings. A good story is stupid with an actor who doesn’t believe in her role, and on the flip side, a mediocre story can be made phenomenal with a talented actor.
“I never sleep well when a new actor is on the flight to Wisconsin to film with me,” MissaX confides, explaining, “I always worry if a new-to-me actor will understand that she is not her role, that her character has nothing to do with who she is in real life. This is why I keep my actor list small and exclusive. The actors I re-hire the most understand that we’re creating fiction.”
MissaX says her favorite actors add unexpected layers to her character.
“I’ll be watching her (or him) perform the role and teaching me something new about the character,” MissaX reveals. “I can’t tell you how much this thrills me. Sometimes I can’t help but jump up and down for joy when I see it! ‘Yes!’ I’ll tell her in celebration of any little part of the story coming to life, and I am indescribably grateful for the actors who give all their love.”
MissaX says the actors are essentially reaching through the customer’s screen and forcing the viewer to pay attention.
“[A performer] is toying with the customer’s emotions, strumming on the customer’s heartstrings to make them feel whatever she wants to convey. It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful it will make me cry because these actors are just as good (and one could argue, better) than Hollywood actors on the silver screen,” MissaX confides. “We don’t have the time or budget in porn for them to rehearse as they do in mainstream Hollywood films, but still, the actors shape the characters that will live forever in the minds and fantasies of the viewer.”
Keeping that fantasy alive, and thriving into the future, is why storytelling is especially important given the episodic nature of many releases today, where scenes are often part of a chronology.
“For episodic content, the continuity of the story is essential,” Kay Brandt says. “It has to all make sense, at least to some degree.”
Dick Bush tells XBIZ that ongoing stories in an episodic porn series make the viewer want to come back to see the next episode and says “it’s always great if you can end on a cliffhanger,” while Bree Mills says it’s important to have a strong story that can weather multiple episodes and keep a viewer’s interest, noting, “if not, the series will break down.”
For her part, Kayden Kross says good storytelling will build interest, and if done correctly, each scene should be more powerful than the scenes that preceded it.
“The culminating scene should do justice to everything that came before it,” Kross tells XBIZ. “If you have the time and the budget to create a chronology then the story as a whole should be greater than the sum of the pieces that put it together.”
One of the things Stills by Alan devotes a lot of time and energy to is character development, which is why he’s such a big fan of episodic content.
“Once I have created characters that the viewers identify with and are interested in, I like to hold that attention,” Alan explains. “A multi-part release allows me to weave together a compelling story about different characters that my audience is already emotionally invested in. It really enhances the fantasy.”
Storytelling Offers Added Value for Fans
Finally, focusing on storytelling offers added value for fans beyond what they get from traditional porn — but is the addition of “narrative” enough incentive for customers to sign up rather than seek free alternatives, such as short-form tube clips?
Kay Brandt notes that her experience is unique in this regard because she’s not just writing a script, but adapting books that already have an audience, which drives sales across other media — such as DVDs.
“When I made ‘Babysitting the Baumgartners’ in 2016, Adam & Eve saw a noticeable uptick in DVD sales for the first time in years and an increase in membership,” Brandt reveals. “Consumers will buy DVDs if they believe what’s on it is quality.”
Brandt doesn’t underestimate the benefits of making movies based on books as a way of tapping into the author’s fan base/readership.
“We found that Selena Kitt’s (the author of ‘Babysitting the Baumgartners’) fan base was beyond excited that the beloved New York Times bestselling novel was going to be made into a film and they were very willing to join and become members of Adam & Eve simply because of how much they loved the book,” Brandt explains. “They were very vocal about it on social media, especially Facebook, and Selena’s faith and trust in me were enough for her fans to trust me, too, and therefore, trust Adam & Eve. So, yes, I think my ‘type’ of storytelling does generate a large audience of buyers and absolutely is a draw for increased memberships for certain companies.”
Telling XBIZ that there’s definitely a lot of porn out there for free, Dick Bush says “if you want your basic sex videos it’s all there,” but notes that there is a higher standard of fare available.
“The companies I’ve been fortunate to write and direct for have a vast amount of high budget, big special FX blockbuster porn movies, and series where paying members have access to a whole load of content that just isn’t out there for free,” Bush explains. “Superheroes, sci-fi, action, gunfights, aliens, special FX, incredible costumes and locations. A lot of people put a lot of work into these movies and to see the love that fans have for some of them is very gratifying.”
“Ultimately,” Bush says, “you only get out what you put in and the people I work with give it their all.”
Jacky St. James says storytelling absolutely offers added value for fans.
“Tube sites often rebrand scripted, narrative films. They cut out the story and the tension, etc., so you’re never going to get the full picture through a tube site... not the way they are structured now,” St. James says. “So for me, I am grateful to the people with memberships and those who buy DVDs because they are looking at something beyond just the penetration — they want substance. I’m all about substance!”
Kayden Kross finds added value is in the way the scene is filtered through the story and cites the lack of depth that short clips have, which leads to less engagement.
“A few disassociated minutes on a tube site isn’t as immersive as those same few minutes when presented within the framework of the story as the reason those minutes exist,” Kross explains. “It is incredibly easy to become numb to images of people fucking, but we are and will always be obsessed with the story. We tell them, we watch them, we read them, we educate and entertain and deliberate on them. Story colorizes every aspect of our lives and our porn is no different.”
Stills by Alan says the added value of storyline driven pornography is that the fantasy world the viewer gets to experience is so much more detailed than what they might experience in more amateur content.
“By using a combination of creative scene concepts with interesting characters and dynamics paired with well-executed cinematography the end result can feel pretty immersive,” Alan reveals. “It’s going to be hard for viewers to find that kind of experience constantly on free sites. Plus, when fans see you working hard to deliver a great product to them they want to contribute by paying for the product they are enjoying so much.
“It doesn’t matter if the scene is a big feature or a simple scene, story-driven adult content is all about characters and fantasy,” Alan concludes. “If your model can become her character on camera, then the fantasy will resonate with the viewer regardless of how exotic or simple the storyline is.”
Providing the wisdom of an experienced perspective, Brad Armstrong reminds readers that story-based porn is “traditional porn” — at least it has been for the 30 years he’s been in the business...
“Although in the early-early days, porn was all loops and just straightforward sex scenes, the backbone of adult cinema has always been ‘plot-driven porn.’ Only with the advent of the internet and the birthing of an attention-deficient generation has the focus become all about ‘the scene,’” Armstrong explains, adding, “I call it ‘Boy 1 with Girl 2 on Couch 3’ porn.”
Armstrong says this kind of porn definitely appeals to fans and may inevitably end up as all the consumer has to choose from in the future, but for now, he’s proud of the work he’s done.
“We at Wicked Pictures have made some great movies over the years — ones that have left their mark on the industry — a number of which were named among the ‘Best Adult Movies of All Time’ on the Showtime Special,” Armstrong concludes. “And when I’m old and grey and sitting around in the old folks’ home, I’ll look back on my movie-making career fondly. I’ve come to terms with the fact that people may not remember who directed ‘Flashpoint,’ ‘Dreamquest,’ ‘2040’ or even ‘Fallen,’ and my legacy will be long forgotten ... but I can guarantee you no one will ever remember who directed the epic saga of ‘Cum Swappers 24.’”
With a future bringing more fan customization and user-driven storylines, and ultimately, AI-tailored plot experiences, storytelling will remain a vital part of profitable porn for the long-term, adding many opportunities for editorial excellence for those whose art demands more than a simple sex video, but rather all of the creativity they can muster — and the fans will benefit.
