When you think about pornography, you might automatically picture mainstream porn with fake orgasms, money shots, and actresses pretending to get pleasure from things you wouldn’t even dream of doing. Mainstream porn is often dominated by the male gaze, and caters to men’s fantasies rather than portraying the reality of sex. Feminist porn is working to change that, capturing how sexuality works in real life (including laughter, conversations about consent and pleasure, and changing things up when it’s not working quite right) – with the same high-quality production standards you’d expect from big companies.
So, what’s it like to work behind the camera, creating a genre of porn that’s not yet mainstream, but is quickly transforming the adult industry? We sat down with Angie Rowntree, director and producer of sexy, edgy, feminist porn at Sssh.com, to get the scoop on just what it’s like to work in the adult industry, why making porn is so empowering, and how feminist porn is changing the world (for real).
What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
In a nutshell, I direct, produce, and market female-friendly and couples-friendly adult entertainment. I’ve been doing this since I launched Sssh.com in 1999. I was already involved in running other adult websites prior to founding Sssh, but the launch of Sssh.com marks the start of my career as a director and producer of original works.
What inspired you to create Sssh.com? How was your journey?
The inspiration was simple: Sometime in the mid-90s, I looked around the adult entertainment market and noticed there was almost nothing being offered intended to appeal to women. I was bothered by this fact – and even more bothered by the feedback I’d get when I asked directors and people who ran adult studios why there wasn’t more female-friendly porn on the market. They all gave me some version of the same response: “Women don’t watch porn.”
I thought this claim was self-fulfilling BS, frankly. If nobody is making porn with female viewers in mind, why should anyone expect women to watch porn? I figured if I set out to make porn with women viewers in mind, I’d find an abundant audience of women who were thirsting for erotica which spoke to them, rather than just about them.
These days, “porn for women” and “feminist porn” seem more and more present in wider society’s lexicon and purview, a development I’m pleased with for reasons that go way beyond justifying my own career. I’ll admit it though — it’s nice to be sitting here 20 years later, reminiscing about how so many people used to tell me I was wasting my time and there was no such thing as a market for female-friendly porn, all while I watch the modern adult market definitively prove them wrong.
You include your audience in the creative process of your films. Why is that important?
From the outset, I knew that if I just assumed my own tastes and proclivities were representative of all women, I’d fail. I knew this because instinctively it made sense to me women’s tastes and fantasies would be just as varied and diverse as those of men. When I thought about ways to assure I was serving a broad range of interests and desires, surveying my members and soliciting their feedback seemed like an obvious place to start. Rather than try to guess what people wanted to see, it became a listening process.
What are some of the most common themes women want to see in porn?
One of the most consistent things I hear is women want to see a connection between the performers – a sense of chemistry and mutual affection which goes beyond two people merely having sex on camera. In terms of specific fantasies and themes, I’ve observed a real uptick in women wanting to explore BDSM and other “kinky” areas, which (for better or worse) may in part be driven by the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey.
As I mentioned earlier, women’s tastes in porn vary just as much as men’s do, so when I talk about the feedback I’ve received, it’s important to understand I’m speaking about general trends. It’s frustratingly common for people to believe all women only want to see “soft” porn or the same themes they’d find in a lot of erotic literature. Sure, there are women for whom this is true – but there’s also plenty of women who like “edgier” content, depictions of rough sex and a lot of other things which don’t fit the stereotypes people have of female porn viewers.
We LOVED “Empowering Ava”, your latest virtual reality film. You see the experience through the woman’s eyes – which hasn’t previously been done. What was your experience producing your first VR film?
Directing for VR is completely different from shooting a traditional movie, and I absolutely loved the challenges it presented. In VR, you have to take so many more things into consideration, such as sound, light and camera placement, and especially the crew!
When I’m working in a VR space, I always relate to it as a theater stage. Once you think about it as a type of theater stage, it’s fairly straightforward to direct and block. It’s not like a movie, where you can cut when you want, shoot different angles, do a retake, or whisper a line or direction to your actors. You want to have as few cuts as possible within each scene, so you work with your actors until their performances flow and they know their marks.
Shooting a movie using the dynamic storytelling model requires a very different set of skills on the part of both the director and the performers. In a conventional movie, the director, editor, colorist all work to direct the viewer’s attention to what they want them to see on screen. When using the dynamic storytelling 360 model, the action can happen anywhere within that space. In this environment, we use sound to not only direct the viewer but also help the viewer feel truly immersed.
We are shooting our second VR movie this summer and the one thing I’ve noticed is that you have to make sure VR is the best platform to tell your story. VR is certainly the next big thing, but it’s not always the best tool to use for every story — it’s important to be honest with yourself about this as a filmmaker. You have to ask yourself, Am I using this to make my story better or because it’s the form that’s “on trend”? As a filmmaker, you need to give the viewer an environment that is interesting, an experience, and one that invokes emotion — the choice of format should come from that I think.
How has the industry changed since you first launched in 1999?
The industry has changed in countless ways since the 1990s – not all for the better. On the good side, the industry has become a much more diverse place, with more women coming in as directors, producers, company owners, executives, and other positions of influence all the time. We’re also seeing more attention paid to the needs and welfare of performers, although I think this is an area where much more progress is still needed.
On the bad side of things, content piracy and the proliferation of piracy-based “free” porn sites has really undermined the market and the value of the products we make. A lot of people these days think of porn as something which is and should be free. Making this development even more galling from the standpoint of a director and producer is the fact it was a segment of the online adult industry which trained consumers to think this way (or at least capitalized on sentiments brewing in wider society about “free” media — porn is not the only space impacted by content piracy. Mainstream film, music, literature, journalism, and more have all been impacted too). The proliferation of tube sites, especially in the early/mid-2000s when they were first growing in popularity, was directly connected to widespread content piracy. Back then, virtually every video available on tube sites constituted a copyright violation.
It’s a real shame — because piracy doesn’t just undermine the ability of producers to earn a profit from their existing work, it undermines our ability to pay performers and fund future productions. For all the fear a lot of people who work in the industry have about the prospect of excessive governmental regulation, I’d say piracy has been far more damaging to the industry than any anti-porn prosecutor or socially conservative legislator.
How do you hope the industry will evolve in the next decade?
I’d like to see a continuation of the diversity trend at all levels of the industry, from performers and directors to company owners and studio heads, greater emphasis on the health, safety, and well-being of performers. I’d also like to see a return to the idea of porn as a product people pay to acquire from the companies which produced it, rather than download it from a third-party which pirated the movie as part of an illicit scheme to profit from intellectual property theft.
Of all the changes I’d like to see within the industry, the one I view with the most “moral urgency” (for lack of a better term) is the need for a greater focus on the ethical production of porn. Among other things, this means always ensuring the performers are comfortable with what they’re being asked to do an absolute assurance of informed consent with respect to every aspect of the performance. For example, on my sets, we have several hard and fast rules, the most important of which is the performers can always call for a pause or stop in filming, no questions asked, for any reason they deem necessary. I’d like to think it’s already the same way on every porn producer’s set.
That’s so important! Btw, congratulations on your recent Stamp of Approval by the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee!
Thank you!
Can you tell us about the missions behind your other websites, MindBrowse.com and SexTalkTuesday.com?
I see SexTalkTuesday as a way for us to engage our members and make them feel like a part of a community, one where they have a voice which can be heard publicly. In some ways, I view it as a logical extension of the surveys we’ve conducted for years and the feedback we solicit from our fans and members. It’s another channel through which people can make their preferences known and participate in a broader conversation about sex, gender roles, the depiction of women in all sorts of media (not just porn), and many other important areas which intersect with adult entertainment and sexual expression.
Mindbrowse has a similar intent, but it’s aimed more at an audience within the adult industry, rather than a consumer audience. We sometimes refer to Mindbrowse as “a place where the adult entertainment industry’s ideas go to grow up” – by which we mean it’s a forum for serious discussion and exploration of topics which relate to porn, but which aren’t “entertaining” in the usual sense of the word. It’s a forum for adult industry professionals to debate and discuss everything from business ethics and best practices to more lofty, philosophical territory, like the nexus between political speech and erotic expression.
Do you have any upcoming projects or films we can look forward to?
I’m really excited about a new project we shot last year which has two “mainstream” entertainment stars in it, along with adult performers. It’s currently in post-production (there are lots of special effects involved) and due to be released later this year. We’re also hard at work on a second VR feature, which includes some truly exceptionally beautiful locations and then our big feature for 2017…well…I don’t want to say too much about the project just yet, other than it’s a tale as old as time, and of course a story inspired by feedback from a Sssh member. Our members have such wonderful, vivid imaginations, and I just love bringing their fantasies and desires to life on the screen.
