Time for Beta

As expected, we've been given the green light to bring Behind The Sites to the public. Apparently The Powers That Be found the day to day exploits that we go through to be funny as hell when put into print. As we were told "we know what happens, but putting it all together in one narrative shows just how silly some things are. Go for it!"

What this means is that it's time to fill in some of the blank spots, start adding in lots of content (pictures), and get some better graphics on the site.

We aren't going to make this a public beta quite yet, so only a few dozen people will be milling around the halls of BTS for now. After the Labor Day holiday we should be able to move to Open Beta, so until then it will remain quiet.

I've changed my mind...

One stereotype about women is that they change their minds all the time, but as we like to say, it's a stereotype for a reason. It's not uncommon for a model to have a change of heart about doing pictures and just quit on us all of a sudden. It sucks, but it's a reality of the business.

We just had that happen with a site that until now we haven't discussed here on BTS, Katelyn's Cove. This one is a little bit unusual in that she's an exotic dancer and obviously isn't a shy girl. Not only does she not want to shoot more pictures for her site, but she wants her site removed.

Katelyn is a smart girl, she knows that once pictures are put out on the net that they are there forever, no matter how much she might like to see them disappear. Knowing that, she still just wants her site removed for "personal reasons". We've been playing phone tag so I haven't gotten to talk to her yet, but I'm sure there's a heck of a story here.

So you wanna get naked....

The most common question any adult site producer gets is "where do you get the girls?". The honest answer to that is everywhere and anywhere. Believe it or not finding girls who dont mind getting naked for the camera isn't that tough, especially when you're dangling easy money. However, the screening process is often an adventure.

There are opportunities in the adult industry for women of all shapes, sizes and colors. But occasionally, we'll receive a pic from one looking to pose that is so ugly we jump back and go "DAMN!". We're talking sasquatch here. Although we will shoot all types of women, we do have a strict policy against shooting girls who are uglier than we are.

After we weed out the butter hogs and freaks of nature, the next step is to see if they're serious enough to show up. Before we setup a shoot, we do interviews. If they no show that, we know they're unreliable and write them off. They only get one shot. If they do show, we see how they look in person, and let them see we're normal folks too. And we find out if we're gonna be able to spend time with them without them driving us crazy.

It's really not unlike recruiting and hiring for a corporate job and often just as time consuming. But it's all worthwhile when you finally do find that girl that is hot and has that exhibitionist streak that she really wants to share with the world.

Willy's Been Drinking at Quark's Bar

This will be a quicky. It's a small world when you start getting involved in the porn industry on a local basis. There aren't a lot of people doing it on a professional level, and they all tend to know each other.

Further proof of that this week. We just noticed in his samples that one of Willy's recent finds is none other than Jennifer with the Ferengi teeth. We can't bitch, we missed it too on the interview. But new rule, all samples must include a pic of the girl smiling!

We are in Alpha

Putting an adult site online is not really any different than any other project, it goes through several stages where it gets massaged a bit, approvals are obtained, and it goes live or gets killed.

Stage one is the idea. We had the idea for this site awhile back, mentioned it to The Powers That Be who were mildly amused and were then told to throw something up so they could see it. That's where we're at now, call it Alpha. At this point nothing about the site is written in stone, anything and everything could change about it. The graphics are temporary, the layout may change, the entire thing could be flushed down the crapper.

The biggest difference between the adult and non-adult worlds when it comes to this process is the speed in which things happen. With adult stuff a project can go from idea to publication remarkably fast, sometimes in a week. BTS hasn't gone that quickly as it wasn't given a top priority stamp by The Powers That Be but it's still moving along at a good clip.

We expect approval to move to Beta to happen in a week or so. We've been giving priority to Lexie lately so that's going to slow this down a little, but Beta will be soon.

The Studio from Hell

We do not shoot in a studio very often. We're not taking pics for Playboy or Penthouse, so we try to get more natural settings. We wanna shoot the girl next door not a "model" as such. We had our own studio for a while, but it proved to be a bad investment as we averaged using it maybe once every 3 months while we had it.

However, once in a blue moon we do come up with an occasion where we'd like to shoot in a studio to get that perfect light control and such. We had one of those come up with a new girl we're shooting. We wanted to get some shots with perfect lighting against a nice solid backdrop to make for easy masking of her pics to use in her site design and such.

We hate to go downtown, so we started shopping around some of the studios out in the 'burbs that we have never used before. We found one that was dirt cheap and appeared to be just what the doctor ordered, well out into the fringes of suburbia and very porn friendly. It turns out the guy who owns it is someone we've met a few times at trade shows.

We asked if we could tour the facilities first prior to renting. He seemed a bit taken aback by that request. But we always scout any location to see what we're getting, what we might need to bring and also how to get there so we can give the girls very detailed directions. I've yet to meet a model who can use mapquest to find a destination. I think it's genetic. So anyhow, he agrees to meet us and let us in for a look.

First thing we discovered is this thing is not in suburbia, this studio is in the boonies. It's far enough out in the country that the gas station we stopped at had a big jar of pickled eggs sitting on the counter. I think the sign out front said "Sam Drucker's". The studio itself was in a row of sheet metal buildings that I think were originally intended to be self storage. The front door opened into an "office" that was about 8x10 feet. The "studio" was the rear where the garage door raised up and was probably just big enough to pull a car into.

The lights? He had some shoplights from Home Depot that we could use free of charge. But here's where it gets weird. We notice there's no bathroom. He tells us it's down the way and shared amongst all the tennants in that particular building (at least 10 units). He'll provide us with the key. I'm wondering if it has a board tied to it like the one back at Drucker's.

So where do the girls change? Well, apparently anywhere because there's dirty panties and other clothes an inch high in this place from the time you walk in the door. I literally had to shake 'em off my shoes a couple of times. There's also the occasional dildo or vibrator laying in the floor. And the place is positively filthy. I'm not just talking cluttered, but filthy.

One thing we always do is try to make sure our girls are as comfortable as possible. There's positively no way I would subject them to something like that. We thanked the man and left in a cloud of dust. Oh, and if anyone calls bullshit on this, we did take pictures!

It's 3AM, Wanna Shoot?

Turns out Cousin Willy looks like he's gonna be a darned good recruiter for us. He has some new girls on the hook that look hot, but we are gonna have to train him how to tame them.

He has this one girl who looks like just what the doctor ordered, we're gonna call her "Wild Child" til we actually shoot her and get a real name for her. So he's supposed to bring her to lunch with one of our partners to try to work a deal and line up a shoot on Friday. Conveniently enough, we already have a location secured for another shoot on Friday evening. Lunch, dinner and the shoot come and go, no word from Willy or the model.

We close out the location and head for home about 1AM. After 2AM Willy is calling our man. Wild Child had boyfriend problems, but now she's ready to meet and shoot. Right then. She's at least an hour away, but she doesn't care. Let's shoot at 5AM!

We had to reality check 'em. First off, if she's up that late, she's either drunk or on something, in which case we're not shooting her. Second, even if she's not on something she's gonna look like she's been up all night because she has, in which case we're not shooting her. And perhaps more importantly, if you let a model get away with a stunt like that once, they'll walk all over you every time because they know they can get away with it. No shoot for her.

We do have a couple of samples of her that look pretty hot, so we will try again on the interview sometime soon. But models know they're hot and will walk all over you if they can. Strippers are by far the worst as they're used to seeing men as prey. We learned this issue early on.

One of our first models showed up late the first time we shot her. We paid her with no penalty and shot her anyway. She was progressively later and later til finally she left us pulling pecker for nearly 6 hours including making another model we wanted to shoot WITH her also sit around that long. We never shot her again, and now we just dont tolerate it. Even if we have to forfeit money paid for a location, we wont reward unprofessional behavior.

This business isn't just an adventure, it's a job, and should be treated as such.

The skidmark

Every now and then when you're shooting a model you get a little reality check when you least expect it. Sure, you're in a room with a girl who is just smoking hot. And she's getting naked, making love to the camera almost.

We had one of these earlier this week.

It was hot and sexually charged. Everything was going great. We're getting excellent pictures, this girl could be Playboy material even. It's these moments that make you really like your job.

Then we noticed it.

On the floor are the panties she has just kicked off. And I just cant help but notice there's a skidmark in those things that rivals anything a fat guy could produce after a good Mexican dinner.

And sure enough as she poses a bit more, I zoom the video camera on the ass and get a look between those cheeks. Oh man, it's like a hershey bar melted in there. How do you explain to this hottie that she needs to learn to wipe her ass?

Ladies, please. As the late great Redd Foxx explained, you've gotta wash your ass! You've gotta wash your whole ass! You've gotta wash your asshole!

Lexie is on Board

I had a chance to speak to Lexie today to see if she had any additional questions and/or concerns, and the good news is that she's agreed to proceed in having us build a site around her. That's good for us, good for her, and good for you.

Did we mention that she's hot... hella hot.

Since Dickhead jerked her around for several weeks, we're going to fasttrack the production of her site to help calm any fears she may have about doing this. We've cleared out a spot for her this weekend and will be doing our first pictures of her. Hopefully she moves as well as she looks.

Cause she looks hot... hella hot.