Page 60 - AVN June 2012

| 2012 Fresh Directors/Producers
Tammy Sands
Fresh Eyes New talent behind the camera
Tammy Sands first came to prominence in 1995 as co-founder, with Danni Ashe, of
erotic photography/video site Danni.com. Soon after that the photography bug bit her,
and she began supplying her own content to Playboy, Penthouse (which bought
Danni.com) and Twisty’s—but she wanted more, and reached out to publicist Adella to
introduce her to Girlfriends Films, which has released, among Sands’ other movies, her
AVN Award-winning All Natural: Glamour Solos.
“I love how more women are becoming involved in the production side of the adult
industry,” Sands said. “I think this presence helps legitimize the industry and helps us
A star performer, a well-known still photographer, a top
build a defense against the critics accusing the industry of exploiting women. Companies
like Girlfriends Films are extremely sex-positive and female friendly. The women are
industry salesman ... our crop of new directors came
encouraged to embrace their sexuality and draw power from it, and on set, I treat them
like the strong, beautiful women they are. I would urge the rest of the industry to always
behind the camera from number of different directions.
remind performers how special and beautiful they are.”
Currently, Sands is expanding her repertoire to girl/girl, as seen in her recent
Alan E
Girlfriends release Me and My Girlfriend—but she won’t be forgetting the genre that
Just about everyone on the production side of adult
already won one award and, she hopes, a repeat.
video knows “Stills By Alan.” He shoots all the pho-
tos for Wicked Pictures, and recently has had four
Cheri magazine covers as well as covers for Penthouse
and Fox, plus layouts in High Society, Club and
Finally Legal. But … “What he really wants to do is
direct.”
And now he is.
“My first movie just came out, for Vivid. It’s called
Rachel Starr’s a Dirty Little Tease,” Alan E told AVN.
“I started shooting stills for Vivid in 2010; worked
Alan E
with B. Skow on The Incredible Hulk, where they hired
Photo courtesy Alan E.
me to do stills and run the “B” [softcore] camera.”
This led to a good rapport with Vivid’s head of production, who gave Alan the go-
ahead to lens his own feature—which, he’s quick to point out, he shot entirely with his
Sony 5D DSLR camera.
“I know a handful of people are doing the 5D thing, like Quasarman, Kevin Moore,
Paul Woodcrest,” he said. “It’s one of those cameras that’s catching fire, and being as I’ve
used the camera for half a decade as a photographer and know it inside and out, I’m
leveraging that experience.”
No camcorders for him!
Harry Sparks
Revenge of the Petites director Harry Sparks wrote and
directed two independent low-budget mainstream
horror features before taking a position as a video edi-
tor at ATKingdom. “I wanted to be a director since I
was 13,” Sparks told AVN. “I took my parents’ super-
8 camera and made short films. I checked books out
of the library on how to make films because I was
curious, and then I went to film school in Florida and
Harry Sparks
at UCLA Extension.”
The inspiration for Revenge of the Petites was the
teen comedy wave of the ’80s, like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Porky’s.
“What was missing from those films was hardcore sex,” Sparks said. “The owner of
ATKingdom saw the production value I had put in my low-budget features and was
impressed. We had some meetings, I went off and wrote the script and went from there.
Sparks wants to continue making story-driven features. “For me, story is very impor-
tant. ... I want to see it again in erotic movies and I think other people will too.”
Sparks is returning to his supernatural roots with another adult thriller, expected out
by the fall. “We still have a lot of green screen and post-production to do.
“The plan is to do one new movie a year. I’m looking forward to that.”
Howard Levine
Everyone in adult knows Howard Levine, a 25-
year veteran salesman, first for Vivid
Entertainment and now for Exile Distribution,
with several others in between. Fewer, however,
know that Howard is also a mainstream per-
former, having first appeared in the blockbuster
anti-war movie The Deer Hunter, and more
recently having essayed several TV roles.
But one descriptor Levine would like to make
for himself is “adult director,” his first project hav-
ing been the Super Porn series.
“I was hanging around the Sons of Anarchy set
and watching people like Paris Barclay, Adam
Arkin, some of those directors work and how they
work, how they set up a scene, what they did with
camera angles, stuff like that,” Levine said. “I
Howard Levine with Lily LaBeau Photo by Craig Daze
knew what I wanted to do: Take the top girls in
the business, and instead of putting one ‘A’ girl
surrounded by four ‘B’ or ‘C’ girls, to put in all A girls. That’s how I arrived at the cast
for Super Porn 1. We just sold our 4000th unit of it, which in today’s market is remark-
able. I’ve always had a really good eye for talent.”
Surprisingly modest, Levine also credits directors B. Skow and Paul Thomas as well as
top cameraman Craig Daze for influencing his directorial style.
FEATURE
Bobbi Starr
She proved her directing prowess right out of the gate
with her debut as only the second woman (after
Belladonna) to ever join Evil Angel’s ultra-elite stable
of shot-callers. The apropos name of that opus was
Bobbi’s World, and it went on to collect the trophy for
Best All-Sex Release – Mixed Format at this year’s
AVN Awards. Since then, Bobbi Starr has helmed
seven more titles for Evil, almost one per month, all of
which have met with critical acclaim. (Her sophomore
effort, Shut Up and Fuck, was up for several ’12 hon-
ors and received an Editor’s Choice review in these
pages.)
Bobbi Star with Emma Haize
Occupy My Ass (Evil Angel)
But Evil Angel isn’t the only place where Starr has
climbed into the director’s chair. She also has a con-
tract directing slot for fetish site Kink.com—in fact,
she relocated to San Francisco for the position.
Asked how the two gigs differ, Starr said, “I feel like Evil Angel is sort of like my artis-
tic baby, where I really have a lot of creative license that I can take, and I run with it,
whereas at Kink, I am required to stay within certain parameters.”
On her command of the craft in general, she mused, “With each movie that I release,
I feel like the product is getting better and better, and my skills as a director have been
getting better and better, and my vision is becoming more solidified.”
See Bobbi Starr’s vision of Sapphic carnality in her latest from Evil Angel, Kiss Me,
Lick Me, Fuck Me.
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