Page 56 - AVN October 2015

Making VR a Reality Porn moves a step closer to the holodeck
It was all very hush-hush when,
back in August, AVN was invited to
observe the first large-scale sexually
explicit virtual reality shoot to take
place anywhere in the world, thanks
to Anna Lee and Brian Shuster, founders
of Utherverse/Red Light Center and the
brand-new HoloFilm Productions. And
the promise is, there’s plenty more to
come.
The results of the shoot were unveiled
to industry insiders in September, a
week before Lee and Shuster launched a
crowdfunding effort to bring the first VR
porn to market.
The shoot was an all-girl affair,
with actresses (or “synthespians”),
Karlie Montana, August Ames, Anikka
Albrite and Adriana Sephora being
stage-managed by the production team
of Kayden Kross and director Manuel
Ferrara.
“This shoot that we’re doing
today is the first-ever Synthologram
shoot,” Shuster explained. “What a
Synthologram is, is a full 360-degree,
full 3D image, with the ability to move
around the scene in a limited capacity.
You can’t actually look behind the
performers, but you can see with depth
everything that’s happening. We’ve
also pioneered technology which is full
hologram technology and full interactive
hologram technology, and we’re also
going to be doing a shoot where we show
some still versions of that, but we can do
these holograms now in full action full
motion.”
But to say that this shoot was
“unusual” barely scratches the surface.
For one thing, being a VR shoot, every
square inch (well, just about) of the set
where the action was to take place was to
be recorded by the unique virtual-reality
camera set-up, which meant that it was
impossible for any “outsider” not directly
involved in the scene—not even the
director—to be in the room. In fact, once
the women were in their places for the
first scene, the entrance to the room was
blocked off with a stage flat depicting
FEATURE
Holo Victory Brian Shuster with performers
Adriana Sephora, August Ames, Anikka Albrite and
Karlie Montana.
56 | AVN.com | 10.15
a cityscape, so that all the camera rig would see would be
women, chairs, sex toys and walls.
Even with performers carefully chosen from among the top
talent in the industry, in part because all were proven “self-
starters” when it comes to acting sexy, Ferrara and Shuster
still needed to give them some preliminary instructions on
how close they could get to the camera; the fact that they’re
not allowed to move the chairs in which they would be
performing lest they go out of focus, or go too far to the left
or right (which would cause problems “stitching” the scene
together); and what they should say to the camera—that is,
inviting them to make the viewers cum.
Humorously, when Ferrara told Adriana Sephora that
when she takes off her bottom, she should turn around to
show her butt to the camera, she responded, “Yeah, not the
boring parts,” to which one wag on set chimed in, “Hey,
none of your parts are boring.”
Due to the nature of the camera rig, the performances
were limited to 12 minutes each—but that’s one of
the limitations Shuster hopes to overcome with the
crowdfunding campaign, which kicked off on September 15
and is set to run through October.
“This shoot is really the pioneering shoot, the first one
that’s being done this way, and I’m hopeful we’ll be able to
use this to show off the technology and do a crowdfunding
campaign that’s going to fund this next generation,” Shuster
stated. “ The problem is, we can do this shoot, but post-
production right now on holograms is hundreds of thousands
of dollars a minute, and even on the Synthologram stuff,
this is costing us about $50,000 a minute. So with the porn
lovers’ help with our crowd-fund, we’re going to give them
access to a huge amount of virtual reality porn for helping us
out with the campaign, but I’m going to be able to drop the
cost, I’m hoping to train hundreds of people I’ve got standing
by in Brazil and Russia to help with the post-production
work, which should drop the cost down to maybe $400
or $500 a minute in the near term, and then we can start
cranking these things out, multiple shoots a week with the
best porn stars and deliver the content.”
Shuster stressed several aspects of the Synthologram
program that should appeal to porn producers and stars
across the board. For one thing, Syntholography can’t be
pirated: the Syntholograms are far too large and complex—
in fact, even streaming the images would require far more
bandwidth than most ISPs would be willing to provide,
which is why all VR material currently available on the
web is for download only. It’s also not something amateur
would-be producers will be able to get into, in part because