Page 60 - AVN January 2016

Pet Project
On the set for Penthouse’s first VR shoot
FEATURE
It might seem a bit incongruous that PenthouseTV had scheduled its first VR
shoot for Easter Sunday, but then again, not everyone’s religious—and pretty
much everyone does like sex. That most certainly includes the 15 established and
rising stars who populated the pool area and cabanas at the country estate where
Penthouse set up its VR camera rig.
However, unlike most of the shoots that take place in the adult industry, this one
was not intended for a DVD or even Penthouse’s many websites, but rather as a
demo of Penthouse’s ability to make fun, hot, sexy VR to show to potential buyers
and partners at the MIPTV broadcast trade show that was held in Cannes, France, in
early April. To that end, the entire production would be softcore, with an eye toward
being able to show it to as wide an audience as possible.
Hence, those who had the pleasure of attending Penthouse’s VR demo got to see
bikini’d, topless and fully naked porn stars, including Penthouse 2016 spokesmodel
Layla Sin as well as Christiana Cinn, Valentina Nappi, Aidra Fox, Marica Hase, Jenna
Sativa, Ana Foxxx, Bobbi Dylan, Tara Morgan, Charlotte Cross, Katy Kiss, Dallas Black,
Mila Jade, Ellena Woods, Taylor May and Leah Gotti playing in pools and under
waterfalls with inflatable balls, a giant inflatable seahorse and other air-filled toys,
blowing giant soap bubbles, and even demonstrating their prowess with Hula-
Hoops.
“This is just an amazing shoot,” commented Penthouse owner Kelly Holland,
making her first appearance on a set in many months. “You know, when we launched
3D—we’ve been working in 3D for two years—we had partnered with Panasonic;
Panasonic had brought us their beta test cameras from Japan to work with. We’ve
now had a lot of history in it; we knew what we wanted to do and where we wanted
to go. With VR, we’re in our early stages. We’ve done a couple of tests and I wasn’t
happy with them, and I saw what else is out there and it’s just dull, dull, dull. So what
we’ve decided to do is bring together 15 amazing girls on a nice Easter day and just
have them around the pool, all doing different things, all doing things that if you
were a man standing in the middle of it all, it would be a wealth of visual sensations,
and we’re going to put the camera in the middle of all that, so whether you turn left,
turn right, turn east, turn west, there’s beautiful girls doing amazing things.”
Holland had said that if the test shoot turned out poorly, she’d discard it and try
again later, but it turned out to be a success—even better than she expected.
“We are now fully committed to VR, and to that end, we are working with a variety
of rigs from simple to complex as well as working with a variety of mainstream
production groups in creating our best workflow,” she stated after returning from the
MIPTV show. “I premiered a great 3-minute VR piece at that show and although VR is
not integrated into a broadcast environment right now, I had in-depth conversations
with my licensees about how to deploy VR in OTT and multi-screen environments.”
OTT, or “over-the-top,” is defined as “the delivery of audio, video, and other media
over the Internet without the involvement of a multiple-system operator in the
control or distribution of the content.”
“Under the new company—the new Penthouse ownership, yeah!—we are racing to
launch a new Penthouse.com brand site/paysite,” she added. At press time Holland
anticipated that the site would launch in late May. “All attention and focus is turned
to that,” she said. “Within the new site, we’ll have a VR theater where we can have
lots of fun. I’m also writing a VR feature that is designed to use all of the best aspects
of the technology.”
If she’s successful, that would be the first full-length VR feature ever produced
by the adult industry—and with any luck, enough customers will have their own VR
headgear in time to make such productions profitable.
Holodeck, here she comes!
—Mark Kernes
60 | AVN.com | 6.16
PornHub VP Corey told TechRadar.com in late March. “It will not be entirely
towards straight men. There will be videos for women and gay men in the very
near future.”
Another early entrant into VR porn was Kink—and let’s face it: When you’re
based in what used to be the San Francisco Armory, you’re not exactly hurting for
interesting backgrounds to a VR shoot.
The company jumped into the VR field last year in a big way, announcing that
KinkVR.com would go live on “Black Friday” (Nov. 27), with the public being
given free access to its earliest productions, directed by their go-to VR creator
Fivestar: a girl/girl scene and, this being Kink after all, a trans dominatrix scene.
The company also promised to make all of its VR scenes available for free through
New Year’s Day.
KinkVR currently has 14 scenes on its site, all 180 degree except one 220, and
they run the gamut of kinky sex, from slavery to BJs to fucking machines to leather
play, and all can be viewed on whatever HMD is available.
Equally innovative, but in a different way, is Australia’s Lightsouthern, which
has taken some of its content cues from woman-friendly website abbywinters.com,
which is not too surprising, since company founder Michelle Flynn was once an
abbywinters performer.
“The Lightsouthern brand is basically all-natural Aussie babes doing all
those terrible Aussie things, really diverse and awesome and interesting,” the
Melbourne-based Flynn said with a smile. “So we’re just taking that idea and
putting it into VR, and one of the things that sets us apart is the locations we have
down here, so people having sex in these beautiful, picturesque locations is a huge
thing for us. We try to do 80 percent outdoor shoots. We’re pushing diversity in
sexuality and body types as well, so lots of it is less glamour and less performative
and a more natural, organic kind of porn—so we’re taking that idea and putting it
into VR and it’s looking awesome.”
But lest anyone come away with the idea that Lightsouthern is an amateur site,
Flynn is quick to point out that another segment of its VR production is devoted
to “gloss women,” which in the U.S. would translate to “established Australian
porn stars,” with whom Lightsouthern’s “Gloss” studio has more than a dozen VR
scenes available.
Flynn’s modus operandi so far has been to film longer scenes with multiple
women and break them up into two or three parts. Those VRs can be found on
Lightsouthern’s affiliate platform, Velvet-Reality.com. At press time, Flynn said
the company has two VR scenes still in the editing bay including one featuring
POV fisting, and once they get a bit more experience with the genre, she expects
to release two or three new scenes per month.
Then, saving one of the biggest companies for last, there’s Penthouse, which
dipped its toe into the VR pool—literally—on Easter Sunday, no less, when it
gathered 15 of adult’s hottest actresses to a lavish country estate and essentially
asked them to have fun in the multiple lagoons and surrounding cabanas while its
VR camera rig recorded all the action.
“This is my first time back on set in quite a while,” said Penthouse head honcho
Kelly Holland. “And I mentioned to the production coordinator, ‘Man, every single
girl out here is stellar; they’re a 10-plus!’ ... I am still trying to wrap my mind
around VR and all the things we can do with it, and we’re in the process of putting
together a really interesting feature that’s incorporating VR, but I mentally have
not yet mastered the technology.”
That Easter Sunday shoot, however, was intended to be a showcase for what
Penthouse could do with VR, which Holland intended to take to a European
broadcast trade show. Penthouse has 3D satellite channels serving the European
market, and Holland hopes that its current customers will think highly enough of
PenthouseVR’s production values to add its content to their offerings. (See our
“On the Set” sidebar on this page for more information.)
Despite all of the companies mentioned above, it almost seems as though new
adult VR start-ups are being created every week—and as Engadget editor Terrence
O’Brien recently argued, in an article titled “Virtual reality and pornography:
An X-rated debate,” “Here’s the uncomfortable truth that most people refuse
to swallow: If virtual reality is going to take off, it’s going to be on the
wings of pornography. It’s not going to be clever PlayStation games or
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films from major movie studios that make VR mainstream. It’s going
to be companies like Kink.com, Naughty America and PornHub that