How porn’s hardest-working director does his homework

On a recent Saturday morning, adult film director Ricky Greenwood was busy overseeing the production of a big-budget pornographic film called Project X. About twenty team members wandered around offices that had once housed a biotech company. , most of the action took place in a room where a hospital stretcher had been installed. A sex scene with veteran artists Mick Blue and Cherie DeVille would soon be filmed.

Today, Greenwood is one of the most in-demand managers in the adult sector. At 42, he has directed more than 500 pornographic films, including Grinders (a skateboarding film), Talk Derby to Me (a curling derby film) and Machine Gunner (a war film). Originally from Montreal, Quebec, he is tall, bearded, heavily tattooed and speaks with a Quebecois accent. His favorite videos include The Exorcist, Point Break, and High Fidelity. The manager he admires most is Michael Bay: “He makes advertising films that look like a big cheeseburger. Greenwood says he remembers what he does. ” I know that when I do porn, I’m doing some kind of entertainment. It happens with that and plays with it. He’s that kind of person.

Before entering the adult world, Greenwood worked in television in Montreal. At one point, he accepted the commission to direct a porn film. It is not a positive experience. Then he returned to television. A friend had a boss who was looking for an adult production director. Then he tried again. This time things were better. He moved to Los Angeles. He wrote and directed adult films. It won a few awards. The story of the film he’s making today comes from his producer, Digital Playground. It’s about what happens when the government discovers an alien spacecraft that has crashed on Earth. DeVille plays a biologist. When Blue arrives on set, the costume manager hands him a white coat with a label that reads, “Dr. John Harding GENETICIST. “

Being on the same page Before filming the scene, DeVille, Blue, two links and Greenwood meet in a room. While the camera rolls, the organization goes through a “pre-shoot discussion and a list of obstacles. ” (Artists are given time to complete the consent list before the meeting. ) Here, actors identify what they need and don’t need to do in the scene. DeVille takes the lead, noting the do’s and don’ts of more than 30 pieces indexed in the “Sexual Acts” column (said diversity of acts, from the vanilla, for example, kissing, to the less vanilla, for example). example, slavery). “The purpose is to make the experts feel comfortable, create an area for them, and make them feel heard and trusted through the production,” Greenwood later recounts.

Make it look good. The maximum production price is something characteristic of Greenwood. Unlike the low-fidelity, low-budget “gonzo porn” of yesteryear, his productions are saturated with deep colors, concerned with history, and more like a film produced by A24 than charcoal. “At that time, a real porn film, it was a film,” he recalls nostalgically. “Now we have to get back to it: a big production, a big budget, anything entertaining. “In the hallway, DeVille and Blue, dressed in white coats, wait for the call to action. The lighting is fine-tuned. In an adjacent dimly lit room, Greenwood sits and strokes his beard thoughtfully as he examines the video feeds from the three cameras displayed on the monitors.

Capturing sex “And action,” Greenwood announces. Cameras come and go following the actors’ lead. There is not much direction. When it comes to filming sex, this director takes a fairly non-interventionist approach and prefers to let things spread organically. “I like to let them do what they need to do,” he shares. I direct them slightly towards sex because I feel like I need to have a more natural sex scene. I need to be a fly on the wall watching them. I don’t need to give them awkward angles and positions. I need us to be witnesses and not let them work. If you create this safe zone, they will take care of the camera. You’ll get those beautiful moments and scenes. If you direct them, it becomes a chore for them and becomes a fake scene.

“As artists, we’re like athletes,” said Blue, who has pale blue eyes and an Austrian accessory and is canonized in the AVN Hall of Fame, when asked how it felt to paint with Greenwood. “There aren’t many managers who have ever been able to do it. ” The more the director perceives what we’re doing, the greater the result. As Blue and DeVille paint on the gurney, Greenwood watches, his face bathed in the green glow of an EXIT sign. He does his homework well, he says: “Because I care. He knows that other people don’t respect what he does for a living. “It doesn’t matter, it’s just pornography,” he says, repeating the criticism. But it is his turn. We need it to be good. We need it to be attractive and different. If we give them a porn movie, what’s the point?

Know Your Niche A little more than an hour later, the first scene of the day ends. “I love running with Ricky,” DeVille, an award-winning MILF artist who ran for president in the 2020 election, said in the bathroom. “I like to be incredibly organized,” she adds, which is all they have in common. Meanwhile, Greenwood prepares to film a discussion scene with other actors. He’s busy, but grateful for the work. His friends who make conventional movies make a movie every five years. He makes nine or ten films a year. However, there is a stigma that will have to be faced. In Europe, “other people see the porn director as any other type of director. They see him just like a director. In the United States it is a taboo. For him, pornography is “just another genre that other people like and can see. “That said, he believes that public belief is changing, at least for some. “The younger generation doesn’t see things so badly. »

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