UrbanUpdate

You’ve probably been fantasizing about virtual reality porn ever since you discovered… regular porn. Well, welcome to the VR revolution: PornHub reports that VR porn videos receive over 500,000 views daily. Finally, porn that puts you in the middle of the action.

Like the first iteration of the personal computer or the Internet before it was the meme factory it is now, VR porn is still very much in its beginning stages. Viewers at home only have a handful of websites to choose from, with little variety between scenes. For actors and producers, VR porn can be awkward, expensive, and inhibiting to shoot.

While we’d like to think there are miniature women begging us to fuck them taking residence within our VR goggles, there’s a lot more to shooting virtual reality erotica than meets the eye. To get the scoop on what a day on a VR set looks like, we spoke to some of the actors and producers who put naked people in front of us.

“It feels like I'm in The Jetsons. Really,” says adult performer and “porntrepeneur” Joanna Angel. But Angel’s version of Orbit City has its own challenges. “I think the most stressful part, from a producer’s standpoint, is that you can't play the scene back on the camera at any point. You shoot and cross your fingers that after it's all stitched together; no one’s arm or leg is cut off. It's very unsettling for a Jewish producer—knowing full well there's a 50/50 chance that you might be throwing your money away.”

Shooting VR, it turns out, is actually really frustrating. The cameras offer new possibilities for viewers, but they limit the positions actors and actresses can engage in.

“The possible positions all depend on where the rig is stationed,” continues Angel, “not to mention how big or tall the performers are. Generally, there's a lot of cowgirl and reverse cowgirl more than anything else. In a ‘regular’ porn scene, you always want to get as many positions, movement, and excitement as possible. In a VR scene your movements and positions are limited. It feels very much like you're performing inside of a little box.”

What really separates a VR porn shoot from your run-of-the-mill shoot is the number of people who need to be involved to make it work. Daniel Dilallo, a director for 3X Studios, a porn production company in Los Angeles that works exclusively with Vivid, recently shot The Kim Kardashian Superstar VR Experience (a killer video that uses a Kim Kardashian lookalike to pick up where the real sex tape left off). Dilallo let me in on some of the hardships of shooting VR.

“The women can’t actually be too close to the camera,” says Dilallo. “They have to have their scenes blocked out and the actress needs to know where she can and cannot go.” Men have it worse. Generally, guys are stuck in one position with a camera going over their shoulder. “It’s difficult for the guys to even see what’s going on, which makes timing especially hard. He has to sit back, he can’t use his hands. It’s hard for the guys to last.” The camera bares resemblance to some of the clunky robots of the 1950s sci-fi era and usually hovers over the dude’s shoulder as he struggles to recall every unsexy scenario he’s ever encountered in a strained attempt to not finish. It’s a world away from your typical porno shoot.

But the really hard stuff happens in the editing room. “The post-production time and process is crazy-long, tedious and expensive,” says 3X's CEO, Adam Block, who also had a hand in creating The Kim Kardashian Superstar VR Experience. “There’s also a huge learning curve as this tech continues to evolve—even for the talent—as most have never shot in VR, which requires a certain amount of instruction and parameters.”

Dilallo thinks the near future of off-the-screen porn will be based in augmented reality, where images are superimposed onto your surroundings (i.e. Pokémon Go). This is where those horned-up pipe dream fantasies of yesteryear will finally come to fruition. Soon you’ll be able to bring porn stars into your living room. It’ll be as easy as slipping on a pair of goggles, choosing who you’d like to have over and seeing a famous adult actress flop around on your Ikea couch. What a time to be alive and alone!

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