Wetlook World Forum

 To add some historical perspective, and how the advent of technology improvements in the last 20 years has had both dramatically positive AND negative effects on the producers abilities to create media, firstly

- regarding scripts and scenarios, one should recognize that there have always been 2 kinds of Producers in our world ... i.e. those who only do "modelling scenes"...where there is never any storyline or script and the scenes are more like a wetlook fashion modelling show...or more like a photo shoot captured on video. Some producers have always preferred to do unscripted modelling sessions, not scenarios or scripts, and that is their preferred style. Other producers like Leon, Flaviu and myself, do a wide variety of scenes....some are scripted scenarios, and others are pure modelling sessions. So -- if you prefer to see scripted scenarios, you can easily find several producers who often produce them, but don't expect the producers who only do unscripted modelling sessions to change their style, cos that is not their style or interest. Most of the producers that prefer to focus on unscripted modelling sessions have professional photographic backgrounds, so they are far more interested in the lighting than a script. So....just visit the sites that produce the kinds of media you like, but don't expect a leopard to change it's spots and act like a tiger....cos leopards want to be leopards. not tigers.

Regarding the "regression" in the amount of scripted scenarios and feature length videos with storylines that are far less today than they used to be in the 1990's....that is true. In the 1990's you had UK producers Aquantics, Artscene, Buff Films, and Splosh productions all making feature length videos with scripts, as well as Messy Fun and myself in the USA producing lots of feature length viideos with scripts too. E.G. from 1992 until 1996 I produced several 90 minute scripted videos such as The Castaways on Jungle Jane Island, Agent H20 & The Bionic Bimbo, The Super Sweepstakes, The Adventures of Aquagirl, Agent H20 & The Vampires from Hell, Battle of the SSS Superstars, The Bully Girls, The Girl from Atlantis....and several others

http://www.aquaentertainment.com/videos/mark-features-c-25_27.html

Aquantics and Messy Fun also made over 2 dozen feature film length productions in the 1990s  too

As Anthony mentioned, our ability to produce such features is totally budget driven and based on how many customers we had that support us. This set our budgets for what we could and could not afford to do.....and this is where technology advancements over the last 10 years have mostly worked  for "the consumer" but AGAINST us producers....cos in the 1990's there was no such thing as cheap cameras that could produce high quality video productions, cos in order to produce professional quality video in the 1990s you had to spend 15 to 20 grand to buy professional grade cameras like a Sony Betacam SP and you had to spend 25 to 50 grand to buy video editing decks, so this was a major investment to make in video production gear, and the feature length videos that Messyfun, Aquantics and I used to make all cost 20-25 grand per video in production costs. Of course this is nothing like Hollywood spends, but for us, spending 25 grand per video release was quite a lot of money to us small time producers in those days (it cost about the same amount to make "The Blair Witch Project" too)....and we had to finance everything ourselves and wait 2-3 years to get enough sales to recover our costs.

Anyway, in the 1990's there was no such thing as cheap digital cameras, so basically that meant that only a small handful of producers in the UK and USA were willing to make the investments needed to produce such media, and there was no competition from amateurs ......as you see today....cos today the HD technology is so good....you can buy a Kodak Playsport or GoPro pocket size camera for $100, and this now produces video quality that only a $25,000 professional camera could have done in the 1990's. So....now...."everybody" is a producer.....i.e. anybody with a cellphone and a girlfriend....ha ha. Also, in the 1990s there was no such thing as "free media".....and since Youtube started in 2005...and with all these cheap HD cameras and free media sites like Youtube......now instead of a small handful of producers who had a loyal fan base where each producers used to have great support and patronage, now today most producers I know have lost 80% of the support they used to have....because now you have 300+ producers and too much competition, and 90% of the wet and messy fans prefer free media sites instead of supporting the producers sites....and now with the current economic recessions in the USA and Europe......you have..... THE PERFECT STORM.....

....so...the good news is, technology advances and the growth in the internet have been great for the consumer......but terrible for the producers.....these are the 3 negatiive elements that are killing our ability to produce high quality media......i.e. cheap HD camcorders (where everybody is now a producer) and the birth of free media sites like Youtube ...when added to the economic recessions in the USA and Europe (i.e. people have little disposable income these days....and so they get their jollies from Youtube cos they can no longer support the producers very much)

I am not whining.....I am merely stating a fact.....i.e. for the consumer...technology advancements have taken the consumer 5 steps forward.....but for us Producers....we have gotten the same 5 steps forward....only that we are standing in the midst of a 150mph hurricane that is blowing us backwards, cos in the past I could do any script I wanted to do and in the 1990's I could safely invest 10-20 grand to make a nice feature length scripted video on location, but these days there is so much competition and we lost so much our support because of the popularity of Youtube .....which is why I am considering shutting down several of my sites by end of this year....for example www.thewambank.com -- cos that is a perfect example of how Youtube has killed all our support. I opened that site in 2002, before Youtube existed, and we used to have several hundred supporters who joined as members and supported the server costs, but now since Youtube is so popular, we no longer get enough support to pay for the server that hosts theWambank now ....so sadly, unless things improve, we will probably have to close thewambank site by end of this year, cos 90% of our former members no longer support the site and we lost 90% of our uploaders too....so it seems that nobody needs theWambank any more, cos they prefer Youtube instead.....so these are the pros and cons with technology developments.......i.e. when the car was first invented....it caused a lot of horses to be sent to the knackers yard to be put down....ha ha....and it looks like theWambank is the horse and Youtube is the car that people prefer.

So basically.....the way things are going with technology these days.....you really do not need producers to create your own fantasies for you....cos if you have a cellphone and a girlfriend....you can do them all yourself.

And now I am off to my stable.....cos the work just keeps on piling up.

MK