Married Slave Program Part 3
Ariel has signed herself up to the Sex Slave Network's Married Slave Program. After her extensive slave position training, she is ordered to present herself to her Master's dungeon. She must run through her details whilst holding a humiliating open-legged hands-on-head position. She is asked to repeat her vows until she has them word-perfect. Next she is tied in a chest harness and tight crotchrope and must run through her positions training again, wearing only hold-up stockings and her slave collar. Once he is satisfied with her performance they repair to the drawing room where she is to receive her slave seal, and she signs away all her rights in a Married Slave Contract! Hywel's note: this epic production was a custom video with a VERY detailed script. I think I've said before that the ideal custom video script for us is evocative and indicative that than prescriptive, except for the details which are truly important to make sure the video hits all the right spots for you. This was an example of something that was so prescriptive that even though we did our very best to get every detail right, and a huge written script it still wasn't quite what the customer had imagined. In the end sometimes you have to let the people you've hired bring your idea to life breathe some of their own interpretation into it- let them delight and surprise you, rather than trying to constrain every single detail on screen. Because even if you are a world-class screen-writer, director AND director of photography, you'll still discover that something you imagine doesn't quite work the way you thought it would work when you come to film it in an actual space with actual actors. What I probably should do to be a good business man is just shut up about the fact that this custom didn't really work out, despite us being at least 95% faithful to the written script (and the 5% we weren't faithful was due to physical limitations rather than us not trying). But I can't. I think we did the best job we could, and the customer then came back with requests to reshoot multiple shots and multiple scenes. Since we'd already done the best job we could of filming the script as written, in the end I had to decline- and indeed we cancelled the second part of the shoot for this customer. Even if we reshot every scene, we'd still be working from the customer's written directions, and we'd already proved that our attempt to film exactly what was written didn't work out the way the customer had it in their head. There was no reason to think we would be able to get any closer on a second attempt, and as anyone who's ever done any creative work knows, trying to do the exact same thing again the same but different is about the most soul-destroying thing you can do as an artist. In truth, I don't think that customer will ever be satisfied by a custom they commission. The ideas they have in their head are not physically possible to shoot. I'm sure they are perfectly sensible and reasonable in real life, and if they'd been present on set they would probably have seen that reality requires you to modify your ideas sometimes. This is true even for auteur mainstream directors with mega-dollar budgets, and it is even more true for bondage customs. So it is bittersweet presenting the film to you. It is an epic training/submission film with a strong story and lots of sexy stuff. I'm proud that we did a professional job of work bringing it to the screen as written on what would be an absurd micro-budget for any normal production. Ariel is, as always, hypnotising to watch and did her best with some very awkwardly-phrased scripted dialogue to boot. On the other hand, I wish the customer had liked it better. It's the only time I've ever had to properly "fire" a custom video customer, which just goes to show that I'm really silly for obsessing over it. We've shot literally hundreds of customs for hundreds of people, and the vast majority absolutely LOVE what we produced for them. Yet the two that stick in my mind are the two that didn't go so well. The carrying one I spoke about before (where we knew we were falling short because of physical space limitations trying to shoot to an unrealistic budget) and this one, where despite a much higher than usual budget and plenty of time, it was simply not possible for us to translate the script as written into images on screen that fitted what the customer had in their head when they wrote the script. One cannot win them all. Yet it's so hard to acknowledge that and not feel like one ought to somehow have magically known what was in the customer's head better. I'd be interested to know what you all think, because truth be told I can't watch this with enough distance from it to know whether or not I like it.