Who Wants To See Razor Burn In HD?

There is an faction in the film industry that has long been tauted as both pioneers in new technology and those lowering the bar for producers. They proliferated the use of video tape recording, multiplied the use of miniDv shooting and now are ushering in the widespread (pardon the pun) use of HD. Of course, it is out beloved cousins in the Valley, the pornographers!

Bringing an element of validation to this, my first post in ages, I am citing a recent New York Times article: In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real

The NYT isnt the first to take up the issue of how the sex film industry is driving this new technology, but I found the article candidly open. Matt Richtel interviewed a cross section of people including women actors and male producer/directors. The obvious benefit is greater image clarity, but is that what people want from their porn. The answer seems to be: Sometimes. If the film is well made and enough attention to detail is paid, especially in post production image retouching, then the benefits for the viewer can be there. But the challenges outweigh the potential for many.

Other female actors say they generally like working with high-definition — except for the cosmetic-surgery part.

Jesse Jane, one of the industry’s biggest stars, plans to go under the knife next month to deal with one side effect of high-definition. The images are so clear that Ms. Jane’s breast implants, from an operation six years ago, can be seen bulging oddly on screen.

“I’m having my breasts redone because of HD,” she said.

Less extreme measures are also being taken, such as extra make-up, spray tanning and laser treatment. Never the less the biggest and most unrelenting problem is 'Razor burn'

Aside from the producing aspect, there are other issues like media production and distribution. Sony has decided to keep firm to its policy to not 'not mass-produce pornographic videos'. This has driven adult film producers to adopt HD DVD more widely and use third party Blu-Ray producers as needed.

Macworld has a more detailed analysis about the potential impact the porn industry could have on the HD DVD vs BluRay battle.