SERENITY'S REVIEW OF THE YEAR - PART ONE

( Yes, there is going to be a part two, when my new keyboard arrives, part one wore it out. :P )

What a year this has been, and it does not seem too long ago i was writing 2010's review here on the blog! That review only began in the August of that year, this one is even more jam packed, due to it being our first full year in Second Life Porn!

2011 began with a bang, as will 2012 i'm sure. I'm talking about The Sexiest Awards of 2010. A few people complained about them, but on the whole the award is a prestigious one still, and has been proved to be popular by another large entry into this years contest. We had a a great night at the 2010 Awards show last January, and were honoured to take home 3 Sexiest awards, for best director, actress, and sex scene.

The Sexiest Awards Red carpet.

I know this years event will be even bigger and better, and make a lot of people very happy. Whatever happens to me in the awards, I'll be proud to have won last year, and i would be thrilled just to be nominated and happy to attend.

Web Cam Voyeur

Following the awards, we continued to work on our new movie. I panicked a bit, Erotique Paradise Isle was a novelty movie and really stood out, then it got recognised in the awards, i worried about Web Cam Voyeur as a result. It finally got released on Blip.TV, and embedded at Naughty Machinima ( NM ) from there. Then it was promptly banned on Blip.TV! For being too "Titillating" and the Link at NM messed up! Web Cam Voyeur was released at a busy time, i think everybody stopped releasing before the awards and then released at the same time. The first release had not really stood out at all. But following the Blip.TV disaster, i re uploaded to NM at a quieter time, and people noticed it. I am very happy with that movie and peoples reactions. It's a sensual, fun, and a nice technical movie too. I think all round, my favourite kind of movie! The icing on the cake for Web Cam Voyeur was seeing it get featured status on Naughty Machinima. For me this was a big thing, not so much an award or anything in my eyes, but at a time when movies could disappear off the front page of the site inside 24 hours, it meant people were actually going to be able to see the movie for several more months before other featured movies replaced it.

Pandora's Box.

Arwen and myself wanted to keep working together on very different movies, and building on the last. I'm a big sci fi fan. I had also had fun some years before with computer animating. When Aurora Bentham blogged some free "Avatar" movie skins on her fashion blog, the penny dropped for us and we started to plan Pandora's Box. It was a movie idea that could really allow all of us, Louise, Arwen, and myself to contribute a lot to. Louise built 2 amazing movie sets. In among her designing she custom made the length of the space ship, to accommodate my planned shots for the movie, and added a green screen back to the ship, and a window so i could expand on things later in post production.

This scene consists of 3 meshes, animated in software to produce the exterior space ship scenes.

There was a lot of talk this year in Second Life about mesh. Pandora's Box actually features "meshes". However, they are not filmed in world. But animated in a outside software. 3D Studio max. An animating software which is something like they produce movies like Toy Story, or Shrek on, or make space battles in Star Wars with. I made planets, and moons, and was able to animate the space ship mesh i downloaded from the awesome site scifi3d.com.

Zero G Sex. Opens Pandora's Box. Effects by myself on Louises movie set, and her amazing SL machanics.

A scene many people like in the movie is the opening Zero G sex. I wanted to do this for about 5 months before, and I'm glad i waited. Because in addition to the ideas i had, Louise Silverweb added her own mechanics in SL, which combined with the camera work, and green screen shoot made it really look like we were floating and having sex! I'm really proud of the movie, and those scenes. I sent the first clip off to Arwen, saying OMG look at this! I was very excited. Pandora's Box was a special movie, because two talented people joined me. Louise and Arwen put everything they had into it with me.

We also wanted to make a movie with no real dialogue. Making it very strong visually, and mixing that with a movie everybody knew made it possible to tell a nice little story without any sub titles or lengthily text on the screen.

Fun in the forest. Sere and Arwen in their Avatar bodies.

The avatar sex in the forest, for me was the most sensual sex scene we've ever done too. It also picked up where the sex had finished in Web Cam Voyeur. Set in very different surroundings, and a whole different atmosphere. But you can see a clear evolution from Web Cam to Pandora. Again, the icing on the cake of the most enjoyable and rewarding movie shoot i ever did, was getting featured at naughty machinima. Seeing the movie get commented on so much, and reading every bodies messages, knowing we'd done something many had enjoyed was a great feeling.

Emmanuelle Jameson, by Jinx.

We had no idea what we were going to do next. So we took a bit of a break. During this break i was really honoured to be invited to be a guest publisher, and to become a co editor of "Emmanuelle Jameson's Second Life" Blog. It's a blog i'd read and enjoyed since the day i got involved in SL Porn. For me it was a institution of SL Porn. I'm very proud to contribute to it, and work with Emmanuelle. She's a great friend, a kind person, and somebody who gives so much to the SL Porn scene. We'll bring you more and sexier stuff in 2012 i promise!

Sere and Arwen, Jinx's production photography.

We had no idea what movie project we'd do next, all we knew was we'd not make another Sci Fi movie so soon after Pandora's Box. So, along comes EmeeLee Rage, with Pron, and we do another sci fi movie! The reason we did, Emee's ambition, ideas, and concepts were so good it had to be done! Also the collaboration and technical challenge was something which sounded pretty exciting.

The tip of the Cyber Sex ice berg in Pron. From my Directed section of the movie.

The reason Pron worked so well. Emee's script had three distinct "acts" and two very different looks. Which leant itself to two different directors producing those acts. It also allowed me to concentrate on visual effects, and Emee to do the things she is good at. That's handling the big cast and the logistics of that, and also bringing some amazing new fresh styles to the sex scenes she shot in the bar, and with my scenes alone with Arwen. Emee's scenes were exciting, and dynamic, and just plain sexy. When people say they love Pron. They are loving a movie three people put a lot of creative input into. Emee's work, Louise Silverweb's amazing movie sets and the effects i enjoyed putting together, made it a very exciting project, on all types of levels.

My Journey to the digital world, from my section of Pron.

The scenes i directed consisted of my journey, from my everyday life at my desk at home on my laptop, to the door of the "Cyber Clit Club". Taking in a host of visual effects to get me there. The whole second act is produced by Emee, with a small exception of my costume change which i produced. Then the movies finale again i produced back at home.

Pron parts 1 and 2 became a victim of the problems at Naughty Machinima this year. Both parts failed to play after a crash at the site. This however did give me a chance to replace the two parts with one complete version. Which later got featured at that site. I was very pleased for Emee when we received this featured status on the movie.

Jinx Jiersen should also recieve praise for his work on Pron. He produced an excellent "Production Photography" shoot, while Emee filmed. Which really added a lot to the project. Producing pics that were high quality and looked great on blog posts.

Mr V, with Rayven, from EmeeLee's Directed section of Pron.

Both Pron, and Pandora's Box made me wish the Sexiest awards had a movie set category, I'm sure Emee would agree with me. Louise's sets not only provided a awesome backdrop, but they also inspired us during filming. They played a huge part in the movies production, and i hope next year that might make it as a category which can be acknowledged.

Arwen in Pron, by Jinx.

In hindsight, i was very relieved Pron got released when it did. In June 2011. because things took a real slump shortly after. The usual summer slow down, was amplified when the hub of SL Porn, naughty machinima went pay per use, and many coding errors and bugs at that site pretty much slowed the scene to a crawl, and really did come close in my opinion to finishing things off for our community. many people lost huge chunks of their back catalogue and rightly felt very upset, and many people could either not upload or even watch movies. It was not until jasmine Skyward's excellent SL Porn Tube came along that the porn scene again found momentum. Naughty machinima now seems to have found a balance, is again working for nearly everyone and things are finally getting back to normal. Hopefully now we have two great outlets for our work again.

Serenity, in newly filmed footage for the 12 month anniversary movie, "Pornstar's and Proud"

In among these problems, i noticed it was the 12 month anniversary, in August of the movie "Wrong Side Of Town" my first movie appearance, and directing effort. So i put together a highlights montage and filmed a few new cutaway clips of myself dancing on the wrong side movie set. To create "Pornstars and Proud" a sort of celebration of the things we'd done with a new fresh look.

Although the above takes us up to August. There was still a lot to come in 2011. Including four more movies, and actress roles for other directors for me and Arwen. All of which I'll cover in part two. I'm not so heartless to make you read it all in one go!

Thanks for reading. See you soon.

Serenity. XoX.

( Serenity is currently working on a longer, bigger, better reworking of the novel "War and Peace" :P  )