The Simonscans Porn Blog

I’ve not blogged in a totally direct moany way since whinging about programmers a while back. I’m pretty sure most of you come to this site for reasons other than listening to me whine, but sometimes a bit of background reality is interesting and can add some insight into how a site like this runs, and the realities of shooting porn. - And yes, anal scenes can smell of poo sometimes.

I know for sure from all the mail I get from you lot, that you think my life is an endless stream of great looking totty all fit and eager to flop em out for the lads. Well, if only it were true. For every great looking girl there’s 10 very average looking ones who really should think twice about taking there clothes of in public. Hell, some should think twice about removing there coats. Most of the time we screen the applications pretty effectively and in general we don’t don’t end up having driven 180 miles to a great location only for the girl to show up and be virtually unshootable. However, thats exactly what happened today.

Personally, she’s a lovely girl, chatty and generally pleasant to be with - which it has to be said - can’t be said of every girl I shoot. But, shes a genuine size 14, and not the hot kind with big boobs, big hips and a waist. Instead shes the Trinny and Suzanne hopeless case, big hips, no waist, no boobs - and worst still, those nipples that point down, but in a slightly boss-eyed fashion.

So what do we do? Well it falls to someone - me in fact - cause no one else will do it, to tell the poor girl shes not going to be shot cause she looks nothing like the (it now turns out) two year old photos she sent in and has gone up at least 3 dress sizes in the time between. Mostly they take it pretty well, but in the end I always end up sounding like Simon Cowell from X-factor. What on earth were you thinking? Do you really think we wouldn’t notice you’ve gained 20 Kilos since the photos you sent in? or even that you are fat, plain and simple. And much like the other Simon my justification is the same. - Go through with it and do a load of porn, you’ll look crap, and if you think I’m being harsh, wait till the girls who hated you at school find out, cause they’ll tear you to schreds.

This morning I received and email from a potential model with this pic attached. Nothing odd about that you’d think, and here’s the text of the email…

hiya,

just lookin at ure website and wondered if u could use me at all????? i use the name Chantelle. i’m 20, size 8 - 10, 36B 24 36. 5ft 8 ins tall, ive worked to continental and B/G . i’ve attached a couple of pice 4 u 2 look at if they r ok what shall i do next??? hope to hear from u soon

chantellexx

ps ive got sum continental * bg pics if u need to av a look????

It all looks very plausible to the untrained eye. Except as I do this for a living I’m pretty damn hot at spotting fakes, not least because we get loads. I have no idea why doing this kind of thing might seem funny but tickles some people, thats for sure. This one is pretty amateurish and has a couple of real give aways. Firstly, I’ve already shot her and therefore know she’s Czech, not brit and certainly not called Chantelle. Doh! Just as damning though is something a bit more subtle in “her” email. Size 8-10’s are not 36B ever. Size 8’s are rare as phuck anyway and are 30/32, size 10’s are most models and 32/34 and thats it, unless of course its a bloke in a bra.

Ok, next question, shes on the site but who is she? And no, I won’t shoot her again before anyone asks.
Apologies in advance to whoever really owns this shot, gimme a clue anyone, and I’ll seek permission and give them a credit.

Hiring and firing is pretty much a permanent process, if only it was fun. Right now we’re looking for another person to work on tidying up a load of pages on the site, so we need a coder. Hence the advertsing is out on various webdesigner sites with a pretty specific brief AND an email address that any moron can reverse engineer into a domian. Thats right, the email addy is somebody@simonscans.com Which hardly requires the brightest spark to convert into a working url. Anyway, here’s the full text of his application:-

Hi   

I would be interested in this but before I send my details and website address (which contains samples of my work) I would like to know what sort of adult website it is. In other words is it Kosha, and legal?!

Do you have an url or can you tell me what sort of images will be on there as I DO NOT want to get involved in anything dodgey.

Cheers

Marc

Soooo, the guy wants the job so badly that a whole two line application is required. Impressive, also that BOTH lines are about as insulting as they can be. I think he’s even spelt kosher wrong. This guy really knows how to suck up to a potential employer! If this was an even slightly unusual application, I’d probably not mention it, but its not. It’s 100% typical of the rubbish that comes in. Seems that if you want to be a coder/webdesigner then all you need is a copy of dreamweaver and a low level personality disorder, say tourettes syndrome - the inability not to say exactly what you’re thinking as you think it.  Whats even more depressing for me as a Brit is that by far the worst applications are from the brits. Seems the standard of written english in the UK for native speakers/writers is now LOWER than the standard for people from the rest of the world, writing it as a SECOND language.

I am not a girl. Its just not true, just cause I like pink convertible Beetles, Hello Kitty, The OC and… This is a real email, just in this morning.

Monday, January 8, 2007, 1:58:59 AM, you wrote:….

CM> Simon, something about the website says you are a woman – not a man.

You assume a real Simon even exists and its not just a marketing
construct.

CM> I’m curious why there aren’t any men in your scenes, as the website is most surely luring men.

Because men who aren’t gay don’t always want to see other men while
they look at naked women.

CM> And why are the girls so young?

They’re not. The range goes from 18 to 43, with the great bulk in
their twenties.

CM> Could it be they’re doing this for you for money?

Damn right.

CM> Women don’t need dildos to have orgasms, and goodness knows, hetero sex with a soulmate outweighs watching a movie every time.

But this is porn.

CM> Where is the equality of gender and equality of experience?

These are entirely non-gender specific photos of naked girls, you are
free to like them or not, whatever your sex.

CM> To me, these young British girls just seem to be pawns in your game.

They are models, no more no less. They choose to either do the job or
not and have no editorial input into the style of the shoot.

CM> I’d like some clarification.

When what you need is more medication.

CM> I’d also like to know what it costs to subscribe to your website. Thank you.

$29.90 per month.

CM> C.M. USA

KER-ching! reckon I made the sale, with all that smoooth sales talk?

A while back I switched from Bowens lighting gear to Elinchrom equipment. Bowens being clunky, heavy british made stuff. Elinchrom being reliable lightweight top quality Swiss made stuff. or so I thought. Basically the Bowens was heavy as hell and didn’t recycle between flashes that fast. But hey, it was cheap, hardly ever bust and spares were only one phone call away. The Elinchrom stuff though has been an entirely different experience one, and not the one I was expecting. Not only do the tube wear out in MONTHS, they’re fucking hard to get hold of. Could it be the UK importers are just crap and don’t hold enough stock of the single user replacable component in the heads? or maybe pixies steal them from their stockrooms and trade them for magic beans. Whatever the reason, thanks to the baggage handlers at Prague or Stansted I now need 4 new flash tubes and no one in the UK has any stock at all. I have only two working flash heads left. Normally I keep spares, but for some reason, I’ve just gone through a phase of killing tubes, so I was down to zero even before the baggage handlers flung them from the plane, probably before it had even stopped. I guess I’ll have to just order a bunch from the manufacturers direct or maybe the US.

In fact I’d say, Lucky for everyone. I’ve been very dissappointed by the quality of new girls in the UK recently, so other than reshooting some of best from way back when, there really was no alternative to flying out to Prague. Day one was, as ever a horror. 3.00am start to get to the airport, closely followed by being well and trully shafted by Sleazyjet - 380 of your UK pounds please. I don’t mind paying per bag OR per kilo, but both? If I wanted that kind of treatment I’d fly Bryanair.

Ok, rant over. As you can see, the day got a lot better. Meet Lucky. When we came to book the girls for the trip there were three girls on the oh-my-god list, and Lucky was one of them. She spoke great english and was just really fun to be around, which in my overtired mood was just what was required. More soon, but todays model has just arrived. 7 mins late, apologising profusely. If only I could find a few UK girls who’d turn up, let alone be on time.

I’m home from Ibiza after a long day travelling. Despite organising a late checkout from the villa, guess what? The bloody cleaners turn up at 9am and get all huffy we’ve not packed and gone. So its all a general race around with everyone packing up lights and stuffing dildos and underwear in to suitcases, whilst gluging coffee and eating Cheerios with nasty UHT milk. Working in porn is fun, but not today. I do not like early starts, least of all stressed ones.
Anyway, we get to the airport and eventually find the lost model and assistant relaxing quite happily miles away from either the agreed meeting point, or the check-in for the flight. A frank exchange of opinions follows…

So now its time for the real task of the day: The excess baggage lottery. Getting a huge pile of gear and, errr, other equipment past check-in as quickly and as cheaply as possible is a lottery, with many factors at play. How many in the group, how many bags and the mood of the check in person being just the basics. As ever, we’re miles over. But this is where fate throws me a bone. For the second time this trip the checkout girl cannot do simple addition. Somehow, and don’t ask me how, she manages to add up the weight of nine cases, each of them weighing over 10kgs and four being over 20kgs each, and come up with a total of just 84kgs. She then charges us for only 14kgs. Astounding. We saved in the region of £300 on the basis that the budget airline was too tight to hire anyone with any maths or buy the existing staff a calculator. Thus was my mood was changed and general perkiness resumed. :)
Thats enough boring stuff, I’ll be back in the office on Monday and will post more samples from the trip, most likely of Clarice, plus the first full set from the trip in Mondays update.

OK, I can finally own up - we’re away shooting again in Ibiza. And as ever, its a rollercoaster ride of un-expected sucesses and random failure. Lets start with the good stuff. The villa is great, huge, very quiet, with lots of very photogenic aspects to it. From the lovely rustic barn seen here, through to a pool with startlingly bright underwater lighting - normally, its not quite enough to shoot by, but this pool, lights up the countryside its so bright and is therefore perfect for shoots.

Also a change from previous trips, we’re flying out all the models. Sorry guys, no local talent from the island at all this year. We took the decision to import girls as reliablity seemed more of a priority than previous years. The clubbing and partying girls usually found on the island, while often extremely hot, aren’t always that reliable - theres always one more after party to check out, and before they know it, its midday and they’re late for a shoot having still not been to bed. So I was really dissappointed when one of our favourite, and usually most reliable girls did not turn up for her flight yesterday evening. We waited and waited, two long and very boring hours at the airport till we finally gave up around 1am. Sitting around waiting is a real mix of emotions. On the hand you’re bored and pissed off; you know you’ve almost certainly been let down, but on the other, you’re just worried that something has happened and the poor thing is sitting on a suitcase somewhere crying.

So what do we do today is the big question? the likely answer is, to write a bit of blog, chase down some standby girls, and then go scope out some new locations in the car.

Holly, has been a facourite on the site for litterally years, when she popped back up again recently it seemed like a damn fine idea to bring her away to Ibiza. I think she had visions of ending up somewhere more glamourous than a dusty old barn, standing next too a bag of cement! 

As ever nothing ever turns out quite how I expect or plan for. After a week in Budapest things are going reasonably well - except after nearly a week we still don’t have reliable access to the internet, which as you can imagine is driving me nuts. We’ve now moved apartment three times chasing working internet AND heating in the same place. So far we’re not winning - to the point that I’ve had a hissy fit and come home for the weekend leaving my assistant and translator to freeze their butts off and fix it all, for princess Simon, by monday. Sometimes its great being the boss. :)

(Read on …)