Maybe More "Natural" Videos

Fran,

Love your work!! However, as one gentlemen in one review said, let
the girls smoke their usual brand and with a more natural style. I've
noticed many vid sequences, like Gwen's, where she smokes three
different brands. I have a feeling that Gwen is a Marlboro kings girl
and not an all-white or 100's girl. Love her ... she's in my "holy three"
with Jen and Jessi.

In other shoots, there are rather affected histrionics like Andrea's
hula hooping and Vanessa's rather bad dancing in "Smoking Machine 3".
These girls are fabulous smokers and we're smoking fetishists who want
THAT to be the focus. By all means, continue your excellent photography
from terrific angles and under great sound and lighting conditions. I
believe you'll find that most members of the site just want beautiful
girls smoking beautifully and little more!! You've delivered that kind of
product on several occasions and I'd love if that would become the main
theme.

Interviews are great if they are PART of the shoot but not the DOMINANT
part. My guess is that, for the most part, most of us don't care too much
about the smoking history of the women or the reasons why they smoke
and how they chose their brand. We want to see them smoke and not
talk about it. Interview vids should be 3 parts pure smoking to 1 part
discussion/smoking like the excellent second Jen vid ... but not the WHOLE
vid. Also, the younger kids in interviews often try way too hard to give
"deep" philosophical reasons why they smoke and it sounds ridiculous
(example: Bojana's last shoot was brilliant but I didn't need to hear her
talk about smoking as a release from "suffering" ... that's way too
"drama queen").

Please take these suggestions as suggestions from a strong ally as I find
the overall quality of your work to be UNMATCHED ON THE ENTIRE WEB.

Cheers,

John

Despite you've widely complained about the Andrea's hulahop and 'bad' dancing scene on Vanessa's video, and you've included those complains off-topic even on other video reviews that were not related to those, many people (like me) enjoy those scenes due to the factor of being doing exercise while smoking, that is closely related to be out of breath when smoking and covers a highly demanded sub-fetish. I know this is not your cup of tea, but it is for many customers. I already mentioned the performance of the hula on the description of the video, you can clearly see the still picture and each one knows what is included in the video, as well as the dancing scene on Vanessas's video description and is clearly visible by watching the still pictures provided, so if you see such still captures when I release the next video try to avoid them, despite the hulahop or the dancing occupies a fraction of the video length one is adviced on the website about the contents you will see inside.

About interviews, keep in mind that those girls are not professional communicators, they are just girls next door, and many of them doesn't have communicator skills, but we all want to hear the common smoking questions answered. So I'll not measure to fit the interview on 1/3 of the video. Some young girls like Elsa were natural and sincere communicators, despite her young age, and the full length of each one of Elsa's videos are 100% interview. I try my best doing this videos, but believe me I stop asking questions to a girl who is not natural, or they are overacted. So as a rule I'll not do any rule for interview lentghs, let's see on each girl, and then I will warn on the description what you will find inside.

If you are a perfectionist person as I can wonder by reading your comments, you'll always find a reason to complain about my videos, and it will be difficult to find your jewel video in my collection of videos that tries to cover many subfetishes.

Look, I received a comment some days ago about another user who was the opossite than you, he asked me to add a storyboard to each video because he found boring to watch a girl just sitting and smoking !!!!!! Then I reveive another comment of another person asking why all girls are sitting all the time, so we can not admire theyr body when smoking, and the last one told me that if a girl was smoking when standing up, he was getting nervous because is not natural to smoke standing up....
Inside my mind I can understand each of those persons, and yes, they are right if you look through their eyes, they didn't complained so widely as you did spreading off-topic your hulahop complains around all the website, but my conclusion at the end is not to listen particular complains because I'll loose the essence of my work. I'll continue trying my best, despite it may not fit for many audiences

Are you trying to say that Vanessa's dancing was GOOD in "Smoking
Machine Part 3"?? Come on, Fran!! First of all, we, the viewers,
cannot even hear the music because she has a headset on. Second,
the girl does not dance in an expert way. Yes, I bought the vid
and when it gets to the dance part, I hit the CLOSE button. Do
you think I'm the only one?? Do you really think that the dancing
without us being able to hear the music is INCREASING SALES??
Does she move her hips well?? NO!!! And I have TAUGHT DANCE.

We can hypothesize all day long about this but you have to take
such criticism in a better way. I'm NOT your enemy. I praise your
work often but if praise is not mixed with criticism, it's just kissing
your ass. Is that what you want? Frankly, don't you think it's
ridiculous that video after video gets an average of 4.8 stars?
The ratings cease to be meaningful when they're all fives. It's
just a "cheering section", a "fan club", and not useful artistic
criticism.

You've got to come to terms with the idea that, good as you are,
and you ARE good, a reviewer contributes NOTHING to your
professional growth by just say that everything is FAAAABULOUS.
Please. Let's be adults here.

And since you want to talk hula hoops and smoking, on Dailymotion's
mini-clip of Andrea hula-hooping, the number of hits on that mini-clip
is SMALL and the viewers gave it 4 stars while THOUSANDS of
viewers of other mini-clips have 5 stars so ... don't take MY word
for it ... look at the small/medium number of viewings and the
four, NOT five stars of THOUSANDS of viewers.

Part of your task, besides making the vids, is to try to see who
are the MOST discerning reviewers (Irene is a good example).
We WANT your vids to have MAXIMUM sales. Yes, from time to
time I'm going to be VERY negative which makes it much more
believable when I'm VERY positive, yes?! I gave Christina
a VERY bad rating because she doesn't know how to hold the
cigarette in her lips, the lighting washed out nearly all the
smoke, and she had zero multiple-pumps ... so what do you
want, five stars??

I gave Jess, Jen, Alazne, and Gwen five stars and you can believe
that BECAUSE I'm willing to give one, two, or three stars to others.
I've done a LOT of work FOR you by also reviewing the smokingsweeties
mini-clips on Dailymotion (I presume you gave them to DM) and I've
looked at the hit rate AND the stars ratings. Learn to realize that
your best friends on SmokingSweeties are your most critical viewers
and not the imbeciles who just say "Yes, Yes, Yes, Fran you are a
GOD!!!!!".

You almost gave up on SmokingSweeties a year ago and many of
us would like to contribute some ideas to increase your sales and
and number of website hits. It doesn't mean you MUST obey
critics like me. It just means CONSIDERING that some of your
reviewers are of more help to your professional success than others.

Do some research on DailyMotion and you'll see that Alazne's mini-clip
has three times the visits and FIVE stars than Andrea's 4-star, seldom
visited hula clip. Numbers speak louder than words!! Look at Badernista's
"Sexy Speed Smoking" clip on dailymotion and watch one minute of a
woman who takes NO AIR and it's sexy as hell. And it's like nothing
you've done!!

If your future responses are like your responses to me, you're going to
STAGNATE PROFESSIONALLY, Fran. We love much of your work but even
you CAN be wrong. And I've given you a NUMERIC example above and
I could give MANY more. Take your critics seriously. They are your
best allies.

John