An Interesting Observation Re "Overdirecting" and Constanza

In the Constanza video and the first Raquel video, you can easily
tell that their smoking was most fiendish and sexy in the CASTING
SESSION than it EVER was in the video!!! Especially in the case of
Constanza, who looked FABULOUS in the white dress she was
dressed in before the actual shoot, if she'd simply retained that
look for the WHOLE video and that smoking style, I'll bet the sales
of that vid would be several HUNDRED percent higher.

It's pretty strange when the exhales look stronger, thicker, and
sexier in the casting session than the actual video. Well, what
conclusion does that draw one to, inevitably? Need I say it?
Constanza looked more beautiful and smoked more beautifully
in HER NATURAL STATE. Fran's "directing" with outfits and make-up
and all kinds of poses "fixed" something that was never "broken" to
begin with.

I fully agree. The same applies to the Alexia and the Encarni vids - and many many others: Most girls look more sexy in their natural state. There are very few exceptions (Jessi maybe and Helen).

What I find particularly annoying is the use of diffusion filters: Just because a model does not have perfect skin and/or is a little older many producers "soften" the image of the face. When not expertly done (see one of the first Vanessa vids) it looks awful. When expertly done (see the Alexia vid) it can look ok, sometimes interesting (20s style), but still kind of faked - while many viewers actually LIKE to see the imperfections on a model's face..

marlbored wrote:I fully agree. The same applies to the Alexia and the Encarni vids - and many many others: Most girls look more sexy in their natural state. There are very few exceptions (Jessi maybe and Helen).

What I find particularly annoying is the use of diffusion filters: Just because a model does not have perfect skin and/or is a little older many producers "soften" the image of the face. When not expertly done (see one of the first Vanessa vids) it looks awful. When expertly done (see the Alexia vid) it can look ok, sometimes interesting (20s style), but still kind of faked - while many viewers actually LIKE to see the imperfections on a model's face..

Sometimes a lot of make-up actually dramatically WORSENS the rough skin
that a film maker is trying to cover up. It also ignores a basic fact that many
models with kind of rough-looking skin look sexy BECAUSE of that skin. It
makes them look more "bad girl" sexy and I, for one, really love Constanza's
skin in its natural state ... even with a couple of pimples.

It doesn't take "diffusion filters" to worsen a sexy model's "imperfect" face
though your point is still germane.

Hi Eleuthero, or any of the other guys here who can confirm this...

If you can, i'd be very disapointed indeed, but be equally grateful to you that you revealed this deception.

I watched Judit's vid afer a long break & forgot how much i liked her.

I loved the closed-mouth inhales, (which are as rare as hen's teeth) that she does constantly.

I loved the fact she smoked soo much & was into marl reds.

I loved her combination of the vaguely amaturish style, yet heavy addction.

I especially liked the fact however that, unlike most of the models here, she seemed to be actually telling the truth.

I was shocked however,to hear that her pack of reds contained marb lights.

Has anyone any evidence they can point me to?

If true, this sort of thing deception makes my blood boil.

I've got to say, if it is true, then not only is Judit one hell of a liar but everything else she says on this video should be taken with a huge pinch of salt (2-3 packs a day, starting at aged 12, 5 packs max etc etc....)

I gotta say however, i had some doubts anyway, as this would explain why her exhales are so weak & "un-red" like.

Generally, I've noticed myself that there is an awful lot of bullshit in Frans vids, which is why i don't buy them very often.

On top of the ones mentioned by others, i've noticed a few "enhancements" myself:-

He often overlays the same audio track over & over again to "enhance" the sound of the inhales.

He crudly attemps to cut different lines of dialog together to change the meaning of a sentence (both of these,for example were amply demonstrated on the last Elsa vid).

He regularly fiddles with the contrast, gamma & brightness settings in order to exaggerate the volume of the exhales produced by the models.

He regularly coaches his models into telling gross exagerations & downright lies (again check out the last Elsa vid - it's almost a theatrical drama. Elsa's a very bad liar so you can tell virually everything she said was balony)

There are many, many other examples - but i'll leave that to you guys to fathom them out yourselves.

In fact, there's so much bullshit in Frans vids I'm beginning to think he's not quite right in his head.

I know for sure (from a previous posts) he never watches his own videos (wtf!!) once he's finished editing them. (I've gotta say Fran your not the greatest filmaker in the world. I do professional offline editing for a living so had to study long & hard myself - you'll NEVER learn anything unless you take a long hard CRITICAL look at what you've done before. For God sake get a book out the library & learn some basic techniques first before you start being pretentious & arty.)

Because of this, if you ask him if he can recommend models that have a cetain style, he can't tell you who can do what.

Makes you wonder if any of his descriptions are accurate.

Just for once it would be nice for Fran just to stick a camera in front of a GENUINELY heavy smoker, with a GENUINELY excellent style, take his time to CARFULLY light it, & position the mic,then just hit RECORD, & let the model speak IN HER OWN WORDS, SMOKING IN HER NATURAL STYLE.

How hard is that

let me jump in here to make one point: before producers like fran, how often did you get to look at a beautiful woman smoking for 10 or 15 minutes? and to have her talk about smoking?
whether what the models say is TRUE is beside the point. the product is part of a fantasy. most smokers i know wish they never started, wish they could quit, don't think it's sexy. hearing that they love smoking and love the feeling and find it attractive--that's part of the package we get, not an accurate reflection of reality.

mikey wrote:Hi Eleuthero, or any of the other guys here who can confirm this...

If you can, i'd be very disapointed indeed, but be equally grateful to you that you revealed this deception.

I watched Judit's vid afer a long break & forgot how much i liked her.

I loved the closed-mouth inhales, (which are as rare as hen's teeth) that she does constantly.

I loved the fact she smoked soo much & was into marl reds.

I loved her combination of the vaguely amaturish style, yet heavy addction.

I especially liked the fact however that, unlike most of the models here, she seemed to be actually telling the truth.

I was shocked however,to hear that her pack of reds contained marb lights.

Has anyone any evidence they can point me to?

If true, this sort of thing deception makes my blood boil.

Mikey,

Fran and I had a series of private disagreements over public issues I raised (things like putting lights in full flavor packs here and in other videos). I've been inactive on this site since Thanksgiving. If you listen VERY carefully to the dialog in the early part of the Judit video she, herself, makes the quick, "slided over" observation that she enjoys "Marlboro. Strong tobacco ... Marlboro LIGHT". Over and over again, she pulls light 100s out of a Marl. Red pack. Not one cig she smokes is a full-flavored Red. In my disputes with Fran, he told me that he would "explain" this frequently-used gimmick (it was done at length, for example, in Gwen Vol. 15 when she switches from Marl. Red Kings to Camel lights for the second half of the video, pulling them, of course, out of a Reds pack). Fran never did explain it here or privately, only offering that he "had an explanation". Well, that explanation never arrived.

In general without opening old sores or going into the same stuff that was hashed out privately, I can only say that I have "voted with my feet" and after a virtual fury of buying from Sept. 29 to Nov. 24 I have not purchased videos here since but have purchased videos from two other sites which have better models and much better exhaled smoke capture. Those other sites have much more buying activity at comparable or even better per-minute prices and with, in my opinion, much better smoking, better angles, pro quality models and relentless honesty.

I'm sure that both you and I will eventually be scolded as "haters" for critiquing these videos honestly. However, the DEADNESS of the Forum here is an indication that others have found both the models and the smoke capture to be far better than here. Far better. One Australian site I visit has a vibrant Forum indicative of a much, much larger customer base and their AVERAGE model is GORGEOUS. In retrospect, even in some of the SS videos I "liked", I had to fill in bad videography with my imagination. I give as "Exhibit A", the first Mireya solo video. The mirror in front of her blocked visibility of about 90% of her mouth exhale streams and when she was lying down her white top blocked mouth exhale visibility. The second scene of Jen 02 had almost complete INvisibility of exhaled smoke. I skip it on every viewing.

Don't feel guilty, Mikey, because you obviously know quite a bit about the technical side of advanced photography. My advice is to follow your "gut" about what's going on here. Obviously, it would be far TOO savage to claim that Fran is a hack because some individual scenes in some videos are very, very good to excellent. However, I find that the seemingly random inconsistency of smoke capture, the small deceptions in videos and video descriptions, and the overall mediocrity of the models combined to lead me to seek "greener pastures". You don't have to trust me but there are sites where Gwen and Alexia would just be considered ordinary looking and, frankly, rather lacking in on-camera personality.

Peace.

Eleuthero wrote:
However, the DEADNESS of the Forum here is an indication that others have found both the models and the smoke capture to be far better than here. Far better. One Australian site I visit has a vibrant Forum indicative of a much, much larger customer base and their AVERAGE model is GORGEOUS.

If you don't mind me asking, what is the name of this site? I'm always looking for more content to check out!

Eleutherio refeers to www.randomsnaps.com

This Australian site has been running for many years (perhaps since 2004), and the guy running the site is an experienced photographer with stunning models. We both keep a friendly contact, it's not an issue for me to post a link to his site. Tony has much more experience than me doing smoking girls videos, and both his videos/photos worth www.randomsnaps.com visit.

Fran wrote:Eleutherio refeers to www.randomsnaps.com

This Australian site has been running for many years (perhaps since 2004), and the guy running the site is an experienced photographer with stunning models. We both keep a friendly contact, it's not an issue for me to post a link to his site. Tony has much more experience than me doing smoking girls videos, and both his videos/photos worth www.randomsnaps.com visit.

That's very magnanimous of you, Fran. Frankly, I wanted to stop short of direct "advertising" of a competitor's site so I did not mention its name. Tony, on his Forum, has made favorable mention of you. I have no idea how he finds such a diversity of stunning models but he's near a gigantic city. Also, there's something quite nice about really hot Asian girls with Aussie accents to go along with the gorgeous Anglos he has found. You, Fran, appear to have hit upon a new formula with the Lucy/Ainhoa video with two vastly different-looking girls and the stills appear to imply tremendous smoke capture which I've been waiting on for some time. Better days ahead???