Behind the shoot retrospective: self defense cattle call
As previously mentioned, Velvetkick went through stages of casting for models for our videos. In an effort to branch out to the ‘vanilla’ everyday female Scott enlisted me to see if we can get females to appear in a self defense type demonstration.
So I put out a few posts on Craigslist and back page asking for females who were interested I learning some self defense moves. Got a ton of responses and had to do a lot of weeding out by telling them they would actually be kicking and kneeing an instructor in the groin. A lot of women weren’t comfortable doing that on camera and others were definitely down. We had offered compensation for their time and finally had gotten about ten females to show up on the day of the shoot.
We were very nervous about this one. This was pre social media days so these women definitely put their trust in us to create a safe environment. Also while Scott was big into self defense and karate, I had limited experience so my job was to make the women comfortable and also convince them to actually hit me. One by one we had them practice some moves in front of the camera. Knees, kicks, punches. Some hit so lightly it was hard to make anything look good. Others just weren’t comfortable at all and barely put forward any effort (they were just there for the quick dollar but chickened out when the camera was on).
We had to also reassure them that the video was for subscription services only and wouldn’t be used commercially as some of the women were teachers or nurses and didn’t want that exposure (this was still in the mail order days / internet clips were just really getting started).
However we had two of the 10 or so women who were really into it and gave it their all. One of them, Malin, ended up doing a bunch more videos with us (and me personally) and also did some vids for Andrea at spikey step (huge jump from vanilla to domination!). More on her another post.
Anyway we were able to salvage some usable footage but really not anything compelling. So this was one of the cases where the shoot expense far outweighed the return in clip sales. As fun as it was seeing normal everyday women inflict some damage, the lack of sex appeal or anything that really stood out made this one a tough one to swallow. Especially given the effort and back and forth we had to do with the participants.
While ultimately we got one new model from the bunch - Scott had to take down the clips a few years later when one of the women was alerted by a friend to her being seen online in a video that she was assured wasn’t being used for commercial use. So basically the entire shoot became a wash.
From there on out we kept things mostly to those in the fetish/lifestyle industry or focused on those more glamorous models like you’ve seen that defined velvetkick.
So I put out a few posts on Craigslist and back page asking for females who were interested I learning some self defense moves. Got a ton of responses and had to do a lot of weeding out by telling them they would actually be kicking and kneeing an instructor in the groin. A lot of women weren’t comfortable doing that on camera and others were definitely down. We had offered compensation for their time and finally had gotten about ten females to show up on the day of the shoot.
We were very nervous about this one. This was pre social media days so these women definitely put their trust in us to create a safe environment. Also while Scott was big into self defense and karate, I had limited experience so my job was to make the women comfortable and also convince them to actually hit me. One by one we had them practice some moves in front of the camera. Knees, kicks, punches. Some hit so lightly it was hard to make anything look good. Others just weren’t comfortable at all and barely put forward any effort (they were just there for the quick dollar but chickened out when the camera was on).
We had to also reassure them that the video was for subscription services only and wouldn’t be used commercially as some of the women were teachers or nurses and didn’t want that exposure (this was still in the mail order days / internet clips were just really getting started).
However we had two of the 10 or so women who were really into it and gave it their all. One of them, Malin, ended up doing a bunch more videos with us (and me personally) and also did some vids for Andrea at spikey step (huge jump from vanilla to domination!). More on her another post.
Anyway we were able to salvage some usable footage but really not anything compelling. So this was one of the cases where the shoot expense far outweighed the return in clip sales. As fun as it was seeing normal everyday women inflict some damage, the lack of sex appeal or anything that really stood out made this one a tough one to swallow. Especially given the effort and back and forth we had to do with the participants.
While ultimately we got one new model from the bunch - Scott had to take down the clips a few years later when one of the women was alerted by a friend to her being seen online in a video that she was assured wasn’t being used for commercial use. So basically the entire shoot became a wash.
From there on out we kept things mostly to those in the fetish/lifestyle industry or focused on those more glamorous models like you’ve seen that defined velvetkick.
