Amateur pornography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Amateur pornography is a category of pornography that features models or actors performing without pay, or for whom this material is their first or only paid modeling work. The label is also sometimes applied to professionally-produced pornography which mimics genuinely amateur work.
[edit] Types of amateur pornography
Truly amateur pornography includes pornographic home movies and photographs shot by couples or individuals for their private entertainment, as well as amateur movies created for noncommercial distribution among friends. Several celebrities, most notably Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, have seen their pornographic home movies illegally distributed commercially by the Internet Entertainment Group. Home movies may additionally be distributed commercially; for example, a group may throw a sex party mainly for the fun of it and agree to sell documentary footage of the events.
Professionally produced amateur pornography - often referred to as "pro-am porn" within the industry - involves professionals behind the camera but amateur actors, often either first time performers or relative newcomers to pornography. On some occasions a professional actor may appear with the amateur actors. One popular form of pro-am porn is are series that purport to introduce new actors appearing for the first time in porn. They often feature a format in which a host introduces a model, interviews her/him about their past sex life, sexual interests, why she/he decided to appear in porn, etc. and they have the actress/actor perform various sex acts including masturbation, oral sex, intercourse, and sometimes lesbian or gay sex acts. In some cases the host may engage in sex with the model or a professional pornstar may be used instead. In some cases only amateur actors may be used in a scene such a boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, or same-sex friends.
In some cases, a distinction is made between "independent porn" and "pro-am porn", in that pro-am videos are generally made by porn industry insiders who have access to the normal distribution channels through which most adult videos are marketed, whereas independent porn videos are made outside of this system and are available only by mail order through a catalog or website. The rise of the internet as a major porn venue has confounded many of these distinctions, as the majority of internet pornography is produced outside of the relatively centralized "studio system" in which the majority of adult videos were produced.
Some so-called amateur porn is not really amateur in any real sense of the term but actually a professionally produced simulation of amateur porn, using such techniques as poor lighting, varying body types and, in the case film or video, omitting a narrative. They sometimes employ anonymous sex workers as performers. Note that some pornographers label pornography not containing any traditional hallmarks of amateur pornography, even the simulated variety, as "amateur" and thus the designation may not always be useful in determining the actual type of content in such pornography.
Some people argue that it is the intended audience that distinguishes amateur porn from other forms such as nude photography and glamour photography. As such, some consider the term more useful as a marketing category than as a well-defined subclass of pornography.
[edit] Amateur pornography and the web
As the Internet created easy access and distribution for pornography, producers realized that they could earn easy money as users were paying as much for cheap, shoddy work as they were for high quality pornography. But as the Web porn industry matured, the majority of consumers began to demand a certain degree of production quality to the films and videos on offer. MarineMeat.com offered amateur gay porn featuring real active duty US Marines in their productions raising the bar for this genre. For a time, authentic amateur porn dropped off in popularity as casual producers were slowly bumped out of the market. However, a backlash against overly produced pornography created a permanent market for amateur porn as a category of production style and content. This trend has more recently created Reality porn which is a more amateur-style approach to professionally produced content. But there are also many genuine amateur sites on the web created without a profit motive in mind, where all of the content is submitted by users who took the photographs and video themselves. Some of these sites, like Privatevoyeur.com and Voyeurweb are free, while others, like cynthiak.com charge a membership fee for access and age verification. Many are independently run by the women themselves, such as femnudist and the now-defunct jennicam. It is unknown what legal effect, if any, will be felt by this segment of the internet, based on recent modifications to 2257 Laws concerning published adult material.
