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06/03/2007: "On the Set: SexZ Pictures' Upload"
On the Set: SexZ Pictures' Upload
By: Jared Rutter
Posted: 1:00 pm PDT 6-1-2007
LOS ANGELES - SexZ Pictures' Upload, with a big budget, big script, big cast, kicked off its 20-day shooting schedule with a monster scene: nine women and eight men banging each other in a BDSM orgy on a dungeon set.
"Big day today," says actor Evan Stone, one of the bangers. "Lotsa stuff happening." Indeed.
On a downtown Los Angeles soundstage, director Eli Cross, who co-wrote (with Alvin Edwards) the hefty 65-page script, is launching a huge project. Everything is going well, he says. But of course it's only the first day, and it's all sex.
The trickier parts are still to come. Swatches of dialogue to be mouthed by performers more used to emitting only spontaneous natural sounds. A complex story set in the future with period flashbacks and simulated reality interludes. Hollywood-style action sequences involving weapons, shoot-outs, fights.
Cross is already fretting over the blocking of a gunplay sequence to be shot the next day.
SexZ has give him one of the longest shooting schedules ever for an XXX movie, twice as long as what he had for his award-winning Corruption last year. The budget is also higher, over $300,000.
A "big chunk" of that, says his partner Kylie Ireland, is for the special effects that are crucial to recreating a future world. The CGI budget alone would fund many smaller scale video features.
Ireland is in charge of art direction, with three departments working under her: sets, costumes and props. The latter include the elaborate computers that figure importantly in the story and goodies like hand-held mini-computers, designer steroids, surgically implanted ID chips and "dermal pouches" for concealing contraband.
Though she hadn't planned to, having so much else on her plate (she's also shooting BTS footage), Ireland will be doing a sex scene herself. It's a black-and-white flashback to the 1950s, with period underwear and vibrators; she's partnered by Delilah Strong and the movie's male lead, Derrick Pierce.
At the moment Cross is directing not simulated reality but plain old simulated sex between various couples against a blue screen. These segments, in post-production manipulation, will be used as inserts in a cellblock setting in a virtual reality sequence.
The couple faking anal action are Veronica Rayne, a statuesque brunette, and veteran stud Mark Davis. Three more such setups are still to be shot; after that will come the orgy, for an hour and a half of real time.
Three makeup artists have been working on the women since morning and they're all ready to roll.
Eva Angelina has the leading role of Cassandra, a federal agent with a troubled psyche. She's been in porn for four years, starting at age 18, and this is her first leading dramatic role.
Most of her many scenes have been in gonzos. Her meatiest acting so far was as Stormy Daniels' kid sister in Wicked's Sleeping Around, which garnered rave reviews.
She's all eagerness, primed for the challenge of a big part. "I am so excited," she grins. "I'm ready for the long hours." She's not concerned about handling dialogue, having had some mainstream movie acting experience as a young teen.
She's especially looking forward to her climactic face-off with co-star Hillary Scott, who plays Tesla, her cyberpunk antagonist. She says the concept calls to mind the Laurence Fishburne-Keanu Reeves showdown in The Matrix.
This is doubly a red-letter day in Angelina's career: her first-ever double penetration. She chose her partners: youthful newcomers Alex Gonz and Justice Young, with whom she's completely simpatico.
The orgy, she says, is Cassandra's fantasy. In it she assumes the identity of a girl she's seen abused in another dungeon scene, still to be shot. Her character is supposed to like abuse and Eva isn't about to fake it.
She tells her partners, with a smile, "You guys can pretty much do whatever you want. Choking, slapping and spitting is a must."
As the sun starts to set outdoors, Cross announces, "We're done with all the blue-screen bullshit."
And about time too for the assembled clusterfuckers, who are thoroughly sexed up and raring to start.
Cross positions twosomes and threesomes on various apparatus—gyno chairs, massage tables, cages, X-frames, slings, hoists—on the large dungeon set. The 17 people break down into seven groups.
The women are Angelina, Rayne, Julie Night, the original anything-goes girl, Carly Parker, a big-breasted blonde, Faye Runaway, a tall skinny blonde, Marsha Lord, a tall skinny redhead, Shannon Kelly, a petite red-haired MILF, plus Aidan Quinn and a brunette, who do girl-girl with strap-ons.
Stone, Davis, Gonz, Young, plus Alex Sanders, Christian, Sledge Hammer and Tyler Knight are the men.
Cross addresses the cast. "At SexZ Pictures the only company rules are you have to be 18 and walking on two legs. But just because we can shoot anything doesn't mean we have to. Discuss [with your partners] how rough you want to go, what you like, what you don't like."
For the soft version there won't be any restraints.
Acknowledging the high hormone level on the set, he says the sex doesn't have to be simulated; the cameras will shoot around insertions. But he warns the guys, "If you pop you don't get paid. So hold it for the hard."
There are three men with handheld Sonys, designated A, B and C. They prowl through the writhing, sweating, screaming bodies, shooting every detail.
Rayne and Davis, on the gyno chair, are doing their anal for real this time. He's pounding her so hard the chair keeps skidding all over the floor. Night is being d.p.ed—hard—by Stone and Christian. Sanders is working on the 19 year-old Runaway. "That girl is smokin'!" he exclaims during a break.
Finally Cross yells "Cut! Take your cocks out of the girls!" He has to repeat Cut about a dozen times before the turned-on talent slows down.
Cross and Ireland take a moment to huddle over what's been shot, as they do at every break. They're being shadowed by a four-man crew from a Canadian reality-TV show that's doing a segment on them as a porn industry couple.
Cross tells them that the official hardcore footage they're about to shoot now will be "the same thing but with bondage and a bit more anal sex."
The makeup brigade moves in to touch up the ladies and help the gents towel off.
Eva is cuffed to the massage table, her double-penetrators hovering over her. Julie's chained to a hoist. Carly gets attached to the X frame. Davis whips Veronica's butt.
When everybody surges into high gear again, the detonation of sexual energy practically raises the roof. It seems to be an indication that SexZ's ambitious project is off to a helluva start.
Note from Kylie: This scene was day 1 of the shoot, back on May 20th.
