BigShinyThing

We know a bit about the pitfalls of HD: cute animals and landscapes look stunning but humans can look downright terrifying. Having seen their pores magnified to the size of saucers on extra-wide plasma TVs, celebs are rushing to their plastic surgeons to get their skin HD-ready. But the porn industry is already on the case about how to deal with the advanced technology.

As acne-prone celebrities like Cameron Diaz have discovered, HD is extremely unforgiving. But for pornographers it’s not just just their actors faces which are under constant scrutiny — in fact the actors’ facial features are rarely the focus of the close up. As one actress, writer and director, Stormy Daniels explains:

The biggest problem is razor burn. I’m not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD.

Others counter that HD makes the action more ‘real’: “It puts you in the room”, says director Roddy D.

One major obstacle to HD porn has already been created by Sony who said last week it would not mass-produce porno on its Blu-ray high definition discs. The decision has forced the industry to use the competing HD-DVD format, or in some cases, find companies other than Sony that can manufacture copies of Blu-Ray movies. This seems like the latest in a series of strategic blunders from Sony, given the role of the porn industry in the VHS/Beta format wars of the 1980s and the proliferation of the Internet. [UPDATE: Sony have just denied blocking porn production for the format.]

Also, because of the sex industry’s experience in adopting new media formats and championing them, it is the ideal testing ground for HD. There is already work in progress to deal with the ‘highlighted physical imperfections’ issue. Two distributors, Vivid Entertainment and Digital Playground, have been shooting with high definition cameras for two years and says that their experience using the technology gives them the edge in understanding how to deal with hyperdefinition. Their techniques include using postproduction to digitally soften the actors’ skin tone: “It takes away the blemishes and the pits and harshness and makes it look like they have baby skin.”

Hollywood take note.

Source: New York Times via Nettime.