Montreal- [Hour.ca]- Webdreams, the Showcase documentary series by Montreal’s Galafilm chronicling the lives of participants in the online porn industry, is back, and is promising to be even “more hardcore” in its second season (it hits the small screen on April 6).
“Season one was a hard act to follow for sure,” says series director Joshua Dorsey, sighting the show’s unexpected success charting the down-and-dirty realities of the biz. In 2004, the series intimately chronicled the lives of various performers in the online adult industry, but for the show’s second incarnation, the focus will shift from stars to producers. Says Dorsey, “We really wanted to delve deeper into the entrepreneurial side of the business. The porn stars are now setting up shop for themselves and there’s a dual business/performer aspect that the online industry allows for.”
Season two of Webdreams will not only branch out in terms of content but also in terms of location, featuring porn workers from Toronto and Vancouver along with a fresh new crop of Montrealers. The idea is to explore the nuances of each city’s industry. According to Dorsey, Montreal has the biggest industry and it is probably the most open, whereas Toronto is “more business oriented,” with more sites and less performers, and Vancouver “is completely unique in the sense that it’s smaller but much more tight knit.”
As for Webdreams’ promise to be more hardcore, that doesn’t necessarily mean in an XXX way, says Dorsey. “‘Intense’ is more the word.”
We’ll see Violet Manson, Montreal’s most popular web chatter, try to get her solo show off the ground; Diesel, a successful web performer-turned-entrepreneur, who will take a turn at producing transsexual content along with his own; a mainstream media crew trying to manage a virtual porn factory; and Uncle D, known as the “Canadian Assman,” a lone softcore producer who has a hardcore edge.
For Dorsey, trust was key to getting close to his subjects in season one. “For the first two months of shooting, Dugmor, a producer, thought that I was a policeman, that I was undercover, trying to get the goods on his business.” Season two will concentrate on more in-depth storytelling as the series charts the latest stage of the booming online scene, in which highly specialized niche sites rule the web and fortune and fame can be had and lost in an instant.
Being the subject of this type of documentary series wasn’t necessarily easy, explains Vid Vicious, a porn director who had a prolific career in mainstream broadcasting under his belt but had never experienced being on the other side of the camera. Says Vicious, explaining the difficulty of having a second camera crew around while trying to film intimate porno scenes: “In the beginning I was always staring at the camera, making notes to the cameramen.”
Vicious, like many others in the industry, didn’t have to work in porn, having already worked as a director for the CBC and the National, as a teacher at Dawson College and at making commercials. He chose porn because it was so much easier to get the contracts. But for Vicious, working in the adult industry is just like anything else. “It’s getting in there and telling the story I want to tell, whether it be about a girl going to the grocery store or a girl having an orgasm – to me it’s the same principle.”
Though Webdreams was essentially the kiss of death to his mainstream career, he is unfazed and treats his job like any other. Says Vicious, “I barely ever get excited while I am shooting even though I am the horniest guy you will ever meet.”
Both the series maker and the porn producer share a similar vision for Webdreams: to show that adult industry stars and producers “are very down to earth when you get to know them,” says Dorsey. Vicious hopes that “Webdreams will trigger interest in the adult industry – and not just seeing it as perverted the way that the Bush government is trying to push it.”