Alternative education: A "school for porn" exists in Vancouver
Deep in the heart of Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood is a fully functioning adult film studio, owned by porn producer and star, Samantha Mack.
The studio is the location of Mack’s business, Mack Models, an adult film agency that specializes in working with Vancouver-based talent.
Along with being the location for various film shoots, the studio is now also the location for a brand new program, a fully comprehensive porn school taught by Mack herself. Yes, that’s right: a school, for porn.
Mack’s porn school runs 12 different classes for both budding professionals to brush up on their skills to eager amateurs who just want a lesson in spicing things up. The 2019 syllabus includes “Intro to rope,” “Intro to BDSM,” “Positions and Transitions,” and “Threesomes, Foursomes, and Moresomes.”
Adult film star Samantha Mack’s Vancouver porn studio/ Shannon Elmitt
Mack’s courses kicked off last year with a male-centred course called ‘Porno Bootcamp’ – which originally started as the plot of a video for Mack’s site, but became much more than that when she realized it could be a great way to find and train new talent.
Since the success of the male classes, Mack has gone on to teach female-centred ones, which focus more on the business side of things.
“What’s really big is girls self-marketing themselves,” Mack explained.
“We want to teach them how to make consistent income. We’re teaching them to be content creators, as that’s the way the industry is shifting.”
The shift away from “shock value porn” as Mack described it, and more towards “intimacy and interaction” means the content that sells now, is far more about showcasing stars in more of an intimate, personal way.
Porn sites like OnlyFans and Clips4Sale operate much in the same way as Instagram or Snapchat, in that they are meant to be self-curated. The performer is in control of their own content, their own brand, and exactly the kind of videos they want to make, meaning they need to become their own producers, writers, and directors.
Samantha Mack (Bruna Arbex)
Mack’s courses, for women especially, are centred around self-marketing, branding, shooting, and content curation.
She is committed to teaching budding industry stars how to bang on camera because, from a producer’s standpoint, it helps her to know she has fully trained and skilled performers at her fingertips.
It also goes further than that and has become a way for her to give back to an industry that nurtured her in a very similar way.
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“Someone taught me, and someone had taught her, and so on,” explained Mack, who has always had fellow performers as mentors in her career.
“This is me paying forward,” she said. Due to the stigma and judgment attached to careers in adult film, Mack – and the porn industry in general – have built themselves up in the shadows, which is why she puts time into teaching others because they’re unlikely to get that information anywhere else.
As more female performers becoming porn producers and teachers, the industry is majorly shifting. These powerhouse women know what it’s like to be a performer and they know what makes performers feel uncomfortable. Their lessons to people entering the industry focus on ensuring porn sets are ethical, and that the rights of the performer and lessons on consent are made very clear.
So, for the first time, with performers needs, wants, and safety as the primary concern, the industry is transforming itself, one Porno Bootcamp at a time.
The new session of Porno Bootcamp begins this month.
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