9.25.2009

Web Site Thoughts

We're all -well Barney, Jake, and I - are coming up with ideas to add into the future sciencesexandtheladies.com website. We'll figure how it should navigate, name buttons, write everything that will be written and write directions so that later Charlie can just read, copy and past when he's making up the site. This way he'll just have to deal with the hellish, horrible issues involved in the actual making of the website. Being a non-profession, never trained, website-making self learner, makes it horrible, I'm not lying about that. In fact there will be some irrational screaming at the computer as if it were actually an evil person actively trying to ruin his life, but in the end he makes it work, and makes it look pretty cool. Plus, he's free, and he probably won't destroy that much in the process.
The website now is just the audition info - which as you might imagine - is a bit useless and out of date. But, oh, it will be beautiful one day...oh it will be lovely. I'm working on the cast page. It's pretty fun remembering all the different characters the actors played. If you are an actor reading this start thinking about links or any info you want up on your page cause I'll eventually be asking for it.
I'm supposed to have another website idea all written out for our next meeting, but I haven't thought of what that might be. I heard someone is doing Science Sex and the Ladies Mad Libs - and he better have some done...Jake. Or Barnaby  -I can't remember which one of you was supposed to do that right now.

9.20.2009

An Update and Some Movie Stills

So far a little over half the movie has been rough edited. Some scenes are more finished than others. Since most of this movie was shot in front of green screen, the sets are, of course, added in, and they are slowly becoming as we planned. The best way, but maybe not a completely correct way to say it is that the sets are to look as if the actors are in a strange stage show. Sometimes the actors are standing in front of what looks like huge screen prints of a set. Sometimes the sets are a sort of layered photo-realistic collage. Sometimes the sets look like a community theater stage.  Here are a few stills from the movie so far.


Although we kinda like the airplane wallpaper, this is only a temporary background. We love the narrator and the dynamic duo in this though, so we thought we'd put it up.
(Nick Marson, Sara Lukaszewski (twice), Sara Yanney-Chantansombut (twice))


Our 40's brother and sister
(Nick Marson, Christa Shoot)


Our 40's family
(Sarah Aaron, Nick Marson, Christa Shoot, Richard Clark)


The notorious caveman scene. Our Arrogant Narrator is explaining the most common scientific hypothesis scientists use to back up thier conclusions that men naturally evolved a higher sex drive then women.
(Joshua Ramsey (twice), Abigail Wright, Joanna Winston, Andrew Borowicz, Lisa Smith, Katie Sheets, Brandi Payton)

The Silhouettes. These ladies shot this the very last day of shooting. They did fantastic, and they got to say some of the craziest things for the Voice Over that goes with this scene.
(Sylvia Borowicz, Joanna Winston, Sara yanney-Chantansombut, Abigail Wright)

A 50's couple learning about life...
(David Charles, Christa Shoot, Trisha Borowicz, and Nick Marson)


Our 50's husband - grilling some hotdogs and learning some interesting facts.
(David Charles)


Our cover model giving us the real scoop on the G-spot.
(Lisa Smith)

9.14.2009

The Movie Making Roller Coaster

All parts of making a movie are like a rollercoaster, but the part we're wading through now is especially so. Footage is beginning to come together in a coherent way, but - frankly - it's not much to look at. The music isn't there, the titling and effects are stagnant and uncomposed, most of the greenscreen work is rough, and there's simply no 'pop' - for lack of a better word. I had been watching pieces Charlie was working on as I get home from work. Some were less than spectacular - and I'd get a sinking feeling even though I knew it would get better, some were ok -  the potential was obvious and I'd be pretty excited, and some just seemed like they needed a lot more work before I could even judge - those make me feel like we would be in post production till the end of time.
Last week when we had our meeting, we watched what had been roughed together so far - about the first 40 minutes. It was, as I said before, not so awesome. But it was strangely rejuvinating seeing it all together like that. There were glimmers of the strange awesomeness that I know this movie contains. They were sprinkled throughout the 40 minutes of this raw movie. And, I could see through the rough mats, awkward silence, unrefined timing, and plane visuals to the things we had imagined during the many months sitting around our meeting table. It became obvious to me that we really would be able to achieve that look we need.  I suddenly regained faith in how we wrote it, how we imagined and discussed it, and what this movie's going to be. I trust in Charlie's unique eye and attention to visual detail, and I know that none of us will be satisfied with half-assed work. To the naked eye, our infant of a movie might seem empty, boring, slow, but to me, watching it this last time was like the slow creaky ride up to the top of the big hill on an awesome roller coaster.

9.10.2009

HUNG Schmung

I do love my HBO series Six Feet Under, True Blood, Sex and the City - awesome soap operas with lots of sex and nudity. However, I just can't get behind the HBO series HUNG. (full disclosure - I haven't seen the last few episodes cause I got rid on my evil Comcast, but I believe my sentiments are still relevant). Outside of the fact that I find the main character whiney and boring...well, maybe I'm being too hard. I hate one aspect of this show and that usually colors my enjoyment of all other parts so I'll stop making random harsh criticisms.
I will only criticize the very premise of this show. That is...that because this guy has a large penis it is going to make him exceptional at pleasing women through intercourse - so exceptional in fact that he and a former lover begin a service where women pay to have intercourse with him. I criticize because I have spent years researching a movie that specifically points out that a larger penis will not make a woman orgasm any more than a tiny penis will.

Penises don't make women orgasm - clitoral stimulation makes women orgasm.
I won't go into all the info that backs up my statement. You can check that out in our movie. However, I bring this show and its stupid premise up to make a point. Although many people would maybe agree with the statement above if asked about it, there is enough misinformation and wishy-washiness in our culture about how women actually orgasm, that a show like HUNG is accepted without question. When a woman is depicted orgasming in our media, the cause of that orgasm is overwhelmingly intercourse. That is true in shows like HUNG, mainstream movies and TV, and in mostly women written shows like Sex and the City - (I still like it though - in fact I got hooked on it researching for this movie. Detailed list of all the verbal or visual references to female sexual response in the whole Sex and the City series, anyone?).

Just for fun, start taking note of what is physically happening to a women when she orgasms in a movie, T.V. show, ad, porn, erotica, or in a book you're reading.

9.07.2009

The book everyone needs to read

It's the Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality. You can read pieces of it on the internet Here at google books.
For me, this book came at a time in my research, about 3 or 4 years in, where I was beginning to suspect that sexperts and sexual researchers were rarely to never using substantiated data on female sexual response to back up their theories, conclusions, and advice. I was also beginning to really doubt myself because no authors or scientists or experts were saying the things I was suspecting. Often I would read something that seemed to be on the track I was on and then suddenly would backtrack, or I would read hints that the author was on the same track, but nothing more concrete.
In general, the rule of thumb in every journal article, advice column or book I would read was that women have sexual organs and they play a part in sexual pleasure, but it's really just a crap shoot as to what works from one woman to the other. Of course, most would emphasize the clitoris as something that is pleasurable to most women, but there was always this allowance that anything could cause a woman to have an orgasm and that some woman are built to have orgasms in all these ways and others in none of these ways. Frankly it seemed like the scientific community should know more about this, and the fact that they don't either means they're not trying hard enough or women are simply magical beings outside of the realm of science - which seemed a little unlikely to me. I mean I certainly wasn't finding this wishy-washiness about how men orgasm.
Then I started reading The Hite Report, and I realized that someone (Shere Hite) was saying in the early 70's the things that I am suspecting and that no expert will say in the early 2000's.Women are not strange magical beings. There is research out there that explains female sexual response (Masters and Johnson). It is not mysterious, but our societal structure has made it seem like it is mysterious. It was so simple and so obvious, and I had to wonder how the teachings from the Hite Report weren't ingrained in our sexual culture. I later concluded that the emergence of the 1981 book The G-Spot and other Recent Discoveries about Human Sexuality had a lot - although not everything - to do with it. However, that's for another blog. For this blog, I want to point out that the things Shere Hite was telling us in the early 70's are as relevant and pretty much correct as they were then.
In this book 3,000 women age 14 to 78 speak for themselves in detail about their sexual experiences - both physical and emotional. Shere Hite shows how these women's physical experiences of masturbation and orgasm do not reveal a population of women with various physical capabilities for orgasm, but a population of women with one capability for orgasm who are too often confused, uninformed, ashamed, and afraid about that capability. Hite confirms that these women's physical descriptions of sexual response coincide with the detailed scientific accounts of human sexual response studied by Master's and Johnson. Then Hite describes how societal change can change the harmful misunderstandings and confusion women carry in regards to their orgasms. Even with 30 years of research and societal change between then and now, the Hite Report still stands firm as a useful, informative, and accurate look at how females experience sexual response, and how our society affects that.