5. There is ‘Success’, and there is ‘Becoming Pro’.

I have worked with a few sub 1% creators now, and there is a distinct difference between how they operate vs new starters, regardless of initial success.

This is a sub-branch extended from a larger blog set I have written laying out tips and advice for Onlyfans Creators, but also independent Escorts, Performers, Sex Workers and whoever else getting started in the Adult Entertainment Industry.

This advice comes from a Content & Brand Production & Marketing perspective. This is not about doing the job itself.

The core post can be found HERE.

'Pro' is not a label or a badge. Being Pro is a methodology. It sings true for other industries. It sings true for the Adult Industries and Onlyfans Creators as well.

Catching a wave and going viral tends to be a matter of luck. It’s not only that, but luck tends to play a major part. For every creator who hits big, there are literal hundreds of others who have delivered the same quality and worked just as hard, but who simply didn’t catch that wave.

But ‘A Pro’ is functioning legit regardless of whether they’ve hit or not. An amateur can hit, but the difference is that when both an amateur and a pro both hit the same wave, the amateur will likely slide off on the other side. The pro meanwhile keeps their head, knows precisely how to analyse, adjust, and how to utilise these new resources to not only prolong, but accelerate their rise.

Whether you’ve got $100 or a million, the mentality is the same.

As this blog is for new starters, here are some practical things you can focus upon to help get you to this ‘Pro’ mentality. They’re a few little specifics that I as a Video Editor, Designer and Marketer of Adult Industry and Onlyfans content have found myself repeatedly advising to new clients.

Here goes:

Learn Your Craft.

The best creators I’ve worked with tend to share similar characteristics. They’re not all the same; some are better here while others are better there, but there is a venn diagram of attributes.

A notable couple of creators I’ve worked with were from the AAA film industry, ABN-award winning level. No matter how people might try to disparage their 'ability to act', they are a whole other level of player when it comes to on-screen delivery. This isn’t some indulgence they just happen to be filming for a kick. They may absolutely be enjoying themselves while doing it, yes, but they still know to the core that they’re making a product, and every part of it they are doing for the audience first.

They know how to position their cameras, position themselves within those cameras, how to pose, when to hold it, and to not hold a pose beyond its welcome. They know where the cameras and themselves are at all times, and they make the audience feel part of the scene, because to them, they are.

One of my clients would set up her two phones in an ‘L’, and be constantly glancing and grinning and playing along with the audience, regardless of whatever angle she herself was in. She’d adjust to another angle and would position her body perfectly in frame exactly the right way. She’d be having fun, and if something funny happens, or her partner does something, she’d look straight back and laugh/react with the audience, because to her they are absolutely there with her.

Beginners and those just doing this for indulgence simply pale in comparison. Even the ‘successful’ ones don’t come close. They’re constantly losing frame, or crowding one corner, constantly losing themselves in the moment (not a bad thing on occasion) and not caring about anything else. Glad you’re having a good time, but that negligence makes for a bad product.

The AAA level also know the concept of ‘scenes’, and understand that it’s okay to pause.

Rather than do a straight half hour from that same stale shot of that same pose where the audience isn’t really involved, maybe be a bit more conscious of adjusting things up. Stop. Breathe, adjust the camera, take a few minutes to make sure you’re in frame, and get back into it. That stuff will be cut in the edit.

On the flip side, beginners also rush through it. You can see when a creator has a checklist in their head; a list of poses and things they need to say and do. They tend to rush through it, just pose, pose, pose, pose, all with this detached look in their micro expression, and it’s all performance, no feeling.

Another trait I see in the top levels is work ethic and commitment to schedule. The sub 1%’ers not from the AAA industry, but who have made it big organically through OF themselves, without the assistance of an agency, tend to excel here. They have their business industrialised, and even though they may not come close to the screen presence of the AAA’s, that work ethic jumps them up into the same tier. Like the AAA’s from a film background, they understand what a ‘production’ is. They understand when they are ‘working’, and that it applies to a level of different states, and having patience, and making a bunch of little sacrifices here and there for the greater good.

Do some research and R&D with this in mind.

Learn Your Tools

You want to get the absolute best out of whatever tools you have at your disposal.

You definitely do not need the latest and greatest new hardware. You just don’t. Technology surpassed an acceptable standard maybe 5 years ago.

The iPhone really stepped up its camera to legit levels around the iPhone13 Pro. Anything beyond is essentially an enhancement of that tech, very little of which will enhance your specific needs. You could argue that it happened with the 12 Pro even. Either way, you can get these models second hand, with larger storage options for far cheaper than a 15 or 16 or whatever the number is at the time you read this.

Hit ebay and buy 1 phone as a primary camera, and that is all it is used for. Buy a second as a support camera, but this one is also for your work chats and social posts and so on. Buy these for your business, keep them separate from your personal phone, and don’t bother with a phone plan for either. You only need the devices themselves.

And learn and test the settings. There are plenty of YouTube tutorials out there that will take you through the camera features of every phone. You will soon gain an idea of what you need relative to the product you are intending to deliver.

Composition and Scene Dynamics.

Learn concepts like Shot Composition, the ‘The Rule of Thirds’, and give some thought towards setting, and lead up. Basically be a filmmaker about it.

‘Narrative’ is a thing, regardless of whether you’re telling a story or saying words at all. There is a beginning, a middle, a build, and an end. There is a lead in, and lead out. People are not necessarily going to be where you are when you press record, so might need a chance to get into the same headspace. You might need a moment to introduce what’s going on, even if solely on a visual level.

If hiring a professional editor, leave buffer space both visual around the shot itself. I know it’s hard in the moment, but that’s why you’re pro. You know where the camera is, you make sure you’re in frame.

You also do this with time. Let a scene/moment breathe in and breath out. Don’t just cut it short the moment your mood’s gone. This goes especially for males who have that ‘on/off’ switch to their libidos. It’s very common for a male party to be filming the experience POV for the creator while they do their thing to them. But the moment they get theirs, their mood drops out in the way it does for us, and they just think “Yeah that’s enough” and stop the recording.

Don’t do that. Let it run, capture the wind down, think about the audience and film more than you think you need. The editor will crop where it works best.

Be an artist about it.

Be a Pro.

Vertical vs Horizontal Framing.

There is no one superior way to hold your phone, especially these days with the multiple formats across the social platforms and devices, but it’s good to have that in mind for the content you’re looking to film.

If your intent is to have it viewed primarily through phones, then yeah, film in vertical framing. But if it’s meant to go anywhere else… maybe rotate that.

About a year ago I would have recommended only do horizontal, especially for promo vids. Things however have really evolved to include vertical as a staple in the culture, so I’d advise now instead to simply plan ahead. Know what you’re making, and what you’re making it for.

One thing I might say is Horizontal provides a more cinematic professional feel, Vertical provides more intimacy. On occasion I have edited some particularly cool multi-cam vids where they’ve used both. You can have the vertical 3rd ‘POV’ cam in hand, inserted PiP onto the 2x L-positioned horizontal cams. Now that makes for a legit production.

4K

Filming in 4K is not critical, but it does increase quality and capability.

Many people don’t quite get the difference between “1080p” and “4K”, because both still fit onto the same screen. A simple way to define it in practical terms for what you do, is that you can zoom in on 4K at least twice as much as you can with 1080p before the image pixelates.

So… even though you might plan to have your videos only ever appear at 1080p, and many platforms don’t even support 4K, filming your raw content in 4K allows the editor to zoom, pan, and reframe your shot.

4K is good to edit to.

Very often a shot might look a little better if you simply just nudged it a little to the left and cut out that doorsill, or the intimacy might be increased by zooming you right in so you dominate the frame. You can do this with 4K footage far better than with 1080p, and that’s the benefit. 4K creates larger file sizes, and on some devices reduces the available frame rate, but that’s all stuff you can take into account with your planning.

Framerate.

A video is a succession of still images all run at a fast rate. A ‘framerate’ or ‘FPS’ setting is the amount of still images the camera is capturing per second. “Frames Per Second”. Usually it’s about 30fps, and that is a comfortable amount for the human eye to be able to view a video smoothly.

But practically speaking, if you increase the framerate to 60fps or 120fps, then that means you can slow the footage down to half, if a quarter speed, and it will still be smooth to the human eye.

In this industry in particular, slow mo can be used really effectively. A good video editor and effects compositor can really punch up the sensuality of a scene through the use of slow motion. Sometimes it’s purposefully obvious, but often you might not even know they’re doing it. I’ve had a number of clients mention how scenes seem a lot sexier after I deliver them, and they don’t know why. Well it’s framing, it’s subtle slow-mo, it’s audio pitch, it’s colour contrast, it’s reading and knowing lead-ins, and cut timing, and buffering, it’s anticipation and reply. It’s finding and following rhythms, and balancing action between fast and slow, long and short. It’s a collection of a whole bunch of different little things at the right times which separates the novice from the pro.

Content Management

Look into methods of filing and content management. Seriously, this will help you.

Work out an efficient folder system for all the varied different files you will accumulate relating to your business. You’ll have Branding files, Financial/Tax files, Brand Collateral and Assets, Content Raw, Content Produced per platform, Planning Production Notes, Marketing Notes and Resources, just any amount of stuff you’re going to gather up and occasionally need to reference.

I have worked with a number of clients who have astounded me that they’re able to get anything done at all. They haven’t yet grasped how computers function and lay things out, so they just dump everything onto their desktop and leave it in email and chats and apps and whatever. They send and do everything through Telegram, they screenshot content and use that as content… I ask for raw files and they send me screenshots… because they don’t know the difference.

Yeah there is a difference.

If you have a friend or family member who is one of these ‘efficiency types’, ask them to take you through their set up. Don’t ask them to set one up for you. You wont learn that way. Get them to show you and explain their processes, so you can then think about how to approach your own. This is a personal thing, with everyone developing their own approach that works for them.

Some suggestions to start with:

Isolate a folder structure for your branding files and marketing collateral. It will likely start off with things like your logo files and their different formats, but might also include your invoices if you use them, or merch files if you develop that. But all of that you keep in a specified folder structure. This is where your business documents might go as well.

It’s just good to have all that stuff in a central space where you can get to it when needed.

Keep all your content in another folder structure, separated by raw files, and produced public-facing files as well, also preferably separated by category. Get the raw files especially off of your phone and into a proper storage system. It’s important to keep your phone (and laptop) storage to no higher than 70% full. That way it runs a lot smoother.

It is good to hang on to all that stuff though, as you don’t know where it might become useful down the track. You just don’t want it cluttering things and getting in the way. Even the private commissions and spontaneous captures might have things you can clip out and use in a promo, or remind you of that great camera position or angle, or performance you might want to recreate. You can use all this stuff to take note of where you have improved and can still improve in the future.

But get it off your devices. Look into options for external hard drives, cloud storage, and or a dedicated NAS server. Cloud-based automatic back-ups tend to be the default go to, but it’s good to have a separately defined place where you physically drag files to for long term storage, and get them out of the way. You can separate them by year as well and build an efficient archive you can delve back into when needed.

A benefit to this is that it also saves you money on buying increased storage for your production devices and cloud-based storage subscriptions. You will be surprised as to how much longer your devices are going to last with just a regular factory reset. They’re not slow because they’re old or through some conspiracy of ‘planned obsolescence’. They’re slow because they’re clogged.

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