SirEDCaLot

(not a pornographer, just providing an answer)

//edit: Please note that I'm not trying to say ALL professional porn is like this.
This post answers a question of why professional porn is often terrible and why amateurs can sometimes do better.

Let's say you are a porn producer. You want to make a porno. So you hit up casting, and book a girl who either has enough following that your vid will get name recognition, or is cute and a good performer, or is cute and new thus cheap. You then book a guy who is not too ugly and is a reliable performer (can stay hard for a long time, and can bust more or less on command, ideally multiple times). Then you book a set, which could be a professional set, or some rich guy's house, or a hotel room; and you tell your crew (lighting, camera (or multiple cameras), sound, makeup, catering, security, etc) to all be there.
You're now on the hook for many thousands of dollars- all these people need to get paid and equipment rentals need to be paid for, no matter if your porn sells or not.

Notice what's missing from this? You didn't bother to check if the two performers even like each other, or for that matter if they've even met before. They're actors, professionals, it's their job to make it look real, not yours.

So then the shoot starts. You have a list of positions you want to get and a rough script. You spend a bunch of time doing this. The two performers, who just met 15 minutes before they started fucking, are now going at it. You're giving them direction (telling them how to position their bodies) so you get a good camera angle. Doesn't matter if those positions feel good, require tons of strength to maintain, cause cramps, are even a tiny bit realistic vs. what you'd do at home, make the performers cold/hot/whatever; they're actors, professionals, it's their job to make it look real, not yours. Hey, if they can't make it look real while 10 people are standing there watching them hold each other upside down, they shouldn't be acting, right?

Now you have a problem. Your guy has a fucking giant steroid size cock, and your girl is more on the petite side, and she's gotten really sore. No way she's going to have a real orgasm anytime today. She's having no fun, but if she bails on the shoot she won't get paid and it will ruin her professional reputation, so she's sticking with it. She's on the verge of tears, so she compensates vocally- screaming out positive words of pleasure but obviously without any emotion or pleasure behind them. You know, the stereotypical 'OH YEAH THAT FEELS SO GOOD BABY, FUCK THAT 18 YEAR OLD PUSSY, OH YEAH GIVE ME THAT HARD COCK'... yeah.

Before that happened though you found another problem- your guy blew his load before he was supposed to (as she was super tight), and the cameras weren't in position to capture it well. So now you need to do that again. If you try again tomorrow, that will mean hiring the crew and set for another shooting day, adding thousands of dollars to your budget. So instead the guy pops a little blue pill and gets hard enough to finish shooting the scene, then you set up a fake cumshot (by having him hold a small tube under his penis that's connected to a squeeze bottle) and pretend to cum on her face. Of course the person with the squeeze bottle gave it a huge squeeze and she's now dripping with half a bottle worth of fake jizz.

But you know what? It's good enough to sell. You're going to make your production investment back and hopefully make some money selling this video.

At this point it's lunch time. Your actors have just spent three hours fucking each other in uncomfortable positions while pretending to be turned on. So we take a half hour break, and when we come back we put the same actors together again to shoot two more scenes. You'll probably save the kinky choking scene for last- the girl will probably hate that but anyone who's into choking / being forceful will love watching the girl have a bad time.

(a week or two later)-

Congratulations, your video sold well! You've found something that works! Time to hire a new girl and probably the same guy, and do the exact same thing all over again! And since you have a successful formula, why risk changing it?

And that my friend is how a lot of 'traditional' porn is produced.

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You notice what was missing there? Any attempt to see if the performers actually want to fuck each other, or to make sure the sex is creating even a little pleasure for them. After all they're actors, if you have to match up girls and guys that actually have chemistry, that makes your life a lot more complicated. So instead you say they're actors, let them act. But most porn actors aren't anywhere near good enough to make uncomfortable unrealistic low-pleasure porno sex look like something really intimate or fun.

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OTOH, take your 'randomers at home'. You have a couple who cares about each other, has chemistry in bed, and already knows each others turn ons. When they fuck it's a lot of fun for both of them. They want to make some extra cash, or maybe they're into exhibitionism, so they run out and buy a $400 HDV camera and maybe a tripod or maybe they just use the 1080p camera on their cell phone. Their production budget is $0. And so they turn on the camera and fuck.

Sure they don't have lots of professional gear. But unlike the pros, they have time- they can shoot a vid, decide what they do and don't like, then shoot another one the next night and another one the night after. They can keep shooting and fucking as much as they want for as long as they want until they get something they are happy with. And if something doesn't feel good, they will stop doing it or make the video another time.

And unlike the pros, they have chemistry- if they didn't want to be fucking they wouldn't fuck. The threat of a tarnished reputation doesn't force them to keep fucking when they'd rather be doing anything else. If something doesn't feel good, they don't shoot it. So throughout the shoot, they're both having fun and enjoying the sex. That's hard to fake.

So they take their vids, apply some minimal editing (the free iMovie software that came pre-installed on their MacBook is fine for this), and upload it to some tube site in exchange for a tiny percentage of the ad revenue.

Then if they're any good they get fans. Those fans will tell them exactly what they do and don't like and how to make their videos better. So they will keep shooting and keep fucking and keep producing videos. Those videos will improve with time and practice. And finally you get to the point where the videos are actually pretty good.

Now their new video is good enough that it shows up in your tube site main directory, or on the front page.

So you watch the 'professional' producers video of two actors who'd rather be doing anything else, and then you watch amateur couple's 25th video, and it's no contest. The 'professional' producer's video gets CTRL-W'd (close tab) and you bookmark the amateur couple's tube site page.

A local Chinese delivery place not too far away made the papers when the cops clocked their delivery guy doing like 70mph on some windy 35mph road in a shitty little Toyota...

Okay a few questions:

1. Every Chinese place near me has the exact same egg rolls. I mean like they look and taste EXACTLY the same. Same thing with a few other dishes like lo mein noodles, sesame chicken, etc. I assume there's some food supplier in the area that they all get their stuff from. Any thoughts on this / how widespread is this? How much of typical Chinese food is made from scratch vs made from prepackaged ingredients?

2. You mentioned food coloring. How much food coloring is typically added to a dish you make? Do colored dishes sell better than the same uncolored dishes (which presumably taste exactly the same)?

Also thanks for the clean bathroom tip, I'll have to check that out :)

Most underrated comment ever.

One of the most important signs of intelligence I look for in a person is that, when confronted with evidence that contradicts their opinions, the CAPABILITY to at least ACKNOWLEDGE that their opinion MAY be wrong.

Seems very few people do this.

Which is just business. They see their stuff selling less and the amateur stuff selling more, so they say 'we need to get into the amateur category!'. Which is just fine- you don't hire a camera operator for the day, you just give the camera to the male actor and say 'your setup is you're a couple filming your first home movie. Here's the camera, push the red button to record and keep the lens pointed at the girl'. ACTION!

Now you have an 'amateur' scene with all the shitty camera work of a beginner amateur scene but with all the same other problems as the other 'professional' scene. But that vid will get mixed in with the real amateur stuff, and it'll have better lighting, so it'll get some views. And thus the genre gets diluted.