Porn didn’t always look like how it does today. It used to be an offshoot of cinematography. Before the internet, porn movies were just like regular movies. They ran for over 100 minutes, and they had a plotline. But everything changed when internet porn became a thing. The industry opened for smaller production companies and independent creators, who didn’t have the resources of putting together a whole film project. (Thank god)
How It Started
Matthew Gangemi is said to be the father of gonzo porn. He had the revolutionizing but straightforward idea of shooting porn movies that are just about sex. There was no plot, no movie roles and no script other than an outline of the kinks about to be performed. The girls were playing themselves, and there were no cinematographic rules to be followed. This style was quickly adopted by many directors of the era, more noticeably by Seymore Butts, who popularized the genre. Soon enough, all the porn industry, especially in the online world, gave up on classic movie format to adopt scene-based content focused on sex sessions. Multiple sex scenes would then bundle in themed packs, and that’s how the porn DVDs of today started.
The Elements of Gonzo Porn
The main characteristic of gonzo porn is the casualness of the entire scene. The intro of the videos in the original form used to start with a short interview of the actress. The director, the male performer and the one operating the handheld camera, was running the interview. He would ask the girl all kinds of naughty questions and compliment her looks while at the same time asking her to slowly get naked and show off her lady parts to the camera. In some other variations of gonzo porn, the directors dropped the interview for a striptease intro.
But the most iconic element of gonzo porn is the POV style. Even if it features some third-person camera shots, most action in a gonzo porn is POV. For the few who don’t know about Point of View porn, simply put, is the style through which the viewer gets to experience a scene through the eyes of the male performer. Not only that but the girls are encouraged to make eye contact with the camera, which offers viewers an immersive experience, just as she would look into their eyes.
Unscripted dialogue during the shooting is also a thing in gonzo porn. The girls receive instructions on what and how to do, and there’s a lot of dirty talk.
Roleplay In Gonzo Porn
Although this style was all about eliminating plotlines and scripted characters, there was still the need for roleplaying. Soon after the internet porn became a thing, networks started putting our gonzo porn collections of different themes. Entire sites dedicated to teacher porn, office sex adventures, naughty nurses, and so many other common fantasies came to life. Although the performers were playing a role, all the elements of gonzo porn stayed in place. Instead of Mason Storm, the porn star, you would have Mrs. Mason Storm, the teacher. This style was later called reality-porn. Its primary purpose was to offer viewers the feeling that they’re watching someone fucking their teacher, their secretary or any other babe in the context of a popular fantasy scenario.
Although we now see more and more sites bringing back porn series with scripted stories and well-contoured characters that have to be acted out by porn stars, gonzo porn is here to stay. It’s the style that made possible a porn scene in which many networks, production companies and independent directors could put out millions of scenes. And it is now adopted by all the amateur porn creators shooting homemade porn for platforms like PornHub, xVideos, OnlyFans or BimBim.