Back in 2012, Los Angeles County passed a law called Measure B that required all adult film actors to wear condoms on camera. Porn studio Falcon Studios, however, has found a way to preserve the old look before Measure B was passed and technically not violate the law.
The gay porn company is now digitally removing condoms from actors through post production in films. In other words, they are essentially editing out condoms from videos. The first two films where this will be done are California Dreamin’ 1 and California Dreamin’ 2, which director Tony DiMarco aims “to capture the essence of that time, when life seemed more carefree and spontaneous.”
Ars Technica notes that Falcon Studios is most likely achieving the effect through a technique called rotoscoping, which requires going through the film frame by frame and tracing the object then applying an effect — in this case, the texture of the condom being replaced with something that resembles skin.
Though the process would certainly add a significant amount to a film’s budget depending on the complexity of the shoots and length of sequences, studio president Chris Ward says the goal is to “simply take the condom issue out of the viewer’s experience as much as possible while keeping our models safe. It’s there, but it’s not giant and distracting.”
One potential issue, which was pointed out by Ars and was also one of my initial thoughts is, does Falcon Studios have to show evidence that the condoms were digitally removed? What if studios began showing no-condom scenes and claiming that they were simply well-executed instances of post-production? Once the practice becomes more common in the industry, we might have an answer.
[via Ars Technica, image via Paul Keller]