I have been relatively fortunate that I have very few stories about bad shoots. But I have two for you. A candidate for worst model that I worked with was during my early days. She would not show her teeth (I believe that she was self conscious and if she was I am fine with that but I wish that she would have told me so I could work around it) and that hindered her acting ability on screen. No big heel laughter or over the top facial expressions definitely decreased the quality of those videos.
My biggest problem with her was her unprofessionalism. She once brought her then boyfriend to a shoot without informing me. He then proceeds to watch the other female models get undressed in front of him and not excuse himself. What if the other models were uncomfortable with that situation but were afraid to speak out? To my blame, I should have asked him to leave.
Another time she was fooling around with a female model during a shoot. My opinion, but kissing and fondling another model on set when it’s not part of the scene, during a time period where she is getting paid by me and she should be taking direction and performing is extremely unprofessional. I attribute her behavior to being a young inexperienced model, but I have never used that model again although she periodically messages me or comments how much she wants to work with me again.
Another candidate for worst model that I ever worked with was again early in my career. I was shooting with a famous Amazon model from California who is still in the industry. I contacted her for a shoot and everything was fine until we began paperwork.
When shooting adult or fetish content paperwork has to be done. This is mostly to prevent underaged models from being in adult videos. A model release form has to signed by the model and official government ID needs to be verified and a copy of the ID made for the producer’s records. The Amazon model presented her ID and I verified, but she refused to allow me to make a copy, stating that it was illegal to copy a government ID (which it is not). That sent up a red flag and I should have cancelled the shoot at that time, but my naïvety and fear of getting a bad reputation early in my career prevented me from cancelling. She also made me sign a release from her that only allowed me use her likeness for 1 year and refused to sign my model release. Most of the time when a model signs a release it’s not for a limited time unless previously negotiated before the shoot. She just sprung this release on me without previous knowledge.
I know, 2 HUGE red flags and my gut said don’t shoot the video, but I proceeded with the shoot anyway. The shoot itself went well. She was fun to work with and loved working with me and Charm.
I forgot about the shoot until 4 years later I received an email demanding the clip be taken down. To my fault, I just ignored the email and kept the clips up until she called me demanding that I remove the clip. I did remove it but I was salty about it. Looking back I do feel bad because I did sign a contract and I delayed taking down the video although I made no additional sales while it was up the extra time (1 month). Now technically I had to remove the clips from my store which I did, but her contract never specified that I couldn’t sell it on another site or sell it without advertising it. In fact it never said anything about giving it away as a free download. 🤔
