Behind The Scenes: Meet The Stars Of Ninn Worx 1

Ninn Worx/Pure Play Media

Genre: Non-sex

Director: Mark Stone

Cast: Anais, Wanda Curtis, Nikita Denise, Angel Cassidy, Mario Rossi, Johnny Ryder, Nick Manning, Mickey G. (others uncredited)

Length: 97 minutes

Date of Production: 12/5/2004 (box), 9/5/2003 (credits)

Extra's: photogallery

Condoms: Yes

Audio/Video Quality: The picture was presented in the usual 1.33:1 ratio full frame color, as most adult movies are shot these days. The segments were edited versions of the BTS features from several other Ninn Worx features and look about as good here as in the original movies. Since the goal of the show is to introduce us to some of the contract performers of the company, the clarity of the picture isn't the main factor. The audio was presented in the typical 2.0 stereo English, but still had little separation between the channels and minor dynamic range.

Review: With the porn industry currently facing a crisis due to an HIV outbreak, it's a good time to reflect on some of the production companies that make movies using safer sex practices. One of these companies is Ninn Worx, a company started up by director Michael Ninn, a man whose stylish works have often been emulated but rarely imitated all that closely. In general, he uses lighting and shadow, slow motion and other effects, to convey a sense of eroticism lacking in a great many porn productions these days. The type of audience he's going for seems to transcend the usual couples market (some of the scenes are very hardcore) but is firmly focused on that niche in most cases. If you could call it stroke material that couples can enjoy together, that would be as close as I can come to summing up his style. Does this style always work? No, not really, but his successes over the years have spawned numerous copycats, something he gets accused of himself from time to time. Now that he has his own company, he is not the sole director, using several associates to forward his vision. The company's latest release is a bit of a primer to their contract stars, Behind The Scenes 1; a set of edited BTS featurettes culled from several of their recent productions.

Of the 97 minutes this DVD contained, there were five segments, each coming from a specific release (sadly, they weren't named). I know that the running time of each segment generally lasted about 18 minutes. I only reviewed one of them in a past review, and it lasted over a half hour originally but was cut nearly in half this time. I suppose this is one way to make sure the DVD has some of each performer but on the other hand, the running time surely would have allowed for the inclusion of more material. This nuisance aside, the DVD had mostly non-sex material with a lot of nudity and some sex, but barely a tease compared to the movies they were taken from.

The idea behind such featurettes is to allow you to get some insight into the performers and directors, something that make these types of show invaluable on the original releases as extras, but weak as heck as a stand alone project. If this were a free hand out or something added to new releases in order to promote the original movies (or their stars), I could see the benefit to it all but aside from a lot of flippant comments that I could make, suffice it to say, I'd refer you to watching the original movies, along with the original BTS featurettes since they will be unedited. You'll get a taste of what the company has to offer, and director Mark Stone has been making such features for years at Wicked Pictures, often showing a sense of humor and talent that make me wonder why he hasn't broken through to directing more features himself, but this left me cold due to the limitations involved.

Summary: As much as I think Michael Ninn and his company offer a lot to a large audience, I have to be fair to those of you reading this and rate this as a Skip It. If you find it dirt cheap, you might get it to see what Ninn Worx is all about but you'd get a better look by reading some of the DVDTalk reviews of those movies than watching this DVD.

Note: You can see recent candid shots of many porn performers by visiting: My Photo's and read about their antics at 2004 AEE Show.