Expert: Charles Taylor - 11/21/2006

Question
Hello Charles,

When sourcing new talents, do prominent pornographic movies studios like Digital Playground, Vivid, and Wicked utilize porn agencies or do they independently recruit for new talents themselves?

Is it an industry norm to firstly seek out porn agencies to speed up the recruitment process and ensure hiring of quality talents?

Would you consider them as a profitable business similar to talent agencies in the fashion world?

Kindest regards,
Frankie

Answer
Frankie,

This one is a 50%-50% question. When dealing with higher end companies they will do a bit of both. Since there are girls going for the gold and wanting to get all the jobs they can and are willing to work with an agency that lets them have the freedom of being able to pick and choose their shoots. But there are girls who have a very good look and with experience will be able to simply apply with a company such as wicked or vivid and be able to get a contract almost instantantly. Most companies will want some type of resume before they will extend a contact to a model. Since they are looking for-
A) Commitment: a model that can show up, do the work without reservation and have superior general "looks".
B) Marketability: a model that either has a fan club or is in very high demand by studios.

These are two big selling points. Every company has to do a quick judgment and inventory of what the models ROI will be and if they don’t see a high value return they wont be kicking in her door with a contract for her to sign.

Now comparing porn to the square world is naturally comparing apples to oranges. Fashion modeling is pretty much a box squared mentality. Think of the older applications on Flight Attendants, they were supposta be height to weight proportionate and if they went over a certain weight class they would be fired or fined. The same would be true in that industry, outside of the plus sized models that have appeared in the last 10-15 years.

So if you checked out DP's website they have a recruitment page....but so does to Playboy. The difference is they will be bombarded with applicants with unusually high expectations of themselves. Now most higher end companies with higher expectations of their models looks with be able to eliminate more then 80% of the talent application pool and concentrate on the 20% unbelievablely beautiful women and then go from there.