A little behind the scene with .DOOM.

Not often you will read "little behind" and .DOOM. in the same sentence. You know that is why I made that the title, right? Har har, I am so funny. But I owe first and foremost a big thanks to the beautiful and uber-sexy DoubleDeez who made this interview possible.

Ok, I love to have on the blog the direct voice of some of the protagonists of the adult arts scene! I enjoy in particular to talk about specific projects as I think there are so often stories not heard about the efforts it took to the artist and cast to produce unique results. It's the case of another interview you are gonna see in here later this week, linked to a very memorable and stylistically exquisite photoshoot. But now, as for today...
It's effectively Doomsday. Or rather, .DOOM. 's day!

But wow, difficult to single out which one of the movies released by .DOOM. has been the most impressive so far! In this interview the mind behind this production company, RandomDD, shares with generosity a lot about his work and provides also valuable tips to newcomers. I am grateful to directors like him and Travis Wagner (who wrote an article for this blog earlier this year ) who take time to bring to this community not just the creations, but also their insight and experience.

Above, screenshots from 'Glass Candy', .DOOM.'s latest.

-  First of all, tell us about your interest in machinima and 'SL porn' ! You have a long experience in this under a different 'stage name', share if you like some about your beginnings and any movie of the past you remember fondly.

"Well, I remember I saw people were making videos on sl and I thought it was cool, so i looked up the wiki on how to make them and went from there.
I think that was around 2011. I didn't have any experience with video editing so it was a long learning process and a lot of experimenting. It was pretty fun at first though, I would get ideas all the time from places or even just objects, seeing those ideas come to life through videos was great too, even though they were pretty amateur, haha.

Pics above from ' Corner of the sky', one of RandomDD / Daves Dethly's truly-not-amateurish vids he mentions in the interview!

There's a couple of videos from back then i still remember.

'Corner of the sky' was very impromptu, well they all were really, my friend came up with this building full of lights and a pit of zombies downstairs, i rezzed some stripper poles tp'd a couple girls and just started filming, though it took me months to find a song to fit that video

'Psalm 69', that was around the time i met Deez, it was really fun making that video and it ended up being one of my most cinematic efforts: also the theme is something you wouldn't see every day back then."

Above and below: screenshots from 'Psalm 69'

-When did you have the idea for .DOOM. , and how was it born as a production company but also as 'brand' for initiatives like the tat store ?

" That was around December/January I think, I got sick of the old name after all those years and there's this rapper i really like who goes by the name MF DOOM (all caps when you spell the mans name). It was some sort of reboot for me, the store's been there for a while now and it needed updating too so it works for that as well."

- Do you get your main inspiration from music? You surely take it into account in the editing, which makes your videos even more exciting. Were the ideas for your .DOOM. movies born from the specific song used in each or you had the idea for the scenario already in your mind and figured which song would be the perfect soundtrack for it ?

" It goes both ways: I firmly believe that music can make or wreck a film, you could have this amazingly edited video but if you put a lame ass pop song or some metal song blasting that just ain't gonna work, the music is as important as the editing itself, they kinda have a symbiotic relationship, can't have one without the other really.

'Bubble Yum Bum', a sunny porn music video with some serious wiggling jigglin' and twerking! Hard to imagine it with any other soundtrack than that song!

For my videos sometimes we'll come up with the idea and just film it and then i'll look for a song that goes with it, that can take a while too since music is really important for me, or sometimes i find a song, get a vague mental image and just go from there.

Screenshots from 'At the Fappamatic' !

The new videos are a good example of that, we found a peep show and built around it for At the Fappamatic and I added the song while i was editing, for Redline i found the song first and it got stuck in my head for a good while. I was experimenting with new lighting and i thought that song would fit the neon-y setting."

Redline, another video with perfect visual match to the audio track. And another one where DD shows his fondness for bunnies? :p

- Give us an idea of how long it takes to make a .DOOM. movie. The idea for it, the locations, then of course the shooting, in all the various positions and angles, and then post production. A rough estimate. 

" Yeah that depends on the video, it could go from 24 hours to weeks, sometimes less too. Usually when we come up with the idea we take a couple hours to discuss it, then building the sets takes around 2-3 hours or more, wardrobe takes about an hour, then I spend another one messing with windlights and lighting making sure it looks right.
The filming actually takes the longest: about 4-6 hours since I edit all the poses to make sure there's as less clipping as possible, finally the editing takes around 2 hours or less since I developed a quick workflow, but sometimes finding songs takes me days and I can't finish the videos without it.

The one movie i remember taking a really long time to make is an old one called Roller Rape, I think it was my second try or so, the filming took us around 9 hours since we kept moving around places and we had some issues with lag and such. "

Nothing from Roller Rape here, just one 'then and now' comparison between the first efforts by Daves Dethly and today's dramatically improved visuals by .DOOM. . Still the eye of the director was already there. 

-What professional tools do you use for editing your work ? The sheer quality of the picture is off the charts, so I am sure so many looking at it go "Omg what's his secret!", do you have any tips?

" For editing i use Sony Vegas Pro and for recording i just recently switched to Fraps since I noticed it gives better framerates, as for experience it's just the practice over the years really and a lot of experimenting, I didn't know anything about video editing before i started with this.
The best advices i could give is make sure you have a decent framerate and hide your interface (Ctrl+Alt+F1) , i can't really stress how important that is, if your video basically looks like a slide show honestly don't bother, pictures would be better, a good way to improve your framerate is lowering your draw distance if you are in a closed space. 32 is just fine for that , also shadows look nice but they lower your framerate significantly so unless your pc can handle that i'd say turn them off.

More bubbly yum!

Take your time to experiment with windlights, they're a good way to improve the quality of the video and get you familiarized with color editing.
A good way to get into editing is trying out Windows Movie Maker since it teaches you the basics like transitions and timing, and then for a bit more control over your video go for Vegas Pro, there's also lots of tutorials on how to get started so it should be easy to get into, as for hardware i'd say a big hard drive is really important since depending of recording software your projects can end up huge in size, and of course a decent video card but that's a whole different theme. "

photos from Daves' flickr!

- Finally, the obligatory question(s): which movie (or photo, as you and Deez do remarkable photos too!) was the most fun for you to do so far, and what's next for .DOOM. ?

" All of them really, they are all fun to make , from setting up the poses to the final product its a nice process seeing them come to life.
Next for .DOOM. is keep trying to deliver quality content be it films, videos or tattoos or whatever else i decide to do haha."

At the time of this interview, Glass Candy (above) was not released yet! So we can very well say that mr. .DOOM. already delivered what promised. And more extraordinary productions are on the way in the future, I am sure.

Thanks again for reading, hope you enjoyed and got an idea or two yourselves, and do follow the links in the post and tags here to get a good view of RandomDD's work. Have a great day!