Amateur pornography
Amateur pornography is a category of pornography that features models or actors performing without pay, or for whom this material is their first or only paid modeling work. The label is also sometimes applied to professionally-produced pornography which mimics genuinely amateur work.
Types of amateur pornography
Truly amateur pornography includes pornographic home movies and photographs shot by couples or individuals for their private entertainment, as well as amateur movies created for noncommercial distribution among friends. Several celebrities have seen their pornographic home movies distributed commercially. Home movies may additionally be distributed commercially; for example, a group may throw a sex party mainly for the fun of it and agree to sell documentary footage of the events.
Professionally produced amateur pornography - often referred to as "pro-am porn" within the industry - involves professionals behind the camera but amateur actors, often either first-time performers or relative newcomers to pornography. On some occasions, a professional actor may appear with the amateur actors. One popular form of pro-am porn is are series that purport to introduce new actors appearing for the first time in porn. They often feature a format in which a host introduces a model, interviews her/him about their past sex life, sexual interests, why she/he decided to appear in porn, etc. and they have the actress/actor perform various sex acts including masturbation, oral sex, intercourse, and sometimes lesbian or gay sex acts. In some cases the host may engage in sex with the model or a professional pornstar may be used instead. In some cases, only amateur actors may be used in a scene such as a boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, or same-sex friends.
In some cases, a distinction is made between "independent porn" and "pro-am porn", in that pro-am videos are generally made by porn industry insiders who have access to the normal distribution channels through which most adult videos are marketed, whereas independent porn videos are made outside of this system and are available only by mail-order through a catalog or website. The rise of the internet as a major porn venue has confounded many of these distinctions, as the majority of internet pornography is produced outside of the relatively centralized "studio system" in which the majority of adult videos were produced.
Some so-called amateur porn is not really amateur in any real sense of the term but actually a professionally produced simulation of amateur porn, using such techniques as poor lighting, varying body types, and, in the case film or video, omitting a narrative. They sometimes employ anonymous sex workers as performers. Note that some pornographers label pornography not containing any traditional hallmarks of amateur pornography, even the simulated variety, as "amateur" and thus the designation may not always be useful in determining the actual type of content in such pornography.
Recent trends
Like traditional magazines and VHS/DVD-based pornography, Internet pornography has long been a profitable venture. However, with the rise of Web 2.0 ventures and amateur pornography, websites based upon the YouTube platform of user-generated content and video sharing have become very popular. Video hosting service websites feature free user-uploaded amateur pornography and have become the most visited pornography websites on the entire internet as users seek to bypass the spam, ads, viruses, and troublesome cookies associated with paysites.
Since the content of these websites is entirely free and of reasonably high quality, and because most of the videos are full-length instead of short clips, these websites have been criticized for sharply cutting into the profits of pay-per-view pornographic websites and traditional magazine and DVD-based pornography.
Pornography based on video game system networks, pornography on cell phones, and other alternative methods of distribution has also been gaining popularity in the last few years.
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