LOS ANGELES – Homegrown Video is returning to its roots as a clearinghouse for honest-to-goodness homemade porn made by honest-to-goodness amateurs.
Somewhere in the middle of its 30-year odyssey, Homegrown moved more heavily into producing so-called pro-am content — adult entertainment that mixes professional performers and production crews with amateurs eager to show their stuff on camera. The technique, adopted by almost every other adult studio in existence, has worn thin, a Homegrown spokesman indicated. More important, pro-am material diverted Homegrown’s resources away from the company’s core expertise: distributing raw, authentic sex, in all its unsophisticated glory.
“Every Homegrown Video employee learns the company history and mission before they even start on Day 1,” said new Chief Operating Officer Josh Marcum, the man Homegrown founder Farrell Timlake credits with reorienting the company’s raison d’être. “Over the past few years, we have focused on maintaining our mission statement and directed our efforts to stay true to amateur as it should be. We have moved away from our pro-am releases to come back to center [on] authentic amateur content, in order to reestablish and elevate our core values.”
Under the revised operating procedure, a large portion of Homegrown’s original setup will remain. Fans wishing to share the real-life sexual adventures of other non-pros still will be able to find the content they seek at HomegrownVideo.com. Couples and groups wishing to share their intimate moments still will be able to submit their work at HomegrownSubmittals.com.
Where things will change under Marcum’s leadership is in the addition of new media technologies to strengthen the nascent sense of camaraderie between the company and the consumers and producers of its products.
For starters, the company now encourages both voyeurs and exhibitionists to interact online with each other and Homegrown’s decision-makers. Members of the community may influence future product releases by critiquing each other’s videos and making suggestions for future material. According to Marcum, the company intends to create a real-time community of true believers who all work together to create higher quality content with each submission.
“Homegrown is different from any other porn site out there,” Marcum said. “The scenes are real and are made by real couples. Farrell [Timlake] and Spike [Goldberg, the company’s chief executive officer] now get into the chat rooms regularly to guide content creators and answer questions. Even Lani [Timlake’s wife] is involved with the chat room and social media action. Lani and Farrell also offer instructional videos from camera techniques to the use of specific sex toys. It’s become very much a family affair.
“HomegrownVideo.com has now become a very creatively interesting, and extremely sexually positive, setup,” Marcum continued. “By allowing content creators and consumers to work together, the creators are continuously encouraged to improve the kinds of scenes they submit to us. Newbie content creators sometimes submit scenes where they’re awkward and nervous, [but] through public encouragement, we’ve seen those scenes become better and better over time. Viewers tell female amateurs, who may think their blowjob skills are not ‘porn-star-quality,’ how good and sexy they really are. We then see scenes with longer blowjob segments from those women. It’s a fantastic process and works every time.
“The only way to have a truly realistic look is to be 100-percent real — an unrivaled attribute of Homegrown Video,” he concluded.
Webmasters with traffic seeking amateur content may promote HomegrownVideo.com through the company’s affiliate program. Homegrown Cash pays a 50-percent recurring revenue share on 12 sites, many of which offer amateur content in specific niches of particular interest to consumers devoted to amateur porn.
