Collecting memories

Well, it's a little over-due but I did promise a couple of people a description of Night of the Cane so I shall do my best. I suspect (given that I've a tendency to go on a bit) that the time-delay will result in a better report, since only the most salient bottomspoints will remain in my memory.

Pandora and I arrived relatively early, and unlike previous experience we knew a number of the attendees: Leia-Ann Woods, Governeor Michael Stamp and Sascha, Diablo and Sarah Collins whom I had met at a previous Firm event, Chopper, and many other well-remembered faces (and bottoms!). We also had the opportunity to renew an acquaintance from some time ago with Niki Flynn and the redoubtable Henry Higgins, of which more later.

The social parts of the event were fortunately unimpeded by idiots (such as those who, protected by press cards and official status at the event, had made my last trip to a Night of the Cane rather annoying) and we made a number of new acquantances and enjoyed a lot of very fine costumes as we drifted about between bar, school-room and seminars.

The centre-piece of this tradition of the London spanking scene is, of course, the caning competition itself and subscription was quite high: quality was even higher. The top five or six acts were very hard to pick between: highlights include the (regrettably unplaced) performance by Lady Penelope and Parker, and a very graceful caning for a buxom young lady in remarkably cute school uniform whose name, unfortunately, I did not catch.

El and C won the event (outright, I believe, since that was their third such victory in a row) and very generously donated their prize to charity: the second place was awarded to Governer Stamp and Sascha. Having not at that time seen any of her work with Bars and Stripes, I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed Sascha's beautiful bottom wriggling over the spanking stool, as well as her muffled and obedient counting of the strokes with her lead in her mouth. Pandora and I were very happy to place third and left with three gorgeous canes supplied by Chopper.

The competeition was ably compered by the incomparable Leia-Ann Woods, who is simply lovely. The judges of the competition seem to have come to the same conclusion, for the compere was ambushed between acts and I seem to recall a caning being delivered.

After the main event we circulated a little more, and re-connected with Niki and HH at the bar. They very kindly invited us back to their hotel for a night-cap: since we had three new canes to break in, and since HH had been busy with his wallet and had recently acquired four of his own, we decided (somewhat predictably!) that our new implements should be thoroughly tested.

Niki is an absolute pleasure to cane. She has style and dignity and a very pert bottom, and she wriggles and kicks in the most delightful ways. HH delivered a series of measured, skillful canings to my girl in her turn, and as the girls took six strokes from each of us with each cane the knickers came down and the temperature rose significantly.

I've always had a fetish for girls comforting each other during canings. Other kinds of spankings as well, mind you, but it's much more of a thrill with a caning. The shared experience generates a very powerful erotic charge, and both Pandora and Niki are very beautiful women. We had delegated whichever girl was not currently taking the cane to hold the other down, but this quite quickly evolved into a much more intimate involvement of the girls in each other's whippings, and I will admit that I very much enjoyed both watching my sub being caned by Henry, and watching her bury her face in Niki's lap for moral support.

We eventually departed in the small hours, and I must say once more a very large thank-you to Henry and Niki for their hospitality and friendship, which made a good evening into a cherished memory.

Semi-detachment

Well, I think I'm back. House-moves, I'm reliably informed, are among the most stressful experiences which punctuate the life of a Western adult, and I can testify that there's a reason everyone moves house in the summer months. Not only is the weather much better, but moving house in the month leading up to Christmas is not a good way to relax.

I did manage, in November, to work for the very experienced Spanking Online crew, and very much I enjoyed it, as well. Miss Smith is a delightful co-star, as is the delectable Elizabeth Simpson, and I was made very welcome by everyone on the shoot. Pandora was, as you can see from the first link, also working with us.

This led me into some considerations about the correlations and distinctions between doing professional work with my submissive Pandora, and working with other professionals.

Apart from the obvious safety and security factors, one of the reasons Pandora asked me to be involved in her career from quite early was that we make pretty hot scenes. Even before we entered our current relationship, we knew each other well enough and had enough experience of the chemistry we can create to know that we would show well on film. In practice a number of adjustments needed to be made: not least, I needed to get used to the very distinct difference between Pandora's responses, both during action and between shots, while she is in her professional mode and the ones I get at home. I knew such differences were inevitable, and fortunately we seem to have made that adjustment quite easily.

Working with my partner is easier than working with another professional. This may seem an obvious statement but I've never seen it investigated by another spanking professional. There is a certain confidence-level that I will make the right calls, read the co-star properly, and get responses from dialogue and body-language that develop and enhance the scene. Knowing I was to be working with other models for the first time made me very nervous (yes, we do get nervous too) because I was afraid my habits might inhibit my professional fluency.

As it turned out, this hasn't been a problem (yet!) and I can only thank Miss. Smith and Elizabeth for making the SOL shoot so easy for me. Both have a wealth of on-camera experience I lack, and have worked with many co-stars; their warmth off-camera, combined with their skills when working, allowed me to very easily adjust.

Comparison is easiest between Pandora and Elizabeth: I mainly worked with Miss. Smith as a co-Top. One of the things that I was interested in was how accurately I could judge pace when working with a model other than Pandora. It helped that Miss. Simpson is very, very good and can take some pretty serious punishment in her stride, and it was good to be able to relax into what I was doing as I began to get a read on her responses.

It was also an eye-opener how comfortable both Elizabeth and Miss. Smith were with dialogue and physical action in cramped circumstances. This, I suspect, is the a mark of experience: Pandora and I are both quite involved in main-stream acting and so I've always been able to rely on Pandora's improvisations, but working with two new models gave me an insight into quite how good some of the untrained actresses in the industry are. I certainly felt Miss. Smith handled improvised dialogue in scene better than I did myself: Elizabeth and Pandora, obviously, did more squeaking than talking but I also found myself genuinely enjoying the role-play aspects of my scenes with both Elizabeth and Miss. Smith.

The third leg of a spanking scene (as it were!) is, of course, communicating energy and sexual tension to the camera. That's all about eyes, voice and body-language, and I went into the day wondering how I would perform without the safety-net of the relationship Pandora and I share off-camera. Again, I should have rested secure in the professionalism and talent of my co-stars. Miss. Smith has a fine touch for body-language to raise the tension in a scene, and Miss. Simpson has very expressive eyes and a remarkable sense of timing.

Obviously, there were differences. The main one I was able to observe as we worked was that while Pandora and I have a lot of experience getting thoroughly into our characters and playing off each other to raise the temperature of a scene, there was a real, and quite powerful, thrill and tension to my interactions with both Miss. Smith and Elizabeth which came precisely from the fact that I didn't know them. They are both vigorous and energetic ladies: exploring dynamics with them was a fairly heady experience and very different from the something-old-something-new tensions of working with Pandora.

I was expecting to find the experience very detached: I was mentally gearing up to have to create the appropriate emotional engagement, but I didn't need to at all. It was like, yet unlike, the experience of playing with a new bottom in a social context: similar in the the explorations and new textures to the interaction are thrilling and fascinating, yet unlike in that there is a sense of externally controlled pace to a scene in front of a camera which leaves me knowing there is more to learn than I will have time for; a sense of secrets still to discern which I hope will carry well.

I hope you all enjoy the scenes: I'm certainly intending to, next time I have a quiet evening with Pandora to follow up on any technical observations. Descriptions and pictures may well be posted, so stay tuned... The producers certainly seem to have enjoyed the work, as they have contacted me since about further work with them. Hopefully I'll be able to offer more well-caned bottoms for your perusal soon!

Oops.

Unfortunately, the server on which I host Pandora's professional websites and my own email suffered a disk head crash resulting in 100% loss of user data, including my own: and while I was trying to fix it I fell victim to a winter lurgy. Hopefully normal service has in most ways resumed.

Unfortunately, various pictures linked from back entries in this journal have evaporated, and it'll be a while before I get them put back again. Please excuse some unwieldy formatting in the mean time.

Anticipations

Okay, cut, everyone take three (months, apparently...) and we'll try again.

I was talking to Pandora recently about the subject of blogging. Pandora's a journalist by nature, in the archaic sense of someone who writes about their interactions with the universe in a thought-provoking and erudite way, on a fairly regular basis. To me, this doesn't come naturally: I suppose the closest that I am to this is an essayist, in that I always feel I should have a structure as well as a basic idea for my article before I sit down to write it. P. has persuaded me that in fact, what I need to do is write more regularly so that people have something to read, and that what I want to say will come naturally once I start to write, so I'm going to give it a try.

I've not posted here since September. An awful lot of my life has altered in the intervening time period, but one of the things that hasn't happened very much is opportunities to continue my professional work, either with or without Pandora. I started writing here expecting that we'd be working together at least once every couple of weeks and would therefore be constantly generating material for entries (and, more importantly, would be regularly able to post newly appeared pictures of Pandora's bottom, which is the real point of visiting these blogs, isn't it? :)

As it is, I think that what I need to do is widen the scope of my search for inspirations. For example: I recently took my belt to Pandora, which is something I've not done in well over a year, and the experience gave me an intense memory from years ago of the first time I ever whipped a girl with a belt.

The thing that caught at my mind was the way Pandora looked at me over her shoulder while I was approaching her, folded leather in hand and a predatory look in my eye. There's a kind of anticipation, a kind of trepidation, a kind of lust and mostly a kind of domestic fear evoked by the use of an implement which is both so mundane and also so stereotypically a symbol of the fear of authority in any culture which needs to keep its trousers up.

Ruminations on this, memories of that delightful first time (of which more, I suspect, in another post) and thoughts about the different ways that anticipation of a scene works on Tops and bottoms, brought me to thinking about the Night of the Cane, run as always by Ishmael Skyes. Pandora and I attended the event in a private capacity in 2004 and I'm rather looking forward to going in a professional capacity this time.

My anticipation of this event is a complex admixture of pride in my girl, enjoyment of the social atmosphere, the opportunity to put names to some of the bottoms I've seen, and a very acute anticipation of how much I'll enjoy caning Pandora for the annual Competition. There's a physical component to this: thrashing Pandora is fun, and it's definitely a spectator sport so it'll be nice to have a proper audience. There is a performer's exhilaration to it as well: I act because being on stage or on camera gives me a lift and an energy which is the same as the ones I get from music. There's a solid degree of smugness, because I know exactly how attractive and how responsive Pandora is, and I know that I get to escort her home: and, loath as most dominants are to admit it, there's a healthy dose of showing off, as well.

Not all Tops are driven to show off in public: but I don't believe I know of a Dom who isn't, at least at times, motivated by the simple, and very human, desire to indulge themselves in a bit of peacockery. A caning competition is the perfect opportunity: one can show off one's immediate skills (like accuracy and control of the implemnt) and also the more subtle ones (like the deportment of, and your control of, the sub): and an audience of one's peers will appreciate these things and recognise in them a little of themselves.

Anticipation, for a submissive, lends itself mostly to the texture of fears: physical fear of pain, emotional trepidation, fear of failure to please, etc. For me, at least, and for many Dominants I know, anticipation is textured with pride: pride in their sub, pride in their experience and their style, pride in their own strength. There are times when showing off is a good thing, and this is one of them.

Pace Yourself

Pace is important in any scene. Dominants control pace, and a good Dominant will use it to manipulate the submissive's state of mind, to exert control over their ability to take punishment, and so on. Stage work is very similar to a scene being played in private, though with modifications: things move slower on stage, but while the rate of progress is less the rhythm (or the shape) of the scene remains fairly similar.

I'm discovering that video work is totally different. I've come across some of these differences between stage and screen work before, but this kind of work is a completely new experience. I now have three distinct skill sets each trying to influence me to work a certain way, and none of them are appropriate for this purpose.

1) Pace for the screen

The on-screen experience I have had before has been all about the reduction of everything I do to minimalism. This is largely because I've done a lot of stage-acting, where the key is subtle exaggerations. So, when playing to a camera I'm used to speaking slightly faster than on stage, to moving my head and body much less, to holding slightly unnatural positions for long periods of time while trying to make my face look normal. For a spanking video shoot, the requirements are completely different. Physically, I need to slow down: vocally, I need to slow down much more and both of those comments are just about while the camera is rolling. The way that cuts are used is completely different, because there's more than one agenda. Dialogue and action need to be sequential, rather than simultaneous (or at least, they certainly do when you're not working with particularly good microphones). There are a few other details as well.

2) Pace for the scene

Maintaining the required working chemistry with the model is also very different in a video shoot scenario. Where pacing would, in a private scene, be an integral part of that from the point of view of exerting control, in a video shoot it's the opposite. The use of shooting breaks to intersperse the actual CP such that a model remains (well, moderately!) comfortable, and the use of conversation or cigarette breaks or whatever to keep an easy atmosphere is so very different from my personal experience that I suspect it will take me a few attempts to get it right.

Another distinction is that, in a well-engineered private scene, there are no interruptions. Movies are all interruption, which I already knew; what I hadn't realised was how that would interact with my role-playing a Dominant on camera.

3) Beads on a string

My personal practice leans towards elaborate scene play. That tends to mean extended sessions over several hours, where everything I'm doing is designed to facilitate a uniform goal. One of the elements of pacing a spanking movie that I need to learn is that there is no 'scene' from beginning to end of my narrative. I need to get the trick of working a scene in a very short space of time, stepping away from it, and then working a second scene in an equally short space of time. That is, as much as anything else, inside my head: the trick is to work that change while making each 'mini-scene' flow internally, and connect with the others such that a narrative emerges organically.

Working with Pandora professionally is, as anticipated, enormously fun. The experience presented expected (and some unexpected!) challenges, for both of us; but as I become more accustomed to the adjustments one has to make on screen, it should become less challenging and more of a pleasure.

I do love my work.

"I love it when a plan comes together"

Welcome to the view from on Top, as it were. I'm setting out on this blogging enterprise to comment on an exciting opportunity that was recently offered to me: a young lady by the name of Pandora Blake is in need of a great deal of correction, and I was approached as the man to see to it.

We are about to start working together to produce film, stills and stories for your delectation. We have a number of different ideas in the works, so keep an eye out here and on Pandora's blog for further announcements.

I've been spanking Pandora in our private lives for several years now (on and off) and have greatly enjoyed the experience at every opportunity. When she frst spoke to me about embarking on a professional modelling enterprise I was rather enthusiastic (lets face it, even if I'm not holding the cane it's always fun to watch as shapely a girl as Pandora wriggle) and I've been following her career so far with interest.

Being offered the opportunity to work with her professionally was a delightful compliment, particularly given the good impression she has left (or possibly vice versa!) on several of the better professional spanking experts she has worked with so far. There is an unexpected thrill to seeing girls one has had the pleasure of whipping oneself appear on sites one has been a member of for years.

I hope you will all enjoy her punishments as much as I intend to.