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PORN STUDIES: Books on Pornography

Pornography Production Books Porn Studies

For far too long, books about pornography have been authored by people either outside the industry or too biased to adequately research the facts. Here are our top recommendations for your sexuality bookshelf, whether it’s learning about porn, sexual health, or sex work in general. (For the Porn Studies Journal, see Taylor & Francis Online.)

CRASHCOURSE: Resources for Producers

We recommend these books for more information on film craft and production information.

 

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
A generation of screenwriters has used Syd Field’s bestselling books to ignite successful careers in film. Now the celebrated producer, lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author has updated his classic guide for a new generation of filmmakers, offering a fresh insider’s perspective on the film industry today. From concept to character, from opening scene to finished script, here are easily understood guidelines to help aspiring screenwriters—from novices to practiced writers—hone their craft. Filled with updated material—including all-new personal anecdotes and insights, guidelines on marketing and collaboration, plus analyses of recent films, from American Beauty to Lord of the Rings—Screenplay presents a step-by-step, comprehensive technique for writing the screenplay that will succeed in Hollywood. [Order Now]

 


Film Production Management


Film Production Management will tell you in step-by-step detail how to produce a screenplay and get it onto the big screen. Whether you are an aspiring or seasoned film professional, this book will be an indispensable resource for you on a day-to-day basis. This updated edition remains true to the practical, hands-on approach that has made previous editions so successful, and has been updated with revised forms, permits, and budgets applicable to all productions; contains important information on standards and typical processes and practices; includes the latest information available on technological advances such as digital FX; and discusses the impact of the Internet on filmmaking. Film production professionals at all levels of experience will benefit from the information in this handbook to film production management. [Order Now]

 


Shot by Shot: A Practical Guide to Filmmaking

Shot by Shot
A clear, easy-to-read introductory text designed for the beginning filmmaker working in high definition digital video or 16mm or super-8 film. The book is divided into twelve chapters, each of which deals with the basic language, processes and techniques of filmmaking: The Moving Image, Film Camera and Film Stock, Video Camera and Recorder, The Lens, Composition, Continuity, Editing Theory, Editing Mechanics, Pre-production, Lighting, Sound, and Distribution. It includes a comprehensive glossary of important terms. [Order Now]

 


 

Film Directing Shot by Shot

Film Directing
A complete catalogue of motion picture techniques for filmmakers. It concentrates on the ‘storytelling’ school of filmmaking, utilizing the work of the great stylists who established the versatile vocabulary of technique that has dominated the movies since 1915.

This graphic approach includes comparisons of style by interpreting a ‘model script’, created for the book, in storyboard form. [Order Now]

 

 


DIY Porn Handbook: A How-To Guide to Documenting Our Own Sexual Revolution


Porn director and performer Madison Young tells you how to share your personal sexual revolution on film!

From formulating goals through script-writing, choosing colleagues through final edits, fund-raising through marketing, DIY Porn Handbook contains all the information insider tips and insights you need to become one of the voices of today’s radical pornography subculture. [Order Now]

 


 

Books on Porn

From industry theory to practice and first-hand experiences, here are resources for the porn-curious.

 

The Feminist Porn Book

Feminist_Porn_cover
The Feminist Porn Book brings together for the first time writings by feminists in the adult industry and research by feminist porn scholars. This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world’s most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Lynn Comella, Jane Ward, Ariane Cruz, Kevin Heffernan, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the arguments of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women’s movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and racial and sexual minorities produce power and pleasure. [Order Now]

 


A Taste for Brown Sugar


A Taste for Brown Sugar boldly takes on representations of black women’s sexuality in the porn industry based on Mireille Miller-Young’s extensive archival research and her interviews with dozens of women who have worked in the adult entertainment industry since the 1980s. The women share their thoughts about desire and eroticism, black women’s sexuality and representation, and ambition and the need to make ends meet. Building on the work of other black feminist theorists, and contributing to the field of sex work studies, Miller-Young wants the voices of black women sex workers heard, and the decisions they make to be recognized as their own. [Order Now]

 


Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”

Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the
In this now-classic study, Linda Williams moves beyond the impasse of the anti-porn/anti-censorship debate to analyze what hard-core film pornography is and does—as a genre with a history, as a specific cinematic form, and as part of contemporary discourse on sexuality.

For the 1999 edition, Williams has written a new preface and a new epilogue, “On/scenities,” illustrated with 25 photographs. She has also added a supplementary bibliography. [Order Now]

 


Pornography: Structures, Agency and Performance

Pornography: Structures, Agency and Performance (Key Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies)
Written for a broad audience and grounded in cutting-edge, contemporary scholarship, this book addresses some of the key questions asked about pornography today and places the arguments from conservative and radical anti-porn activists against the challenges coming from a new generation of feminist and queer porn performers and educators. Combining sensitive and detailed discussion of case studies with careful attention to the voices of those working in pornography, it provides scholars, activists and those hoping to find new ways of understanding sexuality with the first overview of the histories and futures of pornography. [Order Now]

 


New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law

New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law
Why do people use pornography? Is porn addiction a fact or myth? What is revenge porn and is it illegal? Can pornography be more diverse? This interdisciplinary collection presents well-researched facts and up-to-date data that encourage informed discussion about controversial and relevant issues in contemporary society.

Chapters address topics such as the history and cultural trends of pornography, labor and production practices in creating porn, the effects of technology, current issues in obscenity law, and myths and facts about the effects of pornography. [Order Now]

 


Coming Out Like a Porn Star

Coming Out Like a Porn Star Cover
While some denounce pornography as immoral and others praise its sex-positive liberation, the ways performers “come out” about doing porn — or the great lengths we take to avoid it — is an honest, nuanced depiction of how society views those at the public frontline of sexuality.

Coming Out Like a Porn Star presents over 50 first-hand accounts, ranging from funny to fucked up, as well as practical tips and personal anecdotes. [Order Now]

 

 


Ethical Porn for Dicks: A Man’s Guide to Responsible Viewing Pleasure


Our media is filled with confusing, polarizing messages about the dangers of porn, while at the same time sexually explicit images are pronounced in advertising and entertainment.

Using a natural question/answer format for people feeling fear and shame about porn use, this accessible, funny, and well-informed book is the first one to offer men a nonjudgmental way to discover how to view and use pornography responsibly. [Order Now]

 


Books on Sex Work

Sex work is a broad umbrella term that includes adult film industry workers. Here are a few resources that can help you understand the issues.

 

$pread Anthology

SPREAD Anthology
$pread, an Utne Award–winning magazine by and for sex workers, was independently published from 2005 to 2011. This collection features enduring essays about sex work around the world, first-person stories that range from deeply traumatic to totally hilarious, analysis of media and culture, and fantastic illustrations and photos produced just for the magazine. The book also features the previously untold story of $pread and how it has built a wider audience in its posthumous years. What started as a community tool and trade magazine for the sex industry quickly emerged as the essential guide for people curious about sex work, for independent magazine enthusiasts, and for labor and civil rights activists. [Order Now]

 


Playing the Whore


In Playing the Whore, journalist Melissa Gira Grant turns these pieties on their head, arguing for an overhaul in the way we think about sex work. Based on ten years of writing and reporting on the sex trade, and grounded in her experience as an organizer, advocate, and former sex worker, she dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, criticizes both conditions within the sex industry and its criminalization, and argues that separating sex work from the “legitimate” economy only harms those who perform sexual labor. Sex workers’ demands, too long relegated to the margins, take center stage: sex work is work, and sex workers’ rights are human rights. [Order Now]

 


Sex Workers Unite


A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom. Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Unite is a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America’s major civil rights struggles.

Although their presence has largely been ignored and obscured, Melinda Chateauvert recasts sex workers as savvy political organizers—not as helpless victims in need of rescue. [Order Now]


Sex Education

A comprehensive understanding of anatomy, pleasure, and sexual health is necessary to have as performers and producers of adult content. Here are just few resources.

 

Come As You Are

Come As You Are Cover
An essential exploration of why and how women’s sexuality works—based on groundbreaking research and brain science—that will radically transform your sex life into one filled with confidence and joy. Researchers have spent the last decade trying to develop a “pink pill” for women to function like Viagra does for men. So where is it? Well, for reasons this book makes crystal clear, that pill will never exist—but as a result of the research that’s gone into it, scientists in the last few year have learned more about how women’s sexuality works than we ever thought possible, and Come as You Are explains it all. [Order Now]

 


The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone


Drawing on Good Vibrations’ diverse customer interactions plus Sexologist Dr. Carol Queen’s academic training and community experience, THE Sex & Pleasure Book delivers the most informative and empowering sex information book bar none. Covering sexual changes across identity, sexual anatomy, and sex toys, this ambitious compendium aims to inform and inspire sexual comfort and exploration! Co-Authored and edited by Shar Rednour. [Order Now]

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