Millions of viewers a month check out the top porn sites, sifting through an equally staggering amount of content and making easily-searchable titles more important than ever. In as few words as possible—the consensus seems to be three to five words per title—producers often aim to summarize the plot and grab your attention. With titles like Bust a Nut in Grandma, The Little Spermaid, OMGape and Make My Ass Pregnant, there’s little doubt about what you’re in for. Who comes up with these cheeky titles day after day, and how?
For many of the smaller independent companies there is no team of creatives brainstorming lists of titles to be approved by the higher-ups. When generating his own titles, Lance Hart, founder of Sweet Femdom Studios and Man Up Films, takes the distribution method into consideration.
“If I’m putting a DVD out to sit on a shelf in hopes of someone randomly picking it up and buying it, the title has to be bold and stick out,” says Hart. “My newest gay DVD is titled Big Dicked Superheroes Taken Down. I need the walker-by to know that there will be men in spandex with big dicks getting roughly boned by villains.” Nailing the right title is a necessity when distributing on DVD, as reprinting the box covers for a better header is rarely worth the cost.
ADVERTISEMENT
Within the online market, the flexibility to tweak a title can translate to better earning potential—and in some cases make a previously-unnoticed movie skyrocket to No. 1 on the charts. “I made a movie where Batman gets mind-controlled by a sexy superhero girl Riley Reyes and has sex with her. It didn’t do so well with whatever title it had,” says Hart. “In the intro Batman was kind of slut-shaming Super Riley for wearing too slutty of a supersuit, so I changed the title to Slut-Shaming Batman and it was immediately the No. 1-selling VOD on GameLink.”
Though Hart claims he mostly “wings it,” frequently creating content inspired by his set wardrobe, there is also a method to his madness. The first step in creating a successful title is to determine what Hart refers to as the “bullet points” of your porn. “I like to consider what outfits the performers are wearing, since often that’s the only difference in the beginning. Also, there’s what sex acts occur. Then there’s the why. Why are they in this sex situation which would be pretty abnormal in anyone’s natural life?” says Hart. “If I can cover all of this with the title, that’s a win, but it has to be a short title. So Booby Ladies in Pantyhose Pounding Men with Strap-ons is a little long. I start with something like that and try to shave it down. If I can’t get it right, I try a more emotional title, like Give Her Your Ass or something. Sometimes a more emotional title wins in terms of sales.”
Behind some of porn’s hottest trends, multi-award-winning director Bree Mills believes both visuals and text should hook a viewer, as it’s the title and the visual thumbnail paired with it that will get the clicks. As head of Gamma Films’ Adult Time, Mills has the luxury of working with a pre-production team of writers and content analysts to merge data insights with creative intent when determining potential movie titles. “Within Adult Time, which encompasses the Netflix-type shows that we do, we have different types of projects, like TV shows with recurring series,” explains Mills. “At the end of the day, what gets someone to click in and watch your episode is largely dependent on what they see in the episode cover, and that line you read under the thumbnail should be just as enticing.”
“Last month the most engaging episodes released, the scenes people watched the longest, were scenes that had the word ‘daughter’ in the title,” Mills adds. “The majority of top-watched had that word in the title, though not always falling under traditional family roleplay themes, so it provided insight into the importance of that keyword.”
Despite the analytics, Mills stresses the importance of connecting back to the creative integrity of the project. To get outside of those Porn 101 titles, Mills prefers to think about the project on its own, outside its adult orientation, focusing instead on the visions she’s bringing to life. Mills encourages her colleagues to do the same, while still maintaining an understanding of what’s going to sell it. “I try to make sure the work I’m doing is a mix between the data-driven keyword injections and then focus on what’s going to be a good title for that story you want to tell,” says Mills. “Forget about the fact that it’s an adult film. What’s going to be a good film title?”
Drawing much of her inspiration from mainstream cinema, Mills prides herself on creating titles that draw interest without shortchanging the audience with traditional porn names. “Most of my movies aren’t based on porn tropes; I use points of reference. I’m like a pop-culture vulture, a huge film nerd, and one of the projects I called Half His Age, a film that won movie of the year last year in 2018, is inspired by a Police song ‘Don’t stand so close to me,’” says Mills. “If you listen to that song, you’ll hear the line. I took that nugget of inspiration and paid homage.”
Mills’ company also encourages fans to pay homage by submitting their own scene and title ideas, promoting audience engagement. “Several of our big content lines have been working closely with members for years on submitting story ideas and scenarios,” says Mills. “And oftentimes we’ll take a scenarios from a member that includes a proposed title.”
Thanks to digital content, porn titles are now peppered with data-driven keywords and no longer permanent (unless the movie still makes it to DVD). Despite these modern-day upgrades, and directors who think outside the box, there remains a large percentage of absurd porn titles topping the charts. And it’s easy to see why, if using the old naming formula: sex act + motivation to engage + visual identifier = silly porn title.
