What Makes a Pornstar in 2007?

[chadknowslaw]

In the 1970's and 80's, it took a lot of money to make an adult movie and there were not many places you could see it. Before VHS came along, an adult film took in excess of a quarter million dollars to make and played in a small number of adult theaters. There were not many adult films, so someone that performed in an adult film was a rarity. A porn star was someone who was in one of the few films that came out that year!

In the 1980's VHS made distribution easier because the movie could be sold or rented and viewed at home. Still, the production cost was high so there were few films made each year, few producers and few actors in front of the camera. If you were one of the few actors in porn, you were definitely a Porn Star!

In the 1990's, inexpensive camcorders, editing, DVD distribution, and Internet distribution all helped to drop the production cost from $250,000 per film down as low as $5000 per film or less. Anybody could make a porn film, or at least a few scenes. Instead of a handful of performers in a small number of films, there are now literally tens of thousands of adult performers just on production DVD's, and thousands more that are shown on membership websites that never end up in a packaged video.

Now that there are so many people in front of the camera, just being in a porn does not make somebody a "porn star". I know surfers often want to meet their favorite "porn star" and I have acquaintances that ask me how many porn stars I know or how many I will see at the next convention. There are a few names that stand out, but thousands more that do a scene or two and then move on with their lives; they are definitely not porn stars.

What does it take to earn the title of "Porn Star" in the year 2007???