"My aim this year is to produce better films, more creative and more artistic than I did last year" – Kendo 

The low soft hum of the train in the station

Sends yellow sparks high with the smell of bacon.

All hands in pockets and zips done up tightly

As the cold on the platform grips ever so slightly.

The smell of the coffee beans float in the air

Oh why wont that woman sit still on this chair?

A funny looking bloke all dressed up to the nines

As another cancellation’s  announced over the lines.

Thousands, well hundreds, well maybe a lot

Stand formlessly looking at each other, and why not.

A young girl yawns widely did she not get her sleep?

As another stairs gormlesly down at her feet.

Please wake me please wake me when the train does arrive.

Or is this a dream and the connection is life?

Kendo x

Firstly my apologies because as I started writing this blog post yesterday as usual it rambled on and on, and to be honest with you I didn’t even scratch the surface of what I wanted to say so I have rewritten some of the beginning now.

It seems like forever since my last blog post but what a five weeks I’ve had. I don’t think I have ever been so ill for such a period of time.

My first draft went into detail but sounded a bit naff, so lets just say for four weeks I have had flu, there that has cut down the rambling.

On a more positive note we did start shooting a film for the French company Marc Dorcel, as if you didn’t know they were French, and I am honoured to say that in thirty years I am the first British Director to have worked for them.

Anyway I am feeling healthy and raring to go in fact I had my first workout today, being Sunday, and of course I took it easy but yes it was great to get back down the gym, I have lost over fifteen pounds.

This year is panning out nicely and looks to be a much better year than last year so fingers crossed.

I posted on twitter this week and asked what I should write my new blog post about and I got a few answers but one stood out, business and my success. Well if I was to sit here typing about my success I’d probably sound a bit arrogant and a bit of a big head, but then that all depends on what you measure success with?

I do love my life and my job but I feel my greatest success comes in my personal life. I have written about my past and the darkness it holds, how I lost friends, served time in prison, my partying and drug taking, but my biggest success is my family and my wife. Today I don’t drink, well hardly ever, I haven’t touched anything that I shouldn’t have for a long long time, so when I think of my greatest success and achievements to date it must be how I am as a person, as a family man, a husband a dad, and I owe that to my beautiful wife Lisa.

Enough you say, you want to know how I made such a success of myself in the Adult industry, all right Porn industry. Well to be honest with you I don’t feel that Kendo as a Director is that well known, and that I feel is down to lack of marketing and advertising. But this year I am trying to work on this, starting with social networking and building my web presence, but any advice will be greatly received.

For me the first thing that I feel puts you on the right road to success is self belief. You have to have it and have it in abundance but don’t get confused with self-belief and ego, ego will eat you up and spit you out, whereas self-belief just pats you on the back every so often.

You must bring something new to the table, and that table is again called success, if you look at my work I promise you it will look totally different to ninety five percent of all the other porn shot on a daily basis, period. Now does that make my work great porn, of course not but it does make it unique and that is a big bargaining chip in this industry. So I concentrate on what I’m good at and don’t worry about what other Directors are doing, and what I’m good at is looking and understanding human chemistry and human emotion and the finer details. How I look at the individual model and what they bring to my set, the argument on the train journey, the split up with their boyfriend or girlfriend, all the real stuff that happens to every one of us everyday on a daily basis, this is what I look for, and when I find it I try to capture it and build on it, not on a models pain but to channel that pain into a sexual tension on set.

The studio then becomes my arena to do this, I start looking at the space, my space, 360 degrees around my shooting area, how can I light this area, my arena? How can I bring out the chemistry and emotion and set it on fire?

The small candle flickering in the background, the colour mix of daylight and tungsten all around me, painting my human abstract forms like any artist paints his subject. The colours of the fabrics in the background, the leather the silk and what they say to me, what they scream out about the connection on my set, the paintings and abstract shapes in the background, every single smallest detail there because its decided to be there. Everything that ties in to my scene is thought about in detail for a long time sometimes days before the actual scene starts to unfold. I go to the studio with my guys and start to set up the lighting, the furniture, the props and then obviously on the actual day, that day, well that’s when the magic truly begins.

So where did my self-belief come from…

It’s funny sitting here in the print room at college makes me think about how I have changed as a person. How we all change as people or maybe we don’t. I have an assessment in one hour and it took me two hours this morning to put up 100 photographs on a wall and install a conceptual piece, but this is about who is Kendo is it not? Well I suppose my art and my work are Kendo.

Over the past five years it’s interesting for me to look back at the many many films I have produced for companies like Private, Playboy, TVX and Daring. I was producing twenty films a year when I signed my exclusive deal with Daring that cut the films produced  to twelve a year. Twelve is a good number as I have two great editors who work on the films and simple mathematics says that if they do six films each that allows them eight weeks per film. Yes we spend eight weeks editing per film we have cut down the edit time from three months, yes three months is what Bondage Thoughts took, to two months per film.

I see how my style has changed over those years and I see how I have evolved. For me it’s more about human chemistry, emotion, the kind of substance that I cannot really write into a script, its rather the baggage, what the model brings with them. How they are feeling that day, have they had an argument or row on the train journey to me, anybody can shoot porn and I mean anybody. I could take any Joe Blog off the street and within a day I could teach them how to shoot porn, anybody, FACT. But shooting chemistry, understanding emotion now that’s a beautiful challenge, especially when you shoot it with a artistic flair. So yes I am interested in shooting beautiful people, and I have said this before but anybody who falls in front of my camera will always be beautiful. I am interested in capturing real chemistry, emotion, beauty and realism in a very artistic way, the sex is purely the vehicle to deliver the REAL essence that I am in tune with, is this a bit deep?.

A couple of years ago I was so bored with shooting my Z1, or more in particular I was so bored with the look I was getting with the Z1 that I put it down, picked up my stills camera and started shooting the rest of the film and that film was Sheer Nylon with my Canon 5DII. I love the shallow depth of field that this camera with a prime lens gives me. It allows me to take the viewer to exactly where I want to take him or her within the field of focus, within my field of focus. Funny but when I started shooting with the 5DII it shot 30 frames per second and it would take us up to two months to convert the footage into the format and codec we needed, that was before we even started editing with it, MAD? Oh yes I have been told that many times.

I always try and push myself when I am shooting a film, when I finish a shoot I am totally exhausted, my brain works like this. We shoot three cameras on a shoot. Each camera is shooting hard then each camera is shooting soft, three at a time, sound confusing? It is a little. Most producers/ Directors  either shoot one camera which shoots hard then soft or they shoot two cameras one camera shoots hard whilst the second shoots soft. So why am I telling you this, not to impress you I don’t really need to do that but rather impress upon you how my brain sees whats going on in front of me, it sees three different images at any one time, it sees how the edit will unfold as the scene is happening, so I am thinking about three different images at any one time and I am also  thinking how they will all cut together at the same time, that’s why I am knackered at the end of a shoot. Oh yes and I only give myself one hour to actually shoot the whole scene, start to finish, one hour.

So about a year ago I had this idea to take our current filming style and cut it to shreds and re edit the film with all the time lines and scenes unfolding together, a spliced film so to speak, well thats what I call it, my editors call it a pain in the arse. I spoke to Lisa my wife about the idea as I do everything, she is the person who talks sense into me and is my best friend, she said to me well this film will either be crap or brilliant. I don’t do crap. So we started to shoot these inter spliced time lines, the first film to have this idea  was Stilettos. I called the film Stilettos as almost a homage to the first film I shot for Private whish was called Stiletto which was nominated for six or eight AVN’s I cannot remember. I thought that when I shot the film for Private it was like a milestone for me and this new shooting style felt the same kind of milestone. A few years ago I told Lisa that I wanted to work for Private and within six months I was. I put so much pressure on my shoulders when I shot Stiletto it was unreal. I shot the film and I decided I wanted to edit the film myself, Private said “no problems Kenny but we won’t pay you for it as you have signed a contract”. I said no problems I wanted, rather I needed to edit that film as I saw it, as I knew it needed to be, when we gave it over to PRIVATE, they said “Kenny from now on you edit your films and we will pay you for it”.

I put the same pressure on myself with Bondage Thoughts. This was the first film I shot for Daring, why do I do this? Why because I care, I care more than anything else, I have a deep deep desire to succeed, to be different, I have a self belief that has to be fed. I have to push myself further than anybody else can push me. Money is not the most important thing to me, the most important thing to me is to create something beautiful and something very different. I believe that there is not one other Adult Film Director who produces the same look as I do and in this industry. That is a massive statement to make. I have created a style that is recognisable instantly, you may or may not like it. I hope you do, but it is a style and it is mine and when we all shoot the same subject matter with pretty much the same kind of cameras to create something unique for me that is a great thing. But I have such a long way to go, but the journey is great and fun.

Wow do I ramble, I don’t even think I have said what  I thought I was going to say when I started writing this blog post, but like I have said before I will write from my heart. I am not a writer and ramblings will be encountered along the way, sorry.

Part 4 next week, have a beautiful week and believe in yourself, because if you don’t why should anybody else – Kendo x

Who is Kendo? This question and more importantly the answer to this question has always been the driving force behind me. What am I interested in when I set up my camera, what fuels my creative juices when I say “Action” well what is not important to me is what everybody else is doing, or supposedly doing. But let’s start at the beginning.

I am sure I am like very other male always having a deep fascination with Porn, I remember stealing my dads porn mags only to find he had taken them back the next day, a little awkward to say the least but the fascination was always there.

I suppose my first real steps taken towards who I am now started in a different direction, but then don’t all journeys start that way? I remember watching a film ‘Pumping Iron’ with Arnold Schwarzenegger a bodybuilding movie and thinking to myself that’s what I want to do thats what I want to be, I want to be a competitive bodybuilder. I am sure many men have thought the same thing watching the same movie, the difference with me I suppose is I have a very very competitive nature, my will to succeed and my self belief has always been second to none. Three years after starting bodybuilding I was Junior Mr England, Junior Mr South Britain etc etc etc I competed in thirteen shows and won nine and was in the top three in every show I became that semi professional bodybuilder I always wanted to be with sponsorship, and did I earn money from it, did I buggery not a single penny.

Anyway at the age of twenty I went to work at a local night club, trying to get some money to pay for my enormous food bill. I thought I was going to collect glasses but they took one look at me and said “Underground” this was where all the action happened and when I say action I mean six or seven fights a night, my first night one of the punters actually died at the hands of another doorman. Welcome to my world.

I never have actually worked a nine to five job ever, I have never really worked for anybody apart from myself in one shape or another. I have been to college got my A’levels then worked in the night clubs then moved onto stripping. Yes I was that male stripper in that go go bar, well I was actually in a male revue group. But let’s not jump the gun. I was still doing door work when this guy comes up to me and asks me if I wold be interested in getting into stripping, this was on a Saturday night and the next day I was in his house in front living room learning some crazy cheesy dance moves.

My first ever strip show some two days later after learning the cheesy dance moves and drinking a bottle of wine to try and calm my nerves down I found myself with a small plastic lizard sitting on my shoulder, I think his name was Jakey. I was wearing thigh high leather boots, they were black and flat just encase you ask, I was wearing a leather codpiece it was a little bit sticky and oily and yes I was holding a moody broom stick with leather tassels in my hand. I was dressed up like some kind of wacked out mad max figure with my long curly hair to boot, there were twelve hundred screaming women trying to rip my skin off, you would have thought they had never seen a man before in their life, wow again welcome to my world. Anyway we were stripping some thirty shows a month, manic but great fun and a great bunch of guys.

So what about the Porn job I hear you ask? well it was the same guy, a friend of mine called Simon who had asked me about getting into stripping who had been approached by a company to put a show together for Playboy TV, The Adult Channel to rival the Ben Dover show that was on the TVX channel. I was fresh out of prison had not seen a woman for a while and he asked me if I fancied doing a Porn Film, what do you think I said? hold on I hear you say, prison where did that come from, well yes I was a naughty boy and got four years for admitting to the police I had given a friend a ecstasy tablet, not for monetary gain but social supply and yes I got four years,. It was reduced to two years and I ended up doing a year. Anyway so I was away from the group for a year, I got out of prison and was asked if I wanted to make a porn film, what do you think I said, OH YES.

Not sure if I should go on actually what do you think? Is anybody actually interested in what I am writing? Is it touching you in someway, you know I have never been a writer and this whole blogging thing is new to me, so what do think. Do you want to hear more??

So my first day back at college was interesting to say the least. At the end of last year I was feeling that I was starting to move away from the reason I started the BA course. As you are probably aware, I do have a full time job, I do have a beautiful family with two amazing boys and a stunning wife. I am very lucky in my security which I have created within my work environment. I have never been given anything, I have had no privileged background, no private school, I have made countless mistakes so many its easier to remember the dictionary.I have lost many people in my life, two best friends both dying at thirty nine, anyway thats another blog post, back to college.

I was feeling a bit negative towards the end of last year and at the start of this one that negativity had been changed to a very positive start, knowing exactly what I needed to do and how to get there. I arrived only to find the tutor was going to be an hour late, hey no problems we’re all human. We had our tutorial, quite heated but positive. I waited around to give a fellow student support for a poster presentation she was giving at 1:00pm.

When I arrived at the class where the presentation was being given, I was met by the tutor, I will not give her name. Now, she could have said, “Hello Kenny, how are you today? How was your Christmas and New Year?” she could of said “Thanks for turning up Kenny but, ‘so en so’ has asked for a small group present as she is a little nervous about her presentation, but thank you for your support” She could have said many things instead she said “Hello Kenny what are you doing here!” and went on to say” You are not needed” whilst holding a hand up in a very annoying manner. If I say now that my adrenaline went through the roof and I wanted to rip this tutors head off it will give you an idea of the kind of person I am, manners are everything to me, you do not need to be rude to anybody in life especially when they are giving up their own time to support somebody.

Within two minutes a fellow student had called me expressing her concerns and her amazement at the rudeness of the tutor. I did get an email from the tutor saying sorry if I offended you. I posted on twitter how I was feeling about this matter and somebody got back to me saying how ‘You had to kiss arse and eat shit on these courses’ Well I am not somebody who kisses arse and I certainly don’t eat shit, so I composed an email a few days later to the tutor and this is what it said:

Dear xxx,

I try and follow a few simple ideologies in my life, like sleeping on something before making any rash decisions. I love the idea of writing your anger and concerns in the sand at the waters edge and allowing the tide to wash them away. Well I feel now the tides have washed enough of my angers and concerns away and it’s now time to tell you how I am feeling. You did not offend me on Thursday you were dismissive and rude, just as you were in the lecture theatre and in the print room last year, totally dismissive of ones feelings and very rude. I understand that some personalities just don’t click and I believe that you and I have those personalities. You are the teacher and I am the student, I am there to learn and you are there to teach and that is the end of it, but I am certainly not at college for anyone, student or teacher to be rude to me for no reason whatsoever. I feel there is nothing more to say on this matter.

Regards

Kenny

Remember in life, whatever you ask of it life will willingly pay, you ask to be treated the same as everybody else, then step up and don’t except rudeness or bullying of any kind. You want to succeed in business then do the same, have self belief, have desire and step up to life – Kendo x