A YOUNG Australian will attempt to crack the online adult industry when he launches an erotica website in February.
Nathan Nott, who resides in Fulham with his partner Josephine, will launch n-timate.com, an erotica website, this month.
The site will try to provide a more artistic sophisticated alternative to the seemingly endless, and frighteningly large, world of online pornography.
Not only it is a vast empire, it is now largely free — there are more ‘Tubes’ than there are Hotmail accounts.
“I looked at the stuff I had seen, and just thought it looks like crap and it is extremely misogynistic,” Nott said of his motives behind the project.
So how does an Aussie, with a long-term girlfriend, become an erotica director in the UK?
The 31-year-old said he was inspired by erotica as a teenager.
“I used to buy photography magazines to see naked girls. I was too embarrassed to buy Playboy.
“I looked and thought that stuff looks really cool, I wonder if I could shoot it.”
Nott moved to London in 2008, carrying an undergraduate and also postgraduate degree from Curtin University, Perth in Film and Television. He was looking to get his foot in the door of a competitive foreign media industry at a time when jobs were few and far between.
After applying for jobs in television and online media for more than a year, it wasn’t until he was rejected for a volunteer role at a radio station he realised things had to change.
Despite paying his way with some freelance work, the experience of London’s financial crisis of 2008-2009 left, as he attests, a ‘bad taste’ in his mouth.
“It was at a radio station that was going to start doing online videos of interviews with bands and musicians. I got knocked back for that,” he says.
From here, Nott realised he could utilise his skills behind the camera, plus an appreciation of adult art, and mesh it together.
“To be honest I don’t really watch a lot of porn, apart from the year I was researching.
“I read every book I could, especially those from a feminist or Christian perspective,” he said.
On his new project, Nott is quick to separate his site from what has become the norm of ‘hardcore’ pornography.
“We’ve coined the term artcore erotica,” he said.
“It’s erotica where as much attention is put on the quality then just what’s in front of the camera.
“We’re intent on focusing more on intimacy and style and deliberately trying to avoid any sort of misogyny.”
His site will feature over 20 models, including Eufrat Mai – the most searched erotic model in the world in January 2012.
The scenes were shot by Nott and his crew in Prague in August and October 2012.
With the scenes shot, Nott spent the next several months editing the scenes for sound, lighting and length.
Once the site is live, Nott will see if his instinct – of female friendly and artistic erotica – is right.
“We’ll take the feedback on board — that’s the only way to do it. We don’t have any bosses, just the viewers.”
The team’s next shoot was in London, Canary Wharf, in November. Shoots in Budapest and Spain will follow.
But the venture is risky — money, time and his livelihood are on the line.
“I don’t care about the money, it’s just cool to be able to do this in the first place,” he said.
The biggest challenge is how he plans to battle the era of free ‘tubes’ and a largely free market.
Nott said: “We’ve approached it from the point of view of Louis Vuitton and Gucci; their stuff has been sold on the street for years, but they’ve always managed to succeed with their own brand, despite the fact you can find something exactly the same for cheap.
“People still will go and buy that product. It becomes a bit more of an issue if you don’t focus on quality.
“It [the site] is not coming from misogynistic point of view; if anything it’s coming from a feminist point of view. If it [hardcore porn] is not already reinforcing more misogynistic values and everything, it might be sowing the seeds to a certain extent.
“The naked female body is a thing of beauty — let’s capture it, let’s celebrate it.”
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