By Radly Reinhard
Special to YNOT

LIBERTY CITY, Fla. – Once upon a time, money flowed so freely in the online porn industry most producers didn’t have to think too much about pinching pennies or how to squeeze the most of out of their content-budget dollar. If, by some weird chance, you did find yourself coming up short on funds for an upcoming shoot, you could always swing by Joe E’s place and gather up some of the cash littering the bottom of his pool.

These days, it’s a different story. Where once I didn’t bat an eye at the idea of paying each girl in a four-link daisy chain a generous rate for their gymnastic group muff-diving, now I shoot one girl in an old carnival-style house of mirrors set I picked up for $250 on Craigslist, then use CGI in post-production to create the illusion of a rollicking Sapphic orgy. Since it would seem a little weird for all the fake orgasms to sound exactly the same, we use samples of screams from 1960s horror films to mix things up, along with bits of Fran Drescher dialogue from the old CBS sitcom The Nanny, slowed down and played backwards to make it sound more human.

A lot of my friends have gone out of business simply because they couldn’t bring themselves to creatively cut corners they way I have. While I admire their steadfast commitment to quality, artistry and the use of actual (rather than simulated) vomit, all those ritzy Taco Bell value meals I buy for my contract girls aren’t going to pay for themselves. I do what I gotta do to “make ends meet” — especially when I’m shooting docking videos, which is a new thing I’m exploring now that the whole ex-girlfriend porn thing is kinda cooling off.

I know things are tough all over in the porn world right now, not just in South Florida, so I figured it might be helpful to share some of my cost-cutting tips with my fellow producers. These tips won’t instantly transform you into a mega-baller like me (not everyone can afford a spacious double-wide in the exclusive 33125, after all), but they should help you avoid having to sell your entire operation on the cheap to MindGeek for at least another 90 days.

Tip 1: Copyright, Schmopyright.
Let’s face it: Intellectual property laws are just fascist government tyranny by another name. As some dude in the ’60s totally might have said, “Other people’s information wants to be free.” Even more so, other people’s information wants to be repackaged and sold in convenient downloadable bundles to anybody in the porn game who can still afford to buy content. The key is finding sites that offer full-length movies for download, so you can snare four or five individually-sellable scenes in a single download. Even if you only get like $150 per set of videos, it’s easy to keep your costs low when someone else has already covered paying the talent, the crew, the local sheriffs who caught the crew filming in a public park, etc.

Tip 2: Women’s Tennis + DVR = Upskirt Content Collection.
This formula should be pretty self-explanatory, but for those not in the know, during their matches women’s tennis players basically wear nothing but sexy panties covered by lightweight, semi-opaque banquet napkins. Whenever a breeze kicks up and every time they bend over, jump, or stretch out to hit an overhead smash, it’s Panty Showtime in a big, unintentional way. When harvesting upskirt content from televised tennis tournaments, though, be sure to pay special attention to the early rounds, because by the quarterfinals, all the real hotties like Camila Giorgi have been eliminated by the chicks who have names (and thighs) like hockey players. If anybody from the USTA gives you a hard time about not licensing the images, or the “right of publicity” or any such crap, just refer them to Tip 1, above.

Tip 3: Befriend an Ethically Flexible Gynocographer, or Whatever They’re Called.
Dude, you simply would not believe how many chicks go to the doctor. The problem is, a lot of doctors insist on “respecting the privacy” of their patients, or “maintaining their dignity” or some dumb shit, especially if they are pussy-doctors or gynophrenologists or whatever. The key to using a doctor’s office as a production studio is finding a doc with the ethical flexibility and entrepreneurial foresight to see beyond the constraints of any oaths they’ve recited and into the very lucrative future of letting you set up spy cams in their examination rooms. As an added bonus, doctors will often leave you alone for a long time during visits to the office, even if you’re just there to pick up the latest footage, giving you plenty of time to raid their supply closet for useful tools of the pornographic trade, like bandages, syringes, numbing agents and blank prescription forms.

Tip 4: Renting Studio Space is for Suckers.
God gave us public parks, trash-strewn back alleys, viewing booths in porn shops and cars with spacious back seats for a reason: To make sure we had somewhere convenient, appropriate and rent-free in which to shoot porn scenes. Sure, every once in a while you’ll get some hassle from some Officer Straightarrow type, but nine times out of 10 they just make you pack up your shit and move along. Sure, that 10th time you’ll probably need to bribe them, but it’s still cheaper than paying rent and utilities on a commercial space, especially as the going rate for Broward County sheriffs to turn their heads for an hour or so is a couple packs of Slim Jims. Miami-Dade cops are a little more expensive, because they prefer Oberto’s organic jerky, and there’s an obligatory surcharge of a case of Budweiser per crew member they let off the hook.

There’s a lot of other stuff I do to save money — and stuff I don’t do, like pay attention to zoning regulations, responding to summonses or returning calls from my so-called “attorney” — but these four tips should be enough to start with.

Of course, the options available to you will vary a bit depending on where, who and how you’re filming, so you’ll have to adjust accordingly for local conditions. For instance, if you’re based in Maine, trash-strewn back alleys might be a little hard to come by, so maybe look into shooting in out-of-the-way corners of Searsport or inside one of the empty warehouses just off State Route 15.

With a little experimentation, a touch of luck and a reliable getaway vehicle, soon you will be a porn-baller, spreading the Cheese Whiz and raking in the Abrahams — just like me.

Radly Reinhard is a South-Florida-based content producer, talent wrangler, DJ, rental property manager, Taco Bell sous chef and co-founder of the Happy Humping Harlot Model Agency.