Messy Fun
Love you, too
Messy Fun was Rob Blaine's production company, based in Austin, Texas, in the USA, producing still photosets and videos featuring a variety of WAM interests. Originally distributing print photosets and videos on VHS via mail-order, DVDs and web downloads were offered by the company later on. The company continued on for some years following Rob Blaine's death, but is now defunct.
Rob was one of the early pioneers of commercial WAM, giving up a successful career in computer science in order to become a full time WAM producer. His production standards were second to none, he used professional grade Hi-8 video camcorders and SLR still cameras, and hired models with stunning good looks who could have easily graced high fashion shoots, and paid them very well. He brought his computing and Internet knowledge to his WAM business, setting up one of the first commercial WAM websites, although initially not selling digital content on-line. Working in the 1990s, he used his website to sell mail-order VHS video tapes of his scenes, for $50 USD you could purchase a two-hour video cassette with six scenes included, which would be a mix of mud, messy, and wetlook scenes. This was before convenient on-line payment services like PayPal existed so ordering a tape, especially if you lived overseas from the US, involved mailing a cheque and then waiting weeks for the banks to very slowly convert the money to US dollars and release it, after which you would receive a video by air mail. Rob had multi-system compatible video equipment so could produce tapes in both the American NTSC system and the European PAL format.
He was very technically knowlegable about computers, videography, and still photography, and was generous in offering that knowlege to other producers. He even wrote a book, "The Art Of Messy Photography", which gave advice on how to recruit and interview models, how to film different types of scenes, how to manage cameras and change film while deep in a mud pit, and lots of other detailed information on producing messy photos and videos. His objective was to encourage other producers and so grow the overall market for WAM material.
Rob was one of the first producers to experiment with digital editing of analogue footage, in an era when the largest hard drives were measured only in hundreds of megabytes, and having just the masters for one video occupied thousands of dollars worth of digital storage.
Sadly Rob Blaine passed away in the year 2000, leaving an enormous hole in the online WAM community. A warm, friendly, and helpful figure, who is still missed by those who had the good fortune to know him, in person or on-line.
Rob was one of the early pioneers of commercial WAM, giving up a successful career in computer science in order to become a full time WAM producer. His production standards were second to none, he used professional grade Hi-8 video camcorders and SLR still cameras, and hired models with stunning good looks who could have easily graced high fashion shoots, and paid them very well. He brought his computing and Internet knowledge to his WAM business, setting up one of the first commercial WAM websites, although initially not selling digital content on-line. Working in the 1990s, he used his website to sell mail-order VHS video tapes of his scenes, for $50 USD you could purchase a two-hour video cassette with six scenes included, which would be a mix of mud, messy, and wetlook scenes. This was before convenient on-line payment services like PayPal existed so ordering a tape, especially if you lived overseas from the US, involved mailing a cheque and then waiting weeks for the banks to very slowly convert the money to US dollars and release it, after which you would receive a video by air mail. Rob had multi-system compatible video equipment so could produce tapes in both the American NTSC system and the European PAL format.
He was very technically knowlegable about computers, videography, and still photography, and was generous in offering that knowlege to other producers. He even wrote a book, "The Art Of Messy Photography", which gave advice on how to recruit and interview models, how to film different types of scenes, how to manage cameras and change film while deep in a mud pit, and lots of other detailed information on producing messy photos and videos. His objective was to encourage other producers and so grow the overall market for WAM material.
Rob was one of the first producers to experiment with digital editing of analogue footage, in an era when the largest hard drives were measured only in hundreds of megabytes, and having just the masters for one video occupied thousands of dollars worth of digital storage.
Sadly Rob Blaine passed away in the year 2000, leaving an enormous hole in the online WAM community. A warm, friendly, and helpful figure, who is still missed by those who had the good fortune to know him, in person or on-line.
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