For entrepreneur Scott Taylor, it all started with a little thing called New Sensations.
“New Sensations started with the Video Virgins series in 1993,” said Taylor, the president of the company. “For about three years, we concentrated on a pro-am series that was pretty much shot in one room, focusing on all new talent in a very pro-am or even amateurish way. We ended up winning [the AVN Award for] Best Pro-Am series in 1994. Actually, Video Virgins went on for five years, to 1998.”
The following year saw the pronounced emergence of the DVD format; thus was born Taylor’s second business, Digital Sin. He provides some background:
“I used to be president of Digital Playground for a number of years,” Taylor explained. “When I sold my interest in Digital Playground back to the company, I started Digital Sin. When it began, it was in the protocol of Digital Playground where we would license outside titles for CD Rom., and eventually we transitioned to DVD. So it was going to be my same method of operation going forward: License content from other vendors to put on DVD. Ultimately I ended up releasing only New Sensations product, inside of Digital Sin.”
The concern hired its first contract girl, the sultry Jewel D'Nyle, who became the first star in the POV My Plaything series.
“It was sort of like a flagship product to announce Digital Sin,” Taylor stated. My Plaything has lived long and prospered. Over the years the series has featured such delectable playthings as Jenna Jameson and Tera Patrick, among others, and in 2003 and 2004, won back-to-back AVN Best Interactive DVD Awards for My Plaything: Jenna Jameson 2 and Groupie Love. At this seminal time, New Sensations also acquired longtime industry veteran Peter North’s North Pole series, picking it up with Volume 4 (the line is now put out by North’s Northstar Associates).
“Peter North was looking for a different deal than where he was at,” explained Taylor. “He did Volumes 1 through 3 at Devil's Film, and he was looking for a different home. He was dating Jewel D'Nyle at the time. Since she was our new contract girl, she was very into the company, and she recommended that he go with us.”
With the My Plaything series and D’Nyle as a strong contract draw, things were coming together nicely for the company. The third piece in the company’s power trifecta became director Nic Andrews.
“Nic came from a mainstream Internet company, and he was brought on board to do some features, some high-end features that were going to be based around Jewel D Nyle. The first one was Electric Sex, and they just went on from there,” said Taylor. “About 2001, one of the key things in that time frame was we did Dark Angels 1. It won just about every award out there. It won seven AVN Awards (including Best Video of 2000), and that was (director) Nic Andrews’ brightest and biggest shining moment.
“The company just blossomed at that point,” continued Taylor. “From what was a little pro-am company that was doing about nine titles a year to now having the North Pole series, the contract girl, and ultimately the Dark Angels movies, which brought us a whole lot of notoriety.”
At this point, the company added its second contract girl, the stunning, mega-talent Carmen Luvana, who later moved on to Adam & Eve, where she remains to this day.
“When we brought on Carmen Luvana, we had her as our contract girl for about a year,” said Taylor. “It was absolutely fantastic. She remains a significant star. She again brought us more success with the success of her titles.”
In 2000, Taylor started distributing Shane’s World (College Invasion, Search and Destroy), a relationship that lasted until a few months ago, when Shane’s World split off to self-distribute.
"We had a long and fruitful relationship with New Sensations but feel the companies are going in different directions," said Jennie Grant, Shane's World owner.
Said Taylor: "Shane's World is a great brand and we are proud to have been a part of their success. However at this time, New Sensations has chosen to focus on a different style of reality based products.”
Over the years, the company’s focus has shifted, Taylor stated.
“We don't have contract girls now, our forte lies in the young girl stuff: Naughty College School Girls, She Squirts, Young as They Cum; we’re predominantly a young girl gonzo company.”
Which is not to say that things won’t change. “We most definitely will feature things outside that genre,” agreed Taylor. “We try to cover just about as many bases as we can. If we're going to do features, we do features on the highest level. We do features in the $40,000 range, and it can be considerably more.”
A key element in the Taylor business plan is a major emphasis on quality, and the sometimes overlooked fact that a top notch director is as important as the onscreen talent.
“We first hired Nacho Vidal for the Killer Pussy line, and he eventually ended up going to Evil Angel after about a year and a half,” stated Taylor. “I hired on Jonni Darkko (Anal Trainer) and had him shooting stuff for the companies, he's also now at Evil Angel. We've been real successful with people that have come to work for us.”
“Everything we do is very quality oriented,” continued Taylor. “We're not a shoot and release kind of company; everything's pretty much babied all the way through.”
Ever the watchdog perfectionist, Taylor scrutinizes his company’s product with a practiced eye.
“As the president, one of the things I do is look at everything we release,” he said. “In order to insure the quality of what we put out there, it can take the form of editing decisions, and most certainly in choice of talent. I do a lot of shooting. I've directed hundreds of our movies under the name of Tyrone Shuz.”
The meaning of that?
“I thought it was a ridiculous name, and so I used it.”
The company’s recent contract with endowed performer Shane Diesel has proved to be a boon.
“He’s known in some parts as Blackzilla,” revealed Taylor. “He's really making a lot of waves at this particular point with My Daughter Is Fucking Blackzilla 4 reaching into the top retail sales on the AVN site. We always seem to have one thing out there in the world that's kicking ass. Now Shane Diesel, under the Hush Hush Entertainment label, is distributed exclusively by Digital Sin as well as original productions of I Can't Believe I Took the Whole Thing and SOS, which is Stretched Out Snatch, which features Shane Diesel.”
Taylor puts a great deal of emphasis on keeping up with all forms of technology, especially in the High Def format.
“We've recently announced under the Digital Sin label that we are going to be releasing a multiple scene High Def sampler, which is offered free to our customers,” explained Taylor. “To my knowledge, we are the first ones in the adult industry that are offering the High Def video playable on the new players. It’s our intention to support the High Def DVD, as well as Blue Light when it becomes available. We have been shooting on High Def since January of last year aggressively, and we have quite a bit of material set to be released on High Def, it's just that we need the market to support it.”
And, like every company worth its salt, Taylor understands the importance of the Internet.
“We have a very strong presence on the Web,” he said, “with the New Sensations site. It's a membership-based site, where we have thousands and thousands of members. We try to branch into as many different fields as we can that are viable, whether it's thru cell phone technology, or video on demand, or any emerging technology.”
New Sensations can be reached at [email protected] and newsensations.com.
