TORONTO - Webdreams, the Gemini-nominated "docu-soap" series produced by Galafilm and aired on Canada's Showcase network, will return Sept. 5 with 10 new half-hour episodes focusing on the Internet porn industry. Gay studio Jet Set Men is one of the operations featured.
Jet Set honcho Chris Steele said the Jet Set family was pleased to be featured going about the daily business of running a large gay porn studio, but the way the whole thing came about could not have been much odder.
"Ironically, last summer I was here in the Jet Set office one day and I was dealing with a lot of drama, and I remember hanging up the phone and saying ‘Someone really ought to do a reality show on this business. It's so full of drama,'" he told GAYVN.com. "Well, the next day, out of nowhere, we got a call from the producers of Webdreams. They told us about their show and said if we were willing to be on the show they would come do a ‘screen test' of all of us, and if they liked what they saw they would follow us."
Webdreams' producers liked what they saw, and the rest, as they say, is history.
"Filming [of the episodes] was great," Steele said. "It was like having a behind-the-scenes crew follow you everywhere you went, filming everything you did."
When Steele said "everything," he meant everything. The Webdreams crew not only followed Jet Setters to the GAYVN Awards, but also captured the minutiae of their daily lives on the job. Every once in a while, they'd capture something on film the Jet Set gang wasn't wild about having immortalized, but that was all part of the deal, Steele said.
Having the Webdreams crew around "was both fun and aggravating, but we knew going into it that there would be times we would be on camera that we didn't necessarily want to be," Steele said. "The Webdreams guys always called in advance to let us know when they were coming to the office to film, and if we had something going on that we thought they might be interested in we would let them know about it.
"What surprised me the most is how much work it is having a TV crew follow you around," he continued. "When you see these shows everything is seamless, but there are times when you walk out a door and, well, the cameras have to come out to shoot you so you have to go back in the door, then walk back out. They need their coverage just like anyone else does to make their show the best they can make it.
"I was also surprised at how much they filmed us. There are five [lives being followed] on the show and we're just one of those five, so starting out I didn't think we would be filmed very often. That wasn't the case. They followed the making of On Fire! from inception all the way to the GAYVN Awards and documented every step of the way, including going to the DVD replication house to film the DVDs come off the press. They were very thorough."
At times frustrating, at times enlightening or perplexing, overall the experience was pleasant and illuminating, Steele said.
"My famous last words for saying someone should do a reality show? Doing the show was a great experience," he noted. "I've seen them on TV, and now I know exactly what it's like to be on one. Webdreams filmed us from June of 2007 till February of 2008. By the end of the experience we all felt like they were part of our crew."
When all is said and done, he said, Webdreams will "give the Jet Set brand great exposure and publicity."
For their part, Webdreams' producers are looking forward to the beginning of a new season.
"We're thrilled to be back," Webdreams creator and producer Michael Kronish said. "The success of the first two seasons helped us get even more access to the industry and even deeper into the lives of our characters."
Added Michael Kot, vice president for factual content at Showcase parent company Canwest Broadcasting, "Full of character and real-life drama, Webdreams fans will not be disappointed by this popular fly-on-the-wall look at the online world of adult entertainment."
Drawing from more than 600 hours of footage, season three of Webdreams was filmed in high-definition format and will be broadcast in HD where available. Shooting was based in Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, Newfoundland, Las Vegas, New York, Miami, Buenos Aires and the Dominican Republic.
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