As you read this, Keith Miller and his staff will be unpacking boxes, arranging furniture, and setting up shop in California. Helix Studios' cross country move from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to San Diego took place in late September. The move is an exclamation point on several prosperous few years that officially gives notice that the studio has arrived.
“As the company continues to grow and our stuff becomes more popular, I felt the need to position Helix in such a way that it has access to all the benefits that the industry in California has to offer,” says Helix founder Miller, who got his start in the industry in 1997 as one of the founding partners of Internet Billing Company iBill.
“Being in Ft .Lauderdale, I was a little bit far from all the connections that some of the other places have. I felt a need to be closer to the industry, to all the things that California and the film industry out there has to offer, from the distributors to the duplicators to the marketing people. All of the things that will really help the studio grow to the next level.”
Miller was bought out of iBill in 2000 and went into semi-retirement. But he soon started playing around on the content side of the industry, and by 2002 had released his first few videos with a spanking fetish line. The first release was the appropriately titled First Time Spankings. Before he knew it, Miller had a studio on his hands.
“Spanking was the first thing we started with because there was less competition, and I saw a market niche that wasn’t being filled,” he says. “It just kind of gradually evolved from there, from doing spanking videos to filming sex. And then in 2004 we started releasing full hardcore scenes in addition to the fetish stuff.”
The SpankThis! line was soon joined with twink line 8teenboy. Twinkalicious quickly earned Helix notice with its nomination for Best Specialty Release (18-23) at the 2005 GAYVN Awards.
“I filmed Sammy Case in a video that turned out to be one of the first sex videos for 8teenboy that we put out, and it was extremely well received,” Miller says. “Based on its popularity — everyone wanted more — I continued filming.”
It didn’t win, but just one year later, Helix took home the prize with Twink Juice, one of many other company hits like Delivery Boys and Twink Heat. Miller attributes part of that success to distributor Marina Pacific, which Helix had hooked up with by the time it reached its 20th release in 2003.
“We’ve been incredibly fortunate to be associated with Marina Pacific,” Miller says. “They’ve been able to really assist us in getting us into stores, getting recognized, and getting shelf space and helping to build our name as much as we have. They took us on when we were doing nothing but spanking stuff, without knowing anything about the upcoming twink videos. I have to give them major amounts of credit, not only for picking us up when no one else would, but for helping us as we continue to grow, for seeing the potential there.”
And with recent hits like TightEnd Twinks, Twink Juice 2, and Spanked at Work 2, Helix has continued to establish itself as one of the leaders in its specialties, aided in part by the high visual quality of each release. Miller says he films with expensive cameras and high-end equipment, and it shows.
“There’s a large segment of the population that likes twink videos. I think it was an area that was quite neglected for years,” he says. “As evidenced by the sales recently of some of our titles like Twink Juice 2, there’s a big demand for the younger legal look that wasn’t being met as well as others were. There are a few other twink studios out there, and there are some really good ones. But even so, there’s not as much content with the twink line as there is with the buff jock.”
In addition to the spanking videos, Helix typically releases ten to 12 8teenboy videos a year, and Miller is looking to add two higher budget films to that schedule next year, focusing on "larger locations, larger casts, and a larger scope." And with their new surroundings and increased popularity, Helix is sure to make the fans take notice. Just don’t ask the modest Miller why.
“There’s a lot of good stuff being filmed today, and I don’t want to say that my stuff is any better than anyone else’s,” he says. “I simply film what I like to watch, and I think if I continue to do that and we film what is sexy, hot pairings that are good where there’s chemistry between the models, it works.”
Ordering Info: 8teenBoy.com; SpankThis.com; distributed by Marina Pacific, 800-999-5530.
