Dana Dane Productions Develops 'Erocktavision'

Dana Dane, owner of Dana Dane Productions, is presented with a challenge every time she makes a title. With the recent release of Girl’s Night In (distributed by Pulse), Dane and her production company are trying to gear their exclusively girl/girl productions to select niches: couples and lesbians, along with what Dane calls “cool straight men” and college students.

“Those are the groups we’re looking toward,” Dane told AVN.com. “We’ve found that college students are in their experimental phases, and more open-minded to new things.”

Along with Girl’s Night In, Dana Dane Productions, which started in 2002, has released Girl’s Night Out, Sapphic Dreams, West Coast Women and The Lesbian Couple.

“We got a lot of great feedback after our first title,” said Dane. All these features are Dane’s contributions to a new genre that she and her company have coined “Erocktavision,” complete with starlets they refer to as “erock stars” like Niki Clover (“the face of Erocktavision”), Lisa Marie, Leah Lane, Cassie Courtland and Holly Wellin.

“Nobody wants to mess with something that already works,” continued Dane, “and there’s a lot of money in pornography. There’s an opportunity to pioneer something that’s different in this industry, and I’m just trying to use some of the influences I have, like Andrew Blake and Michael Ninn, and add some of my own elements. Nobody wants to keep watching the same stuff over and over again.”

“Our titles are more commercially friendly than your average lesbian titles…we’re a lot less political…We’re trying to do something that’s sexy. As AVN said, we make stuff that’s ‘strong enough for a man, but built for a woman.’”

Dane, who also shoots, produces, edits and directs most of the titles for Dana Dane Productions, just got back from Toronto where her company ended up snagging the Indie Porn Pioneer Accolade at the Feminist Porn Awards, and her title carried a number of nominations. “We’re trying to make something that has its own style all together,” Dane said. "It’s a new way of seeing pornography; a combination of MTV and porno.”

One of Dane’s challenges in trying to run an adult production company geared toward women is trying to find performers that are not doing “gay for pay” work. “We screen all the girls very closely,” Dane explained. “They don’t have to be strictly lesbians, but we at least want them to be bisexual... they have to have some real, on-screen chemistry with other girls…we don’t want any fake, tongue sword fighting. We need to make absolutely sure that the vibe is right.”

Another important element to Dane’s titles is the music. “Because watching our stuff is like watching an X-rated video, we take a lot of care in choosing the music…we look in all genres, everything from hip-hop to rock. A lot of bands have been contacting us, and we’ll check their stuff out, and consider using them. We then license the songs we choose, and we’ll soon be releasing soundtracks to go along with the title.”

“I’m always trying to listen to the feedback that we get from a new generation of people watching adult movies. For example, we are now filtering in the moans, because people said they like to hear the sounds that the girls are making, along with the music.”

Dane told AVN.com that, in terms of the future, she’d like to keep making material that has great music and a high-production value.

More on Dane Productions and its titles can be found at www.erocktavision.com.