Even though you may not know it, if you’ve gone Internet-surfing in search of high-end stroke material, you are familiar with the work of Matrix Content. It is most likely the largest erotic content provider anywhere.
“If you surf the Web and you’re looking at porn,” said Norman Bentley, Matrix Content’s creator, co-owner and the man who shot the cover of the issue of AVN you’re holding, “you have to have seen one of our pictures. There’s no way you could have avoided it. And if ever there was a story about porn Websites and they did a screen cap of a site, nine times out of 10 it was our work.”
The company started in 1999. “We produce and license content for Internet sites. Single girl, boy-girl, girl-girl, girl-girl-boy, boy-boy-girl, the gamut.” In seven years, Bentley estimates, they’ve turned out over 6,000 minutes of video and well over a million photos.
Matrix’s client list runs to roughly 18,000 Webmasters. Some of the bigger names include SilverCash, CyberAge, CyberErotica, “pretty much all the big boys that are out there Web-wise.”
Bentley and his crew work in Los Angeles in rented locations, not a studio. They’ll shoot one girl a day: stills in the morning, then a striptease, then with another model, girl-girl or boy-girl photo sets and a full sex scene. That way, Bentley says, “we can really pay attention to quality. We’re not rushed. It’s very detail-orientated. We heavily concentrate on high-end glamour photos.”
Originally, Matrix was strictly Internet, but now they also do DVDs. After scenes go to Matrix Content clients, they are compiled by theme. “I’ll be like, I’ve got five big-busted girls here, let’s throw a big boob title together.”
Matrix currently has no DVD distribution. They had a short-lived deal with Metro and are interested in picking up where they left off with a new company. “We’re currently sitting on eight fantastic titles,” Bentley said.
Bentley started out in mainstream photography, moved on to what he calls “Skinemax” movies (softcore cable fare), and did some work for Penthouse. Around 1996, he said, “the Internet started blowing up, and I love computers, my favorite thing. So it was just a natural progression for me. I was one of the first people doing video encoding for the Internet.” After shooting for various content providers, he decided, “I’ll do this for myself. And Matrix was started.”
In some ways Matrix is a microcosm of the porn industry, covering a wide range of physical and ethnic niches. They shoot all kinds of sex, including some anal, but not a lot, although whatever clients request, they’ll get. “I have one of my clients now, they’re asking for harder, nastier sex,” Bentley said. “I’m like, OK.”
He has shot a lot of first timers, including the first video of former Wicked Girl Kaylani Lei. If a girl rings the bell with his clients, he’ll bring her back, like Eve Lawrence, whom he’s shot three times.
The Matrix production schedule averages three days a week, but he keeps getting busier. “We’re currently talking to another client that might bump us up to, believe it or not, about eight days a week. I’m going to have to start running two crews.”
In addition to his Matrix work, Bentley signed up to shoot movies for Defiance Films. His first feature, Runway, was shot last December on a much higher than usual budget. At press time in April he was still editing it. “It looks beautiful,” he said. “I haven’t even cut the sex yet. We just cut the dialogue and the story, and I’m like, Dude, this is a real movie.”
He won’t set a release date until it’s finished and fine-tuned to his complete satisfaction.
Bentley took a day off to shoot the June AVN cover featuring hot new starlet Naomi. Shooting an AVN cover is “something I’ve wanted to do for years,” he said. “We shot on like the best camera made, a 22 Mpixel Hasselblad that’ll put out a 128 megabyte file. It costs as much as a car, that thing.”
For samples of Bentley’s work, check out matrixcontent.com.
