NJ Films Inc. is a new studio formed by John Knowles and Nelson Blanton, two industry veterans who have known each other for 15 years, having met when they were both musicians playing in different bands, but on the same scene. Eventually the two left their rock and roll dreams behind to find careers in the adult industry – Knowles found a sales job and Blanton became a fashion photographer and eventually a videographer working for Playboy TV.
Knowles earned his chops in adult video sales with an eleven-year tenure at Devil's Films before moving to New Sensations/Digital Sin. Knowles had been at New Sensations for four months when he ran into Blanton at the 2004 AVN AEE Show, where Blanton was on assignment shooting video footage for Playboy TV. The two old friends quickly decided to form their own studio.
"We were talking and said, 'Let's do this.' I said, 'I can get the money,' and he says, 'I can get the money,'" Knowles said. "So we started putting it all together, came back and started working on getting the location and booking the movies and just moving forward."
"In a month and a half we went from just conception to actually existing," Blanton added. "In a week we'll have our first title in hand — in just over a month we'll have our third."
NJ Films will focus on interracial projects, a decision based on Knowles experience in sales.
"Every month, you look at your printout report. What sold the most was your interracial," Knowles said. "And if I was able to push something, even if it didn't say interracial on the cover - if it had an interracial scene - the numbers were up.
"Therefore, targeting what I think people want to see as being more interracial, let's go out with something that is interracial, we'll push it as interracial; it says interracial on the box," Knowles added.
And by interracial, NJ Films means multiracial as their tagline "Blurring the boundaries of color," suggests. They aren't creating ethnicity specific lines – there will be women of every ethnicity in each of their projects.
"A lot of people shoot just a Latin line, it's interracial if it's Asian women and white men, or where it's interracial white with black. We have a wide variety for everyone in every video," Knowles said.
"A potpourri of interracial," Blanton quipped.
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| Interracial Addiction |
Interracial Addiction, the first title from NJ Films, will be released on March 16. Blanton's favorite scene of the video features Billy Banks and Lilly Thai. "They just had really good chemistry, the energy was there, and they were both really fresh coming into it. She's a squirter," Blanton said. "There are some great shots of that where she's like, 'Here it comes,' and it's just like 'Whoooosh!'"
It was Thai who inspired Interracial Coxxx & Soxxx, the second series that NJ Films will release. The series features women wearing knee socks.
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| Socks from Interracial Coxxx & Soxxx |
Thai had worn knee high socks to the set of Interracial Addiction. "She put those on and we thought, 'Yeah.'" Knowles said.
"I think it's just too cute. They're very innocent looking, the argyle socks or the stripes and things like that. It's very school-girlish," Blanton said. "It's a fetish. Who knows what makes a fetish work? But it works. Worked for us."
Interracial Coxxx & Soxxx will be released on March 30.
Sexually, NJ Films intends to offer hardcore sex to the extent that "if we were to try and edit down to softcore, you'd have a two minute movie with just the girls' faces," Knowles said.
Interracial Tag Team Ballerina, the third series from the studio, is being shot this week. It will be the hardest fare the studio will offer; complete with double anals, double vag, and anything else they can come up with.
There won't be any directorial credits given on any of NJ Films projects because they prefer to view their titles as a collaborative process – the same way they viewed their music. While Knowles and Blanton brainstorm together to conceptualize new projects they welcome input from everyone on their production staff.
"One thing we used to do in the bands was that when someone brought in a song, it would still get split between everyone in the band when it gets copywritten, when it gets paid out in publishing and everything, because we wrote it," Knowles said. "Because if I bring in a song and you put your guitar on it and he puts his baseline and, excuse me, the drums are part of it, too. It's a four-part process.
"You hear it any differently and it's not going to sound the same. You put four other musicians on it and it's not going to sound the same. So it's a collaborative effort."
"I think that this is working the same way, and it seems to be working for us. So far," Knowles added.
Knowles and Blanton point to their relationship with their cameraman and editor Dick Logan, as a confirmation that their collaborative approach to adult video works.
"From years of music we've learned that when you're dealing with someone you get more creativity out of them and spontaneity if you let someone run with their own idea," Knowles said. "So going into the shoots with that idea we just turn and say 'Okay, Dick, you capture it. This is what we're doing. This is where we're going to start it. And you guys just go and do your thing."
And since Logan is also the studio's primary editor, he is able to learn about what works and what doesn't work as time goes on, making notes to adjust his shots for this or that type of scene as he edits.
Besides, Knowles and Blanton don't think anyone really cares who directed a video. "Nobody wants to know who the hell we are! They just want to see the girls and know who the girls are," Knowles said.
NJ Films expects to release one title a week, which they will distribute themselves. For more info call 888-578-6888 or 818-718-8074 or visit their Website, NJFilmsInc.com.
