tickleking said:
Sorry to hijack your "resurrected" thread
Not at all. After all, I did post it on a public forum.
tickleking said:
I have to say I totally admire your integrity. I, for one, completely believe you when you say you only look for truly ticklish models. I can't say I believe that for some other producers, but in your case, I think it is 100% genuine.
Thank you, that really means a lot to me. I'm certainly not going to claim that my models are the most ticklish in the business. I know that's not true. But I'm still proud to say that whatever reactions they do have during the shoots are all genuine. I'll admit that a few have rather unusual reactions, possibly enough to make some people wonder if it's for real. But it is. I'm very glad that you believe this. I can't entirely blame some people for thinking some of the models might be faking a bit when they're reacting in non-typical ways, since not everybody realizes just how varied people's reactions to tickling can be. They simply expect something more "standard". But it's still extremely frustrating.
I don't know how it is for all the other producers, but I personally have a hard time finding models. Quebec City isn't especially small (though not a real big city by any means, either), but, I don't know, people around here seem to be on the careful, conservative side. When I actively search for models I sometimes get a reasonable number of candidates, but most of them eventually drop out of the project or simply don't bother to show up when we make appointments. This happens even with those that seem the most enthusiastic about the idea of posing for such a video. I'm afraid people tend to be unreliable. In the end, I don't have many candidates to work with, if at all.
When I do manage to find a willing candidate who's interested in my project, it's really disappointing when she turns out not to be ticklish enough. Unfortunately, this happens quite often. Many times the candidate probably really is ticklish in everyday life, but a video shoot is very different from, say, a spontaneous tickle from a boyfriend. There are many psychological factors than can influence ticklishness, usually lowering it. So I lose several of the candidates that are genuinely interested because they turn not not to be ticklish enough for a shoot.
Sometimes the verdict of an audition is borderline. The candidate is ticklish to some extent, but her reactions aren't quite what I'm looking for. Maybe she's hard to tickle, requiring special tools or techniques. Maybe she only reacts part-time. Or maybe she's indeed ticklish but her reactions are just too mild. For all I know, she might be better during an actual commercial shoot, but I can't know that and I can't hire her based on such a gamble. She might just as well be even less ticklish, and doing a real shoot with her would be a waste. So there are times I'm not sure what to do. Usually, though, when I'm hesitant after doing an audition, I prefer to tell the candidate that it's not going to work.
It's not always easy to do so, especially when the candidate is truly enthusiastic about the project. Frankly, there's a number of people from a few years back, when I was still very new at this, that I kind of regret turning down. In those days I was still hoping to find perfect models, at least from a ticklishness point of view. So I let go several candidates that, in retrospect, might not have been that bad after all. In fact, I remember some that were comparable to some of the models I work with now.
Nowadays I'm more realistic. Considering how few truly interested people I get, I tend to hire all the candidates I find decent enough, even if they're not super ticklish. After all, not everyone prefer extreme, tortuous tickling, so having videos with more playful tickling isn't a bad thing. As long as it's genuine. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm thrilled when I get models that are especially ticklish, even more so when this includes their feet.
