A Cam Life (documentary)

[Lou_King_]

Watched last night "A Cam Life" (2018), by Andy Weiss and Billy Sorrentino. I decided to post about it here since it's precisely about camming, and didn't find any other threads about the film.

If the 2015 documentary "Cam Girlz" was an intimate look about a few independent US cam models (and a couple of users), "A Cam Life" was instead about the big picture: how massive and strong the camming industry is. Cam models (and one user) are also interviewed, but also representatives of different platforms, as well as of agencies/studios, and of different camming conventions. Not only that, but the interviewees weren't only from the US, but also Colombia and Romania... as you know, two of the biggest countries when it comes to the camming industry.

Just like in "Cam Girlz", "A Cam Life" left me asking for the difficulties and struggles in the camming world. It does mention a couple very briefly, something that didn't happen at all in the 2015 documentary, but it still felt mostly like rainbows and unicorns. Similar to that, male cammers and of other genders were only briefly shown and mentioned... hiding a big part of the industry. And, at one point, the film showed with a good light the offline meeting of models and users, it even mentioned a couple of cases which ended up in marriage... I don't know why it did that. Finally, I think the movie could have had a better ending.

All in all, an interesting, informative, and attractive look into this segment of humanity.

 

[AudriTwo]

i really would love a documentary created by an actual cammodel instead of the perspective of the observing male or judgmental female. (im not gonna mention the other one, because its swerfy. no one should watch it on the principle they featured models that didnt agree to be, got outed on the literal netflix homepage, and documentarians said too bad fair use)

but camgirlz is made really well. sean dunne is a great documentarian that shares a positive light for people who are stigmatized. recommend florida man and american juggalo.

 

[Miss_Lollipop]

Just like in "Cam Girlz", "A Cam Life" left me asking for the difficulties and struggles in the camming world. It does mention a couple very briefly, something that didn't happen at all in the 2015 documentary, but it still felt mostly like rainbows and unicorns.

While I can see this perspective, the majority of doco's made about sex work are overwhelmingly negative bias. It feels like these rainbows and unicorns slice of life stuff kinda shift the balance back a bit to the center. (I haven't seen A Cam Life but I was around during some of the Cam Girlz filming thing).

Like Audri I'm really tired of seeing our job through the lens of outsiders.

 

[Highlander884]

I did write a poem (it's not very good) because almost all articles on camming are either a) it's all fun and games or b) it's all doom and gloom, I dont think I've seen an article or documentary that doesnt look at it in black and white.

I'll give the doc a watch later!

 

[Lilly_____]

While I can see this perspective, the majority of doco's made about sex work are overwhelmingly negative bias. It feels like these rainbows and unicorns slice of life stuff kinda shift the balance back a bit to the center. (I haven't seen A Cam Life but I was around during some of the Cam Girlz filming thing).

Like Audri I'm really tired of seeing our job through the lens of outsiders.

Yeah I have to agree with you guys. I don't care for watching those films anymore because the judgmental aura is just so heavy. They'll edit it like, it's just a girl in front f her computer, but the soundtrack is gloomy like "oh what a sad world we're living in".

 

[Lou_King_]

You should give the film a try, I don't think you'll hate it, at least not wholeheartedly. But, please, let me know if I'm wrong and you did

I'm definitely not missing judgemental looks in these type of documentaries. What I am missing are portrays of freeloader, harasser, and stalker-users, constant camsplaining, difficulties taking off, getting banned without knowing why, experiences with abusive garage studios/agencies, the pressures from judgemental people, medical and psychological issues, etc. And I'm not saying I'd like a camming documentary of exclusively that; just that it is a part of the whole picture and–in that sense–it should have an important part of depictions of the camming world.

One last thing, a documentary directed by cam models would be simply amazing! I hope it'll someday happen.


Thank you all for sharing your thoughts!

 

[yummybrownfox]

The only “cam girl film” I saw and liked was the film ‘Cam’, even though it annoyed me that the main character actually met up with one of her customers in person. Lol. There’s a scene where she walks over to her wall calendar, and marks down that she has a date with him on such and such day. But the “cam girl film” that I enjoyed even more was ‘Girl House’. Lol. Not a documentary at all…just a scary movie about some psychopath dude murdering these cam girls. At the beginning of the movie, it shows how he was picked on (as a kid) by these girls who were laughing at his dick. And how that set him off. That dude was terrifying.

 

[Miss_Lollipop]

The only “cam girl film” I saw and liked was the film ‘Cam’, even though it annoyed me that the main character actually met up with one of her customers in person. Lol. There’s a scene where she walks over to her wall calendar, and marks down that she has a date with him on such and such day. But the “cam girl film” that I enjoyed even more was ‘Girl House’. Lol. Not a documentary at all…just a scary movie about some psychopath dude murdering these cam girls. At the beginning of the movie, it shows how he was picked on (as a kid) by these girls who were laughing at his dick. And how that set him off. That dude was terrifying.

The reason that didnt bother me in cam was because i knew (like had met once or twice) the model who did it and those were drawn directly from her lived experiences. We were all (mostly) doing date raffles or meet ups etc during that time period - Especially top mfc models which she was for a while.

It was really common to meet your whales. And at least one of the member characters was uh.. INSTANTLY recognizable to me. As in I knew exactly who he must have been at least partially based off and Ive met him too.. she goes into more detail in her memoir too...

But yeah the meeting up with whales, and the camgirl house etc..a lot of that felt true to my experiences or to the top models I observed during that time.

 

[yummybrownfox]

The reason that didnt bother me in cam was because i knew (like had met once or twice) the model who did it and those were drawn directly from her lived experiences. We were all (mostly) doing date raffles or meet ups etc during that time period - Especially top mfc models which she was for a while.

It was really common to meet your whales. And at least one of the member characters was uh.. INSTANTLY recognizable to me. As in I knew exactly who he must have been at least partially based off and Ive met him too.. she goes into more detail in her memoir too...

But yeah the meeting up with whales, and the camgirl house etc..a lot of that felt true to my experiences or to the top models I observed during that time.

I remember the date raffles being a popular thing on MFC, as well as it being common to offer incentives such as "highest tipper of the day gets my phone number." I remember I even tried a "Highest tipper of the day gets a 15 minute phone call from me," and I wound up having to do a phone call with a member who'd only tipped me like 50 or 100 tokens. Also remember visiting a model friend in her MFC room (under my premium account), and one of her regs. had the nerve to whine to her about me (with me right there in the room) that "Fox doesn't offer her tippers her phone number because she's paranoid." I found that incredibly rude, and I had some words for that entitled douche...

 

[Lilly_____]

The reason that didnt bother me in cam was because i knew (like had met once or twice) the model who did it and those were drawn directly from her lived experiences.

Yes! And it definitely shows it was written by a model. The fears represented are indeed our worst fears as models - people impersonating you, strangers stalking you, family finding out about what you do.
And the tone is not condescending nor judgemental. Also, I love how you can tell that the site is MFC.

 

[Just_A_Guy]

Watched

I haven't watched any of them. That's interesting. I remember I have seen some of them mentioned in the forum, though, from time to time. I'll give it a watch if I find them streaming online on some platforms. Not a super expert of the site mentioned, but I am not surprised of meeting beetween models and members. I mean we must be real and not naive. Personally, I believe there is nothing wrong, since we are talking about adults, and also because there aren't many men out there on this planet throwing a considerable sum of money at women they fancy without having anything in return. Just my opinion, though. But I do remember few threads in the forum about the site mentioned where there was a member who really spent a lot on a model there, but it turned out she was in a happy relationship with her SO and wasn't having any of it from a quite stalker-ish member who even got her name tattoed somewhere on his body. I mean, that's mental. It is a quite famous thread on ACF. Everybody always mentions it. You should check it out.

segment of humanity.

Didn't understand this, honestly, I didn't know humanity has segments.

 

[Lou_King_]

Thank you @Just_A_Guy for reading and replying the original post. Hope you give both documentaries a try. If you do check out A Cam Life, come back and share your thoughts .

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there's a good number of cam models that aren't into the idea of meeting costumers in person, many of them–I think–are members of the forum. And a tattoo with her name was probably a little too much

About my phrase "this segment of humanity", it was my failed attempt to sound interesting. I meant that the camming world is a subculture, with everything that that entails: people that share, to some extent, different roles, values, spoken and unspoken rules, specific terms, knowledge, etc.

The only “cam girl film” I saw and liked was the film ‘Cam’

I don't want to dilute the original topic of this thread, but I did watch Cam a couple of years ago. It was good!