Opening a tickle studio - need advice

thanks

I'm looking to open my own studio in the near future as well, so I can't offer too much advice on the legalities and expenses. However, I will say that although it may not go over well with your girlfriend, keeping it from her will turn out much worse than her knowing about it. If she knows about it, no worries, right? If she doesn't know and finds out, not only will you piss her off from the whole tickling studio thing, but she'll also be 10x more pissed that you didn't tell her about it.

I would just try and talk to her about it and see what she thinks. Perhaps if she was present during the shoots or something, she would be more comfortable with it, I don't know.

So you're opening a studio......GREAT!! Oh...you have a gf you say.....and you know she won't approve of this so you're planning on keeping it from her......hmmm.......Well, what's more important to you, tickling studio or gf?? When you can answer that question, you'll know what to do.

Yeah, telling your girlfriend before you even start is the only way.

She'll find out eventually. Depending on what level of success you get......even if you fly through with zero legal trouble and zero drama....one day a model will
call or e-mail you simply asking "What time do I get there again?," or some simple question, and your girlfriend will be like, "What?!"

And that could be on the first shoot.

There was another guy recently who wanted to start a studio who planned on using his girlfriend as the MODEL.
http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?207964-Thinking-about-opening-up-a-clips4sale-store...

If she's open to that, you're in better shape, but you can't do something this
immersive and her not find out about it. Unless ya'll spend very little time together, or are separated my a few states.

But if you're hell bent on doing it, get all the technical knowledge down pat. The stores with the underlit videography and amateur look either don't last long, ....or go on forever,
because the producer has such passion. But it's more enjoyable to have a well lit set and smooth camerawork.

I would suggest you also go look at, or talk to/e-mail, the producers who are successful, and have been happily successful for a long time with no plans on quitting anytime soon.
Go talk to Renee at Tickling Paradise, Tommy at Tickle Abuse, or Turtleboy at UK Tickling. (Or any of the others - James Darke has posted several very instructive how-to's on lighting, editting...)

See what hurdles they had to overcome, and soak up some of their positivity. I think if you're able to do it, and are positive, have great passion about it, then that's your absolute best resource.

Look how James Darke handles people who are critical of him, either instructive, to trollish - with calm and patience. I love it! He listens to advice, but is utterly calm to people who want
to get him flustered. I've e-mailed Renee a few times, and she is as chipper and excited as can be. Turtleboy has had models come back so often he'll need to start renting out his place soon.
This is a good thing, because obviously he is easy to work with.

I hope it works out for you....and keep us updated as to what happens.

theman6666 said:

Lastly, on a personal note, I have a girlfriend who has no idea I am doing this. I love her very much and we have a pretty decent thing going. She knows about my fetish and takes care of me on it, but I know she would not approve of something like this. She would look at it as selling sex or something and I don't agree because although its a fetish, there's no sex involved. I would lose that argument with her anyway... Do I tell her or not? I'm obviously leaning towards not... Whats your opinion?

Click to expand...

Wow…

Doing it without telling her would be very low. Not cool at all. Sorry, I can't condone this in any way. Besides, my guess is that she would eventually find out about it somehow. She would be totally justified in never trusting you again.

If your girlfriend is supportive of your fetish and indulges it, why do you even feel the need to produce tickling clips? Why are you willing to risk your relationship for something like this? It's just plain stupid. Then again, considering what you’re thinking of doing, maybe breaking up with you would be the best thing for her. She deserves better.

Sorry for being so blunt, but your post is just begging for negative feedback.

Francois,

Big fan of your work and please don't apologize. I appreciate your honesty very much. I agree and have always agreed with that statement. She does deserve better and if you only knew us you would know that I appreciate her in every way shape and form. To answer your questions, I am considering this for a few reasons; One, although my lady does comply with my needs, she herself does not have a foot/tickle fetish. To ask her to be apart of this would be like having a pet rock; there's no point. Two, I'm attempting to create a wave of supplemental income that I know at first will be very low, but am hoping to get good at and increase over time. And three, I have a love for video and film like no other and wanted to do something for me in a category I know I will enjoy. Selfish, yes... On the bright side to my pathetic synopsis, I have come to the conclusion that I could never do this to her and really believe I never intended to. I still want to open a studio, but if I am going to do it, she will be involved in the decision. Who knows, when I ask her worst case scenario she slaps me, tells me I'm retarded and loves me again in the morning. I can deal with that... What I can't deal with is losing her to one very idiotic & selfish decision.

Thanks again for your advice and keep making those vids!




Mabus,

Thank you so much for all the great references. I have already reached out TickleAbuse, but have not heard back from them yet. I will on the other hand try out the others and see what they say. And as for my "personal dilemma", as stated above, I can't possibly try to hide this from her. Not to make excuses, but I have this need to be secretive. Call it an addiction if you will, however, this involves too many egocentric reasons on my part and is a decision that once made cannot be undone.

Also, I read the posts about vmandude and his story. That was a great find! The replies for that guy answered a lot of my questions so thanks for that too!


As for everyone else, thank you all so so much for taking the time to respond! I'm glad that I have reached out to you all and will keep you all in the loop!

Thanks again everyone! Talk to you next time!

-The Man

I don't really have much advice except that you should tell your girl about this before you go ahead and get started. Other then that good luck with this and it's pretty awesome you wanna do something like this. I wish I could get around doing a studio type thing that has to do with tickling and whatnot. Closest i'd get to opening anything up would be a tattoo parlor lol. The more tickling videos the better right?

Big fan of your work and please don't apologize. I appreciate your honesty very much. I agree and have always agreed with that statement. She does deserve better and if you only knew us you would know that I appreciate her in every way shape and form.

.....

I have come to the conclusion that I could never do this to her and really believe I never intended to. I still want to open a studio, but if I am going to do it, she will be involved in the decision. Who knows, worst case scenario she slaps me, tells me I'm retarded and loves me again in the morning. I can deal with that... What I can't deal with is losing her to one very idiotic & selfish decision.

Click to expand...

I'm glad that you agree. Again, I'm sorry if I was harsh in my previous message, but considering how you presented the situation in your original post I think it was justified. I'm relieved to hear that you've come to your senses and, hopefully, won't do something so unwise. It's just not worth it at all.

If you're honest with your girlfriend about your project and she's comfortable with it, then great, go for it. If she disapproves, or even if she accepts it but is clearly uncomfortable with, I hope you'll find another way to have fun with video making. Don't even consider doing this without her complete support. it wouldn't be fair to her, and you'd feel bad about it, eaten by guilt and the fear of getting caught. How fun would that be?

theman6666 said:

one, I'm attempting to create a wave of supplemental income that I know at first will be very low, but am hoping to get good at and increase over time.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry to say that's probably not a good idea. Most people don't succeed financially in this market. It's highly competitive, with a number of high quality, very popular producers dominating it, and it gets worse all the time. Thing is, it's become a lot easier to start making clips and opening a store, so everyone and their grandma are doing it now. It makes it very hard to get noticed and attract customers.

I personally make some profits with my own clips (nothing spectacular, just enough to justify going on for a while longer), but only because I've been around for the last 9 years or so and have built a fairly healthy back catalog (several hundred clips). Truth is, the clips I've released over the last 2-3 years haven't been all that successful in terms of sales overall. Some series barely break even or make profits that are just too low to justify all the hard work. Other series simply never pay for themselves and thus are financial failures. Not because they're especially bad compared to my older stuff (at least I don't think so), it's just that the market is just so damn competitive these days. I only manage to survive because customers continue to explore my back catalog. If I had to rely on my more recent productions I'd close shop in a couple of months. Quite frankly, the main purpose of even bothering to put out new releases is pretty much to remind potential customers that I still exist. For me, new releases represent advertisement, not significant income potential.

As a new producer, you'd have to be really, really good to make a decent profit, or even break even. In most cases, making money isn't a good reason for doing something like this. There's a good chance you'd go to all that trouble only to lose money.

theman6666 said:

two, I have a love for video and film like no other and wanted to do something for me in a category I know I will enjoy.

Click to expand...

It's great that you have a passion for video making, but I would strongly recommend that you apply it to a different project. That is, unless your girlfriend is fine with it and you're willing to risk losing money doing it.

I know a little about intellectual copyright legalities, being a musician. if you write up a contract and get everyone to sign it basically stating that they know what they are getting themselves into, and make sure you use proper legally binding terms, and that they wave all rights to claim anything on the clip etc. then you should be ok. I know mostly about music law though so I might be incorrect. But you need to get them to sign it and date it, then you should be ok.

Best response yet...

Thanks again Francois for all your advice. This is the sort of accurate feed back I was hoping to get out of this post.

Take care!

The Last Laugh said:

I'm glad that you agree. Again, I'm sorry if I was harsh in my previous message, but considering how you presented the situation in your original post I think it was justified. I'm relieved to hear that you've come to your senses and, hopefully, won't do something so unwise. It's just not worth it at all.

If you're honest with your girlfriend about your project and she's comfortable with it, then great, go for it. If she disapproves, or even if she accepts it but is clearly uncomfortable with, I hope you'll find another way to have fun with video making. Don't even consider doing this without her complete support. it wouldn't be fair to her, and you'd feel bad about it, eaten by guilt and the fear of getting caught. How fun would that be?



I'm sorry to say that's probably not a good idea. Most people don't succeed financially in this market. It's highly competitive, with a number of high quality, very popular producers dominating it, and it gets worse all the time. Thing is, it's become a lot easier to start making clips and opening a store, so everyone and their grandma are doing it now. It makes it very hard to get noticed and attract customers.

I personally make some profits with my own clips (nothing spectacular, just enough to justify going on for a while longer), but only because I've been around for the last 9 years or so and have built a fairly healthy back catalog (several hundred clips). Truth is, the clips I've released over the last 2-3 years haven't been all that successful in terms of sales overall. Some series barely break even or make profits that are just too low to justify all the hard work. Other series simply never pay for themselves and thus are financial failures. Not because they're especially bad compared to my older stuff (at least I don't think so), it's just that the market is just so damn competitive these days. I only manage to survive because customers continue to explore my back catalog. If I had to rely on my more recent productions I'd close shop in a couple of months. Quite frankly, the main purpose of even bothering to put out new releases is pretty much to remind potential customers that I still exist. For me, new releases represent advertisement, not significant income potential.

As a new producer, you'd have to be really, really good to make a decent profit, or even break even. In most cases, making money isn't a good reason for doing something like this. There's a good chance you'd go to all that trouble only to lose money.



It's great that you have a passion for video making, but I would strongly recommend that you apply it to a different project. That is, unless your girlfriend is fine with it and you're willing to risk losing money doing it.

Click to expand...

Best response yet...

Thanks again Francois for all your advice. This is the sort of accurate feed back I was hoping to get out of this post.

Take care!