An employee with a freshly moulded Doc Johnson dildo, at the factory in Los Angeles.
Doc Johnson is the largest US manufacturer of adult pleasure products, with 450 employees producing 75,000 products per week in their Los Angeles factory. "The only type of products that we make here are dildos, dongs, butt plugs, anal products, and strokers or masturbators,” says COO Chad Braverman. It would take less than a year for the factory to produce one of these for every single person living in Puerto Rico. Electronic products such as vibrators are produced abroad and added to the 75,000 per week.
The factory floor at Doc Johnson in Los Angeles.
“It’s a family business,” explains Chad Braverman, whose father Ron started the business in 1976. "I wasn't really aware of what my family did for a living for a really long time,” says Chad. "I think there were some years where I thought my dad might be in the mafia or something ... Ron was in “import-export", which as a kid you don't know what “import-export" means. I mean, he kind of has the Tony Soprano look anyways, so I just wasn't sure ... I knew my dad had money. I just didn't know 100% how he got it, because I was just a kid.” Chad remembers visiting the factory once and seeing some “product” that he wasn’t supposed to see. "As I got older, I realised like, I was seeing ... I knew I saw penises. I knew they were penises, because I had a penis. That's how I could do the correlation. It was like, ‘but what would my dad have penises in his place of business for?’ That part I didn't know.”
Quality control at Doc Johnson in Los Angeles.
“I deal with things that nobody really thinks about” explains COO Chad Braverman. “We have insurance companies that will not insure us, because of what we do for a living. Almost every bank in the world that you know of will not bank with us, because of what our business is. Not only the business, but privately as well. They will not bank our money if they know where our money comes from, and you can ride that down the line to whatever it may be. So then you start to wonder 'How far along are we really?'” Doc Johnson is not allowed to advertise on billboards or mainstream media, and Chad believes that helps maintain the stigma that they are part of a 'dark and dirty' industry. "I think these are the next barriers to break through. That's when we're really going to be sitting down and having a conversation about how mainstream our industry is, and how you can go to Target, and Walmart, and Rite Aid and buy a product for your sexual needs, desires, and pleasures without having to feel like you've got to go online or go to an adult store."
Lip options for the RealDoll sex dolls and sex robots at the workshop in San Marcos, California. There are also more than 10 different types of vagina to chose from.
"I don't think of very much as being strange anymore. I just think of it as being different. Primarily when someone is customizing a doll or a robot, they sort of seem to zero in on a certain thing that is perhaps to them a fetish. It could be nipple shape, it could be freckles, it could be punched hair eyebrows. Because you know, that's just a detail that they really want" says Matt McCullen, founder of RealDoll.
Torsos ready for shipping at the Realdoll workshop in San Marcos, California.
Body moulds in the workshop at RealDoll.
“We will not do a clone of anybody without their explicit written permission, paperwork, lawyer, all that stuff. Somebody wants a celebrity, we're not going to do the celebrity. What we will do, because we have so many faces, you tell them to pick out the one that looks closest, send a picture of the makeup and we can get give them the look of that. But it's not going to be that person.”
The RealDoll workshop, where 20-30 fully customisable sex dolls are made by hand. Regular dolls average at $5-6,000, and a robotic head costs an extra $8,000.
Twenty years ago RealDoll’s founder, Matt McCullen, began producing dolls in this San Marcos workshop, and now the company makes around thirty per month. “My background is in art, mostly sculpture,” explains Matt. RealDoll was born when Matt wanted to make a more realistic mannequin for shop windows. “My initial efforts were beautiful women … I wanted them to be poseable so that the position wouldn’t be rigid … so you could manipulate them into different poses. Then people’s imagination got the better of them and they were going 'Hey, I want to have sex with that thing.'”
A robotic head at the RealDoll robot workshop in San Marcos, California.
A specially modified VR camera used by VR Bangers virtual reality porn studio. "In order to keep up you gotta always be innovative, so we change our camera rigs almost every three four months because the technology is getting better ... our customers are really tech savvy and they're quality freaks, you know, they want to have the best quality so now we have 6K ... Next step is probably going to be 8K, 10K at some point. We can shoot at 10K, but nobody has devices that will actually play 10K." Daniel Abamovich, CEO of VR Bangers
A robotic head at the RealDoll sex doll factory in San Marcos, California. “We don’t recommend oral sex. There are gears in there. I mean you can mess things up, you can mess yourself up. She’s got the mouth and everything moves, but we don’t recommend it. It’ll kind of ruin the whole thing.” - Jeff, RealDoll
Moulds for rubber dildos on the factory floor of Doc Johnson, where 450 employees produce 75,000 sex toys per week.
RealDoll mouth parts are fully removable for cleaning.
A RealDoll on the production line. "The whole mouth comes out for cleaning, but the tongue actually has four sides. You can do a fat tongue down, fat tongue up, skinny tongue up, skinny tongue down. You know, like she's licking her lips or whatever. But they all come with the flexible teeth and tongue."
A handpainted RealCock that costs $499.
Dildo prototype at Doc Johnson.
Dildo prototype at Doc Johnson.
Mould for dildo at Doc Johnson.
Anjani Hunaman, the Columbian artist that has sculpted the Doc Johnson sex toys for 20 years. "Most of those pieces over there, I have done most of them by hand out of my imagination."
Pornstar Katie Morgan posing for still shots before her virtual reality porn shoot for VR Bangers in Hollywood.
Pornstar Katie Morgan with her travelling suitcase of outfits, before a VR porn shoot for VR Bangers in Hollywood.
In 2014, Daniel, a building contractor who had no connection to the porn or VR industry, got inspired to start a VR porn company when a friend told him about Oculus, the company that began making VR technology mainstream in the early 2010’s. "I said 'Wow, that's freaking cool, imagine there would be VR Porn … '” explains Daniel. He slept on it. “The next day I called my friend and was like 'Dude, I'm serious we have to create a company that makes VR porn.'” The two friends cobbled together some equipment and convinced a talent agency to let them use one of their models, and set to work. "We just did our first shoot, it was a total fail. We didn't even release the first footage because it was really bad - we were hiding behind some areas of the house while the VR camera is shooting because it was 360 degrees.” They persevered and by 2016 had enough content to launch the website.
"It's definitely takes a certain kind of guy that can be able to keep that party going without the eye contact ... it is definitely more acting than regular porn, because you don't get that, I don't want to say romantic connection, but you don't even get that, right? Like that spark that you can't look at the person. They're not there. They're just a camera." John Strong and Katie Morgan performing in "Cable Guy" by VR Bangers
“It's super different shooting VR to shooting regular scenes,” explains pornstar Katie Morgan, "because when you shoot a regular scene, your focus is your partner, and you disconnect from the rest of the room. But when you shoot a VR scene, you can't even see his face, because the camera is like right in front of his face. So you can't look at that person in the eye and be connected in the moment like you normally would in the scene. It's all to the camera. It's all to the viewer.” During the scene, John stands completely still with a camera rig in front of his face, while Katie does her thing to the camera (and John). The result is a 180-degree point-of-view (POV) scene intended to make the viewer feel like he, or she, is the lucky cable guy.
180 degree video from two cameras is previewed on a laptop on set.
