The "mood" of a strangle

[Nyghtfall]

I would prefer the scene to last a bit longer, but the energy needs to ramped up in the beginning. I LOVE the victim struggling and fighting like mad, going from shock and terror to fury to pain and agony to resignation. But the mood has to be fairly realistic for the scene to work for me.

That's the ticket. It is absolutely critical that the actress be fully vested in her role if you're going for a brutal, violent death. Otherwise, the whole scene falls apart.

Ten years ago Hunter's Lair of Horrors posted a car strangling featuring one of my favorite models at the at time, Carrissa Montgomery. It's called Busty Blonde Kidnapped. With the exception of a brief glance toward the camera that I edited out, her performance set the bar for what I look for in car stranglings, and I've yet to see its equal. He re-posted it on NC earlier this year if anyone wants a copy. My favorite part is at the tail end of the struggle when he pulls her up off the driver seat to finish her. What's more, the rope looks tight as fuck throughout, a detail I haven't seen from anyone since.

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[consigni]

Nyghtfall,
Scorpion viciously strangling his first schoolgirl victim
- in your digital 3D 70’s inspired comic, ‘The Stealthy Black Scorpion…’ -
is without question my most eagerly anticipated strangling sequence of the year.

No Bullshit!

[Glebonplebis14]

That Hunter's Lair clip with Carrissa Montgomery is one of my absolute favourites. Set the bar pretty high for car strangles...

[Awol Nate]

Carissa Montgomery has a hell of a bod, too! One of my favorite actresses. Too bad her top wasn't ripped open during the strangle to show off her amazing breasts! That would have made a perfect scenario. I might have catch that one despite the apparent lack of nudity.

[Joshua_Sharpe]

I would prefer the scene to last a bit longer, but the energy needs to ramped up in the beginning. I LOVE the victim struggling and fighting like mad, going from shock and terror to fury to pain and agony to resignation. The good thing about longer strangle scenes (5-6 minutes) is I get to play God and edit the shit out of it and make it into exactly the clip I wanted. It's more footage for me to play with, so I can make it either an eight second strangle or a six minute strangle.

But the mood has to be fairly realistic for the scene to work for me. A victim simply lying there without a fight is not very realistic and just looks too much like bad acting. And if the victim gives any indication she remotely enjoys it, I'm out. I will NEVER buy material where the victim appears to like it. The pain has to be realistically conveyed, and most human beings don't like pain. If you need an example, take a needle and poke it into your arm. Did you orgasm? Have someone slam their fist into your guts. Are your sexually aroused? Bite your tongue while chewing food. Does that turn you on? Most human beings absolutely do not like pain and will avoid it all costs. And when it happens, it's grueling and terrible.

I agree with the bulk of this. Overall the crucial element for me in this kind of death is the psychological and emotional transition - from feisty resistance/defiance/rage, to that moment where a tightness and panic shoots through her body and brain and it registers on her face. She's still fighting, but her movements become less controlled and more frantic/animalistic. Then, as she really starts losing it, her look and movements of panic melt into a kind of disbelief but also submission, while she still twitches and jerks and makes odd noises. There are a number of ways to put these pieces together, but the ones that work for me are the ones that have these elements to some degree. If she's only ever in panic mode, or doesn't really resist much beyond light flapping of arms that don't make sense, or she makes sort of silly facial expressions, then it takes me out of it.

[tommygun]

To me, the acting is 100% of it. One of the advantage of working with someone like Amanda Foxx is that she has a lot of bondage experience, and had been in a garroting scenario in a bondage shoot. She's not afraid of it, so she actually urged me to go deeper, more pressure, so that she could experience and express the shock and desperation of the victim before she finally lost her energy and consciousness. As she says in the outtakes, it was "the challenge of this extended role" that made it so interesting to her.

[Awol Nate]

To me, the acting is 100% of it. One of the advantage of working with someone like Amanda Foxx is that she has a lot of bondage experience, and had been in a garroting scenario in a bondage shoot. She's not afraid of it, so she actually urged me to go deeper, more pressure, so that she could experience and express the shock and desperation of the victim before she finally lost her energy and consciousness. As she says in the outtakes, it was "the challenge of this extended role" that made it so interesting to her.

That is 100% accurate. The actress HAS to be committed to the role and dig deep to find those emotions. I always state in no unclear terms exactly what the actress will be experiencing emotionally throughout the strangle scene, and sometimes you get an actress who can take her performance to the level you envisioned when you drafted the script. If an actress doesn't dig inside of herself, or is simply more of a model than an actress, then it doesn't matter what you put down in the script. The performance will fall flat and the video will be a terrible disappointment.

Overall, I want to see more fight in the victims while she's getting strangled. I see too often the actresses just taking a lazy approach and offer up some mild arm-flapping while maintaining the same porcelain stare throughout the entire thing. I want to see teeth-gritting fury in the victim, panicked desperation, and a sense of horrific pain and agony. She has to look like she's fighting for her life. And the struggle should be chaotic, frantic, and messy. I want to see stuff getting knocked over, chairs getting kicked, clothes in complete disarray. I want to see pure terrifying peril.

And of course, my strangle scenes always has the victim getting her clothes torn off her body, preferably quite forcefully, as getting yanked off or ripped off. None of this taking time to unbutton blouses. I want to clothes getting torn off her body.

[tommygun]

Suppose we could name the five "stages" of a strangle... What would they be?

I went through this exercise with the Amanda Foxx film. I'd be interested to hear how others might characterize this "progression" of the death scene in one or two words each...

I actually think this is helpful for the actor, incidentally. It gives her an idea of what changes from each part of the scene to the next.