What are your pet peeves in a spanking video ?

Goodgulf

Good point GG, the acting and story lines are pretty good, although I wish they would show a bit more spanking instead of concentrating on caning so much...but hey ho!
The subtitles are infuriating because;
a) the translation is often very poor,
b) it often blocks out or covers the action.
Nevertheless, they are still some of the best videos out there...IMHO.

I'll second the peeves posted earlier, and add a couple of mine:

Using dyes/pigments on the implements to fake marks. I recently watched an especially poor execution of this fakery. The Dom was using a whip, and leaving marks that were all out of proportion to the strength of a blow. And the marks would get lighter and lighter with each successive lash. The Dom would stop and move off-camera, and when he returned and resumed the whipping, the first lash would leave a nice, bright red mark, and then the following marks would get fainter and fainter. And then, during one of the breaks in the punishment, I could actually see the guy's shadow while he was off-camera, and he was clearly doing something to the whip. Like loading it up with red dye.

There's another company - Eastern European in origin, but I can't recall the name - that makes enjoyable videos with decent acting, but ... it really looks to me like most of the implements they use are made of some sort of dense foam rubber. They make a satisfying sound on impact, but never seem to leave any kind of mark.

Also, I just dislike canes in general. I have rarely seen a caning video that does anything at all for me. And the caning victims all seem to reside at the two extremes: virtually no reaction at all to the strokes, or insane overreaction to the strokes.

Edit: Also, during a punishment spanking, is it really necessary for the spanker to repeatedly spread the spankee's cheeks to inspect her butthole?

Just to be clear on the Nu-West gripes, it was Ed Lee who was pulling all that crap and he did it from the very beginning. I always had the impression he fancied himself a sort of modern P.T. Barnum and indulged in no small amount of humbuggery. I called him out on this a few times and his answer was always something to the effect of, "Hey, I'm selling a fantasy here." Well if your selling a fantasy say so, don't bill it as, "The most extreme paddling of a female ever filmed!" This was even more perplexing to me given that they did produce a lot of very good and to all appearances authentic material. Why they felt the need to mix it in with so much obvious crap is just beyond me.

Chard,

I guess I never saw any of the so-called fake stuff. I had several of their videos and you may or may not know, I did a couple of shoots with Ed. The main one I have discussed in the Well Read Weekly I think Vol.11. I can promise you this was no fake spanking. It was 70 well laid on strokes with a decent leather strap. I also know that the severity of the spanking completely depends on the model. The more they can take the more $ they earn. Ed would never try and force a model beyond her limits. I can see where some of his videos may have used a model that lad a low threshold level but as you said yourself, he also put out a lot of good "realistic" videos as well.

The lame stuff I was referring to is the all the stupid talking, the rubbing after every swat, the backhanded spanking and I have called Firmhand out on this a few times.

"One, thank you Sir, may I have another?", etc. Silly and tedious.

Mouth-soaping. Ditto.

Videos where the TV is playing loudly in the background. All we need to hear is the sound of the spanks landing and the reactions, verbal or non-verbal, of the spankee. All else is extraneous.

Ditto music tracks. Who needs 'em?

Interminable pompous, preliminary lecturing before the spanking starts. 30 seconds - fine. Five minutes - just shut up and get on with it already!

Soft leather floggers. Very pretty, but they sting about as much as a length of cooked spaghetti.

Red-faced spankers who bellow and yell at the spankee. Quiet, implacable speech is much more effective - as it is in r/l.

Excessive bruising and bleeding. A rich deep blush, mantling the whole bottom, is the effect I like to see - again, as in r/l.

Thick wooden frat-style paddles. For me, it's sting rather than thud every time.

Schoolmaster/schoolgirl set-ups, unless they're very well done. Which most of them aren't.

Spankers who have their faces fuzzed out, while leaving the spankee's face fully visible. Gutless creeps.

Slow-motion. What's the point?

Goodgulf
Dubbed films are for babies (in Finland, only children films are dubbed, other are with subtitles, or finnish/swedish of course)

[1] I don't mind a small tattoo that is cute and/or sexy on a woman's body, but the tattooing can definitely be overdone; I don't care for body piercings at all.

[2] It's generally best to purchase the earlier (1980s-'90s) Nu-West materials, even if the video-to-DVD transfers aren't technically quite as high-quality as the company's more recent DVDs--the older stuff was just more imaginative and free-flowing, it seems to me. (However, I'm opining primarily from a F/M perspective, so I'm uncertain about the 'fakery' involved within Nu-West's M/F or possibly F/F materials.)

[3] I've only occasionally viewed M/F videos/DVDs, but when doing so I sometimes do find the smug, pedantic paternalism of the male spankers to be annoying.

[4] Non-reacting spankees irritate me as well. Audrey Knight, supposedly now retired from spanking-related productions, always struck me as a competent female disciplinarian--but a viewer would never know that merely from watching the video/DVD action of that woman blistering the naked buttcheeks of her purported boyfriend (Stephan). She usually makes her feminine victims squirm and squeal, but Stephan apparently has no sensory nerve endings in his posterior region.

If the chastisement isn't seriously hurting its recipient, what's the point in a spanking-related video/DVD featuring it...?? --C.K.

I'm absolutely no expert on this subject, but it appears that some subs release endorphins and go into something called sub-space.
This allows them to take an enormous amount of punishment and not actually feel it at the time.
They do apparently suffer quite badly the next day.
However, you're totally right CK, why use them when making a spanking video?...it's pointless!
This effect is more common in a Dd lifestyle and probably explains why it is apparent with Audrey Knight and her partner...even more reason IMO to keep it to themselves.
I also agree that she came across as a very accomplished disciplinarian, and if she has retired will be greatly missed.
Isn't it a shame so many Dommes retire at a relatively young age?
I'd love to see some of them carry on into their 50's and 60's.

Kullervo

I've watched various foreign films, and with most of them dubbing was better than subtitles. Sometimes the voice is off, but a well dubbed film should fool everyone (except lip readers) into thinking that it was filmed in their native tongue.

Subtitles (in my experience) detract from the action on screen. Large areas of the screen are ignored as you focus on where the subtitles are.

Again, your experiences might vary.

We're maybe getting slightly off-topic here, but I'd go for subtitles every time. An actor's voice is an essential part of his/her performance, and for me hearing the wrong voices coming off the screen can kill a film stone dead. Dubbed films are thankfully a rarity in UK cinemas these days, but at one time movies like La Dolce Vita would show up in Eng-lang versions: Marcello Mastroianni with a British accent was a ludicrously agonising experience.

I'd accept that if you're a slow reader or dyslexic, subtitles might distract - but otherwise, how long does it take to scan ten or twelve words? Once you're in the habit, you'll hardly even notice you're reading them.