Domain: mindcontroltheatre.com
Metadata access
Public (mostly)
If you’re in a US state that forces sites to self-censor, and you are not logged in, you will not see screenshots or trailer videos.
Also, some releases are paywalled. See “Backstage” below.
Community Scraper
‡ If you’re in a US state that forces sites to self-censor, the fragment scrape may not work at all. Even if you enter the URL into the scraper and scrape by URL, the studio code will not populate and the cover image will not populate.
To properly resolve if you’re in a self-censoring state:
- Find the scene URL on the studio website and paste into the URL field of the Stash scene manually.
- Set the studio code manually in Stash (use the part of the URL after the last
/). - Scrape by URL in Stash.
- Log into the website.
- On the studio webpage, click to open the first screenshot.
- Ensure the URL has “large” in it.
- Change the number at the end to
0. For example, change the URL filename part from1.jpgto0.jpg. - Copy this URL and paste it into the Stash scene Cover Image… By URL.
Background & Website Quality
This site is niche and run by the primary writer & director themselves with a close collaborator. As such, there are many idiosyncrasies to the site that I will try to document here. Many of them are resolved in the scraper, but not all.
The people who run this site are the production company themselves, and they are not technology experts. Great people, but they make mistakes that professionals would not… For example, commas inside of spans or divs that hold names, inconsistent production attribution (why care if you don’t list yourself on your own website?), and inconsistent file/title/slug naming.
Because they are not technology experts, the pages are NOT generated from a database with page templates. As best I can tell, each page is copied from a starting template and manually edited for each release. This means that some elements, like high quality cover images or the Director, are not on every page.
Cover Images
The scraper pulls the cover image properly for all titles for the last decade. But remember ‡ above, so the cover image may need to be manually input depending on where you live.
Titles before circa 2014 do not have ‘real’ cover images that are findable by the scraper. In those cases, the scraper finds a ‘play’ button on a large transparent background. I have gone (or will go) back and extracted a low-quality cover image using my personal knowledge of the site’s previous folder structure, and put that into StashDB. These files are not available to the scraper.
Director
For most of the life of the studio, there was only ever one director, the studio co-owner. Then, they got someone else to direct and, recognizing the importance, edited the release webpage to add her name. I asked on Twitter if they would fix the old webpages to list the director, they said yes, and every release webpage before the second director’s debut was updated.
However… Some release webpages after the second director’s debut had no director listed. When I reached out again on Twitter about fixing that, I was brushed off and told “If there’s no director listed, it’s Henri Tisserand.” At this point, 3+ years after getting a second director, they still sometimes publish release webpages without listing the director. The scraper implements that default if no director is detected on the page.
Studio Code
There is no true unique ID given to each release, as would be necessary if each webpage was generated (real-time or batch), as done by big production houses. MCT’s 2257 title cards in the videos show no ID number, file name, or even the film title. But each webpage slug has to be unique, and it happens to often (NOT ALWAYS!) be the base filename, basename to craft the cover image URL, and a key to access other info. I verified this approach in the Stash Discord back in 2023, I think.
Given URL: https://mindcontroltheatre.com/movie/pracdem
The Studio Code: pracdem
The scraper considers that slug to be the Studio Code. But remember ‡ above, so the Studio Code may need to be manually input depending on where you live.
“All the Sex” Releases
With most narrative media these days, there will be a lot of recorded footage that doesn’t fit the director’s vision. In niche fetish porn, such as for Mind Control, this means that some amount of the just regular sex scenes that were recorded are discarded in service of the mind control plot. The site decided to make money off of those discards when possible. So when there’s a lot of sex that’s cut out, they release “all the sex” shot for the scene.
Aside from “All the Sex” appended to the title and the lack of a trailer on the webpage, these scenes are indistinguishable from ‘normal’ releases on the website, so add them to StashDB as a normal release. This includes the Mind Control tag, since there is sometimes artifacts of the fetish remaining in the sex scene.
However, because they don’t have a trailer, the scraper cannot identify the webpage slug. That’s because an xPathScraper cannot know the URL of the page it’s scraping. To use the scraper on these releases, follow the same resolution as in ‡ above.
Descriptions
Historically, the site used terms in the video descriptions that implied non-consent. Because Visa & MasterCard force their puritanical beliefs on merchants, the studio was forced to go back and change these descriptions. I have done my best to note the original descriptions, as required by StashDB Guidelines. But The Wayback Machine only goes back so far, and I don’t have all of the older descriptions myself.
Most video descriptions are 1 paragraph <p>. Occasionally, a video description will have a second paragraph. This paragraph is almost always promotional. Such as…
blah blah blah
This movie is free for subscribers to blah
or
blah blah blah
A short movie set in the Blah (other movie) universe!
Do not include the second paragraph because it isn’t descriptive of the current movie, it is more promotional. It feels like including an ad into StashDB.
I make rare exceptions to this when the movie says it is a sequel to a different movie, especially since (last I checked) we cannot put Groups information into StashDB.
Dates
This studio is amazing about dates! The release pages have the release date 100% of the time, and in the same format each time.
Each video back to the first has date of production listed on the 2257 title card. In some cases, with some ambitious videos, the DoP may be 5+ dates over 2+ years, but they will list each and every one on that title card. Of course, per StashDB Guidelines, choose the most recent date.
Performers
There are 10 exclusive performers for this studio, and that makes for a few weird situations.
Henri Tisserand is the main director and studio co-owner. He performs voice only or waist-down only, and appears in fully 21% (64) of the videos on the site. He has no image available, no social media, nothing. So his Performer image remains blank.
In another case, an exclusive performer’s name was changed on the MCT website. As she had no social media presence and the MCT website is authoritative about her because she’s exclusive to them, her name was updated in StashDB. This didn’t follow the letter of the Guidelines (the new name did not come directly from the performer themselves), but it certainly followed the spirit.
Performer Credit
The central fetish of the site is mind control, which can be depicted in ways that upend the general assumptions of most porn video credits. For example, some videos depict unseen hypnotic masters, videos of spirals with voice-overs, unseen supernatural entities, etc. In some cases these voice-only performers are credited and in other cases they are not.
As another example, in multi-part videos the sequels might incorporate footage from previous videos that include voice-only actors or non-sex actors or even short snippets of sex scenes, all from actors that do not appear in the current video. In some cases these flashback performers are credited and in other cases they are not.
Because the StashDB Guidelines have a preference to link every actor credited on the scene webpage, I have made the decision to list all credited actors, even voice-only or non-sex.
I also decided to leave off uncredited actors. Note that this is not the same as ignoring a male performer! The studio has always properly credited every sexual performer as best I can tell. This is to prevent us from having to try to voicematch unseen actors to credit them.
Backstage (subscription service)
The site began a subscription service in June 2023 called “MCT Backstage”. Per the announcement email, current website, and my experience so far, it features the following.
- Exclusive movies not available to the general public
- Previously unreleased footage
- Behind-the-scenes and making-of videos
- Photo galleries
- Fiction stories
- Scripts
Because it is a paywall, some or all of the information for these items are not available to non-subscribers. I verified in Discord back in 2023 that it is okay to submit these items as long as the edit comment says that a paywall might prevent verification.
The majority of the exclusive movies are streaming only. However, some do allow purchase and download. When submitting these movies to StashDB, the Description will need to be updated since the XPath scraper doesn’t get your login cookie. Check all other fields manually as well.
Enhanced Releases
The mind control fetish is loosely aligned with a few other fetishes, one of which is bimbofication. A big part of that fetish is breast enlargement. The studio has done some clever things like writing scripts for before & after an actor’s breast enlargement surgery. The outcome being, in the part 1 movie the character is hypnotized to get larger breasts and in part 2 she has larger breasts.
However, there have been some plots where a more immediate enlargement was called for in the same video. CGI solves that problem, but CGI post-production on a porn video like this takes a long time and a lot of money. To make money sooner, they usually release the video without CGI then they go back and re-release the video with CGI.
When they do a CGI re-release, 2 things happen.
- They send out an email telling everyone that the “Enhanced” or “Expanded” Edition is now available on the website.
- They replace the video in-place on the website without changing a single word. From that moment on, it is impossible to download the original, un-enhanced release. They’ve pulled a George Lucas.
So that leaves 2 different files, with 2 different OSHASHes & 2 similar PHASHes, that are each equally official. Actually, there will be 4 files with 4 different OSHASHes, because they release a low-quality and high-quality version of each scene.
I brought this up in the Discord back in 2024 after looking through the Guidelines at the time, and no one had a strong opinion one way or the other. My solution is this…
-
The Enhanced (currently available) version, do nothing special in StashDB. Because it’s not mentioned as special by the studio. Just add it as normal.
- In the StashDB edit comments of the Enhanced version, link to the old version & put the info from the re-release emails from the studio (like “The re-release has amazing breast expansion effects through the talents of Ooze3D.”). I want to use their words as much as possible here and not editorialize.
-
The original (first available) version, append to the title “(Non-Expanded Edition)” in StashDB. This is the opposite of the way the studio promoted the re-release, but defers to their wording.
- In the StashDB edit comments of the original version, link to the new version & note that “This studio has performed an in-place replacement of the movie with an enhanced version. {describe the changes made, from the studio email} This is the original version and will be kept for those people who downloaded the video before it was replaced.”
Why all of this? Simply put, I want to prioritize the experience of someone who buys those videos now or in the future, while recognizing the original video was official. This aligns the StashDB/website experience to minimize confusion for those people.
Note I haven’t DONE this yet, so I may need to adjust this approach in the future.