On the Set: The Making of “Almost Real”

“Fuck You, Robot!” the second installment from Almost Real, the new 4-part Feature from Next Door Films, drops March 7th!  To celebrate, we wanted to take a peek at some of the fun from the set, and hear from the project’s director and writer, Jeremy Babcock.  

Behind the Scenes with Babcock

Let me start off by saying, this shoot was a BLAST.  I spoiled myself by bringing some of my favorite guys together for this shoot, and it was everything I’d hoped for.  Getting ready for a shoot like this is a ton of work.  For this project, I assembled the cast long before I settled on a concept for the series.  I always have a few wish list projects burning in the back of my brain, but I try to put together pairings I want to see before settling on a concept.  I knew I wanted to work with Ryder, Nico, and Trevor, some of my favorite guys when I get to direct.  And I hadn’t even met Vincent at this point, but knew I wanted to work with them.  With these guys as a base, I started to figure out my concept, but I still needed a love interest and a mad scientist.  I had bumped into Grant Ducati at the Grabbys in Spain (of all places), and found out he was free to work with us again. I pitched him the project on the spot.  Derek was at the same event, and I pitched him as my mad scientist.  It all fell into place!  

We shot this in the Summer of 2025, before Capo Dei Capi, but that project got released ahead of this one.  The casting mirroring was an accident, but getting to work with Trevor, Vincent, and Ryder again is never a bad thing!  

For this film (or any project we do), each of these scenes is shot in a single day.  A wild feat, considering the runtime can edge up to nearly an hour.  The cast and crew are a well-oiled machine, and we keep things MOVING on shoot day.   Let’s take a little peek at life on set for each shoot day!

Four Days on Set

Day 1:  There was a lot to pack into this shoot day.  Setting up at a new location is always a time suck, and just getting up and rolling is a little more of a process the first day.  A standard day on set for me generally includes selecting our shoot locations for the day (around the shoot house), then a script runthrough with the models and some of the crew.  The table read helps everyone understand what we’ll be doing that day, and kind of helps it all make sense.  Great for the guys to get into character without cameras rolling, and things flow really nicely later.  At this point we do our paperwork and consent chats and then I like to start the day with sex.  Getting the sex out of the way lets everybody eat and the stress goes way down, knowing we’ve got the vital part already handled.   Sex with Nico and Ryder was, of course, a breeze.  Two of the most high-chemistry models I’ve ever worked with, and the result was amazing!   The afternoon was knocking out the phone call with Nico and Trevor on the bed, and Robo-Ryder’s arrival.  Making Trevor the jerk boyfriend was a lot of fun, and sooooo far from the laid back Trevor you get the rest of the time.  The rest of the afternoon was packed with the pool montage and the cuddle scene.  

Day 2 was when we got to have a little fun and explore our side characters – after setting up so much story in part 1..  This was also the only day with five of our characters on set at once, bringing in Vincent and Grant for the first time in the series.   Tons of story to pack in on this day, but we kept it to a single location to reduce setup times changing from location to location.  This was my first time working with Vincent, and it was a lot of fun getting such a soft-spoken laid back guy to drop his guard and have some fun. We shot the story mostly in order on this one to get Vincent’s sneaky blowjob lead up to Trevor catching them.  The sex with this scene was great, and all the guys are funny and adorable in this one!  We ended the day picking up Grant’s intro scene, where we get our four main characters all together for a brief moment.  

Day 3 was BIG.  We took a pretty big tone shift on this one, and we leaned pretty hard into the love story.  There’s a little less story here, in exchange for some really great date moments.  The chemistry between Grant and Nico is so effortless, and the pool, movie date, and billiards date were really fun to shoot.  If you pay really close attention, you can spy me playing a background extra during the date montage!  I picked this particular location for our ability to find some really cool corners to shoot in.  The outdoor pool, the cozy movie theater, and the billiards bar are all in the same house!  (an illusion less convincing with that orange wall… but close!)

I’m far from a hopeless romantic, but I do love shooting these unapologetic love stories.  The sex gets taken to another level when you can build that connection first.  This one was really sweet – “cavities” was the script note for how sweet we needed to be.   Grant and Nico really had wonderful chemistry, and it shows on screen.

Day 4 was our Fourgy!  Having learned some hard lessons on Goldenrod Resort 2, I was determined to tackle a group scene, and nail it.  It’s so wildly hard to get four people aligned and engaged and ready at the same moment, and when you’re capping off a four-part feature, a LOT rides on this one sex scene.  The script for this one is considerably lighter than the others, I wanted all the focus and energy locked in for this one.  We got to bring back our mad-scientist, finally!  It’s always a pleasure to work with Derek Kage, and he brought his A-game, as usual.  I went into this shoot TERRIFIED of failing, but not only did we succeed, the sex is epic.  These four guys kept one-upping each other, and each moment or change elevated from the previous.  The positions and body twisting and stuffing of holes was epic.  At one point we were running long and they insisted we keep going.  I fully told them we had enough to go to cum shots, and they argued with me because they had holes left to fill.  Needless to say I didn’t argue.  

‘Almost Real’ is Now Showing!

Thanks for taking this little trip down memory lane with me.  This was my first time getting to direct a feature (after over a year), and my first time getting to really work on set with this crew.  Sincere THANK YOU to everyone who made this project such a joy to create.  The cast who had so much fun with the script, the crew who made it all look amazing, and the designers and editors behind the scenes who put the amazing finishing touches on it.  When a project is fun, I think it translates on screen, so hopefully you can feel the joy that went into this one.  Cheers!

“Worth The Wait” part 3 from Almost Real airs March 28th, with the epic fourgy finale following on April 18th. Find this and more from Next Door Studios, exclusively on ASGmax.com.  Find ASGmax on the socials at Instagram,  X,  and now on Bluesky.