“THE IDEA IS TO HELP THE DIRECTOR REALISE THEIR VISION, WHILE ENSURING THE ACTORS’ CONSENT ISN’T FLOUTED” Aastha Khanna Intimacy Coordinator

TThe makers of last year’s MX Player series, Mastram, hired Canadian intimacy coordinator Amanda Cutting to help during filming. Inspired by the life of an erotica writer, Mastram featured several sex scenes, and Cutting’s job was to ensure they happened as smoothly as possible. Then, last September, India got its first certified intimacy coordinator in Aastha Khanna, fresh from a 16-weeklong training course from the Intimacy Professionals Association. An assistant director, Khanna stumbled into this niche when she realised there was no dedicated professional on the job. “The idea is to help the director realise their vision, while making sure that the actors’ boundaries are upheld and at no point is anyone’s consent flouted,” she says. She now has several upcoming projects, including with Netflix, Amazon Prime and Dharma Productions.

Indian cinema has moved on from suggestive foot movements and creative use of foliage as a stand-in for on-screen sex to realistic, unabashed depictions in shows like Made in Heaven, Four More Shots Please! and Sacred Games. As the industry has shed its inhibitions, the culture around shooting these scenes, too, has evolved. From hiring intimacy specialists and holding workshops and consent conversations, to using safe words while shooting, filmmakers and studios are taking nascent steps towards ensuring actors feel comfortable and safe while filming sex scenes. “Three years ago, the [intimacy coordinator] job did not exist even in the West,” says Khanna. As an outcome of the MeToo movement and disclosures of major Hollywood actresses, the HBO show Deuce was among the first to hire an intimacy consultant in 2018. These professionals are now mandatory in all of HBO’s shows. Khanna’s job entails conducting workshops with actors, creating ground rules for shooting, checking comfort levels and arranging for protective wear. Intimate scenes are broken down technically and carefully choreographed, not shot in a burst of spontaneity. “Chemistry is something that actors can bring when they have trust in each other,” she says. Unlike with dance choreographers and stunt directors, actors often don’t even know that sex scenes can have specialists. “I realised there was not much effort being put in to create a safe space for actors on set,” says Neha Vyas, an actor, producer and ‘intimacy designer’, now working towards certification as a coordinator. “Because of the way we [actors] are trained, we treat ourselves like that. We don’t realise that our boundaries or consent have value.” Vyas worked as an intimacy designer for the film Bodies of Desire and has conducted workshops for actors. “My attempt is usually to move actors from thinking about their bodies as objects to treating their bodies as instruments,” she says. Sometimes actors may be willing to go further than the director anticipates. Other times they may be hesitant, so workarounds are needed—shooting close-ups, using creative angles or body doubles. Actors have also told Khanna that it helps if they have more time to build trust with their co-actors or if they can shoot without a break. She is now working on guidelines for best practices on film sets, including the role of an intimacy specialist. Directors, too, are taking extra steps. In an interview, filmmaker Alankrita Shrivastava and cinematographer Jay Oza described building a rapport with actors and avoiding multiple takes during the shoot of Made in Heaven. Before shooting Margarita with a Straw, director Shonali Bose was determined her actors feel safe and unselfconscious. So Kalki Koechlin and Sayani Gupta did an intimacy workshop along with Bose where they gently explored boundaries. The day Gupta had to take off her shirt, the closed set had just a handful of women. Bose, too, took her top off and directed with a towel around her waist. “If you are the only one nude, you feel vulnerable,” she says. “To have the most powerful person in the room, the director, also be nude immediately lessens the tension.” Following a sex scene, Bose herself rushed to give the actors their dressing gowns. Frank discussions and thoughtful preparation also have a knock-on effect on the film itself, averting schlocky, clichéd on-screen sex or exploitative framing. “While talking about the MeToo movement, gender identity, sexuality and parity, you don’t have an intimacy coach or coordinator, you are doing a disservice not just to the actors but to the aesthetic of the film,” says Vyas. Bose specifically wanted a woman director of photography for Margarita, partly to avoid a reductive gaze on the women. “What we were conscious of and added to making the actors comfortable was knowing they are not being objectified,” she says, but “we are capturing something beautiful... in a respectful, progressive way.”