Birds fighting each other’s beaks, two flowers meeting, milk boiling… in old movies, these scenes were inserted to show the intimacy between the hero and heroine. With time, there has been a lot of change in filming these intimate scenes. There is a competition to make the scenes look realistic and the challenge in front of the directors has become bigger. Shooting such scenes is neither easy for the actors nor for the director.
The biggest challenge is that along with making the scene look original, the stars also have to take care of each other’s dignity. For this, the actors are rehearsed and sent to workshops so that they can control their emotions. This workshop is organised by the intimacy coordinator. In today’s time, their role in the film industry has increased a lot.
In this episode of Reel to Real, we will understand the role of intimacy coordinator and their working process. For this, we spoke to the country’s first intimacy coordinator Aastha Khanna, Neha Vyaso, actress-psychiatrist Dr. Aditi Govitrikar and psychiatrist Dr. Kersi Chavda.
Aastha told that Deepika Padukone was feeling a little uncomfortable about the intimate scenes in the film Gehraiyaan because there were a lot of people present on the set. Later, everyone except 4-5 people were removed from there. Even the cameraman was instructed to record the scene from a faraway bathroom.
Actors tell their boundaries to the intimacy coordinator.
During the workshop, the intimacy coordinator first talks about the wishes and limits of the actors. They are first asked to what level they can shoot the scenes. Actors tell their boundaries to the intimacy coordinator. Then the actors are told how they have to react during the shooting. Where can they put their hands, there should be so much perfection that the hands should not move up or down even a little.
Meanwhile, the actors are told that if they feel anything is wrong, they should say cut or freeze their body. Seeing this, the director himself will stop the scene.
After the workshop, the intimacy coordinator designs the scenes. Now here intimacy does not mean only romantic scenes. Sexual violence scenes like rape scenes, homosexual scenes, kissing scenes between minors and bathing scenes of actors are also shot under the supervision of the intimacy coordinator.
Intimate scenes are kept in three categories, actors are given special clothes.
According to Neha Vyaso, the director of the film gives a brief to the intimacy coordinator about that particular scene. According to the brief, the intimacy coordinator breaks down the scenes in three different categories (red, yellow, green). There is more intimacy in the red category, a little less in yellow and very less in green. The coordinator then visualizes the scenes in his mind and then writes them on the page.
After this, the actors are told how to perform those scenes. They are given some special kind of clothes. This is called intimacy kit. After this, the shooting of these scenes starts on a close set. Only 4 to 5 people are present during the shooting. These 4 to 5 people include the artist, director, intimacy coordinator and cameraman.