Meet the trailblazers changing the face of porn

Over the last few years, sex in film has become the top­ic du jour online. Some of the dis­course – large­ly about what we see on-screen – has been brain-melt­ing­ly insuf­fer­able (hel­lo, Poor Things), but oth­er con­ver­sa­tions, like those about behind-the-scenes behav­iour, have been pro­duc­tive, and have even led to trans­for­ma­tive changes in the indus­try. Most recent­ly, these have been about inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors. Before 2017’s MeToo move­ment, nobody had heard of the role, and yet now, sev­en years on – and with an unprece­dent­ed amount of media atten­tion – it’s become a reg­u­lar fix­ture on main­stream film and TV sets.

The role of an inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor is to act as a liai­son between the actors and crew, ensur­ing there’s con­sent, com­fort, pre-agreed nudi­ty and chore­og­ra­phy, and a sus­tained open and frank dia­logue. A whole host of actors, includ­ing some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, have spo­ken can­did­ly about how the role has been rev­o­lu­tion­ary in their expe­ri­ence of film­ing sex scenes, with Michaela Coel even ded­i­cat­ing her 2021 Baf­ta win to pio­neer­ing inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor Ita O’Brien.

But what hap­pens when the actors aren’t just sim­u­lat­ing sex, but actu­al­ly hav­ing it? Very lit­tle atten­tion has been paid to the role of inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors on porn sets, and yet they’re becom­ing a ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence in the adult indus­try, too. While much of the prep is the same – pre-scene con­sent talks, set­ting bound­aries, empow­er­ing actors to stop a scene at any point – cer­tain things are unique to porn sets, like STI test­ing, decid­ing on and pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion, and more rig­or­ous emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion and sup­port. Although there’s a pletho­ra of train­ing ser­vices now avail­able for inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors in Hol­ly­wood, pornog­ra­phers have large­ly been left to fig­ure it out for them­selves – that is, aside from a few trail blaz­ers lead­ing the way.

One of those is Izabela Bar­tyzel, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and video­g­ra­ph­er, and the founder of Red­Cheeks, a rare (if not the only) organ­i­sa­tion that teach­es inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tion in adult media. Bar­tyzel, like all of the inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors I spoke to, came to the role after work­ing in pornog­ra­phy in a dif­fer­ent capac­i­ty. For her, it was as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, then a gen­er­al man­ag­er, and then a com­pa­ny direc­tor. ​“I learned every­thing on the job,” she tells me over Zoom from her Ams­ter­dam apart­ment. ​“I think the role was in the indus­try already, but we just didn’t make that much of it.”

It’s true that many of the pro­to­cols asso­ci­at­ed with inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tion have exist­ed in the adult indus­try for a long time (many pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies have best prac­tice guide­lines, includ­ing agree­ing to sex acts, like BDSM, and bound­aries before­hand, estab­lish­ing safe words, and healthy on-set con­di­tions that cater to any med­ical needs per­form­ers may have), but they haven’t always been adhered to, and there hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly been some­one sup­port­ing per­form­ers in a real­ly holis­tic way.

Eth­i­cal porn direc­tor Eri­ka Lust, for exam­ple, has long employed a tal­ent man­ag­er as a liai­son between per­form­ers and pro­duc­ers, but that role has only rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly evolved into what we now con­sid­er to be inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tion. ​“A tal­ent man­ag­er is more about organ­is­ing agree­ments, flights, and accom­pa­ny­ing per­form­ers to their hotels, where­as inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tion is more about bond­ing with them, under­stand­ing their needs and minds, and sup­port­ing them in a dif­fer­ent way,” explains Anarel­la Mar­tinez, an event and film pro­duc­er, per­for­mance artist, and the in-house inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor at Eri­ka Lust Films, whose first expe­ri­ence in the adult indus­try was organ­is­ing her own sex fes­ti­val in 2015. ​“My role is also to under­stand why they want to be in porn, what expo­sure they’re going to have, whether they’ve thought about their fam­i­ly know­ing, and if they have any men­tal or phys­i­cal health issues.”

“The more you get to know them, the more you con­struct a rela­tion­ship of trust,” adds Lust. ​“It’s also a lot of talk­ing about plea­sure: ​‘What works for you? What makes you cum? What kind of touch do you like? How do you feel today?’. All of the very impor­tant con­ver­sa­tions you should be hav­ing with a lover – but ones that peo­ple don’t often have in real life.”

So, what’s a typ­i­cal week (or so)-in-the-life of a porn inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor? For Bar­tyzel, like for inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors in the non-adult film indus­try, the first thing on the agen­da is to see the script, flag any par­tic­u­lar­ly explic­it scenes, and then ask lots of ques­tions. ​“Like, ​‘What do you mean by, ​‘They have sex’?’,” she says. ​“It may sound obvi­ous, but we need to know what exact­ly they’re going to do.” Bar­tyzel then talks to the per­form­ers about the script, STI test­ing, and pro­tec­tion, answers any ques­tions they might have, and enforces the gold­en rule: that they don’t have to do any­thing they don’t feel com­fort­able with. Any spe­cif­ic requests are then passed onto the direc­tor. Before the shoot, Bar­tyzel will do rehearsals with the per­form­ers, as well as bond­ing exer­cis­es to make them feel more com­fort­able with each oth­er. ​“I’d also estab­lish with the direc­tor that I have the abil­i­ty to call ​‘cut’ if necessary.”

Lust recalls a recent instance in which she and Mar­tinez had to do this on one of their sets. ​“The per­former want­ed to use a con­dom, but in the heat of the moment, they didn’t remem­ber they’d said that,” she explains. ​“We’re the back-up to make sure that what they’ve talked about before is being respect­ed in front of the camera.”

This, as well as after-shoot check-ins – in which inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors ask for feed­back from per­form­ers both on the day, if pos­si­ble, and a few days lat­er – has been a major pro for adult per­former Jet Set­ting Jas­mine when she’s worked with them on set. ​“It takes so much pres­sure off when some­one else is advo­cat­ing for your bound­aries,” she says, adding that hav­ing a fol­low-up to say, ​‘I know you did a hard thing, how was it for you?’, allows her to ​“not feel dis­pos­able after being so vulnerable”.

As well as being a porn per­former, direc­tor, and the co-own­er of Roy­al Fetish Films (a diver­si­ty-focused adult site that rejects the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry tropes com­mon in porn), Jas­mine is an on-set well­ness con­sul­tant and inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor who works on adult and non-adult films as part of Reps on Set. ​“We’re one of the few that actu­al­ly con­sid­er the crew,” she tells me. ​“The actors aren’t the only folks tak­ing in take after take of par­tic­u­lar con­tent. The same goes for edi­tors, for exam­ple, who might have to watch clips of a hard­core BDSM scene over and over.” Once, dur­ing the film­ing of a par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful and tense BDSM scene, Jas­mine asked the direc­tor if she could pause and call for the cast and crew to take a col­lec­tive deep breath. ​“Just to say, ​‘That was real­ly pow­er­ful, everybody’s doing a great job’, but to acknowl­edge that it’s intense for every­one.”

In this way, porn pro­duc­ers can be a real­ly valu­able addi­tion to non-porn sets. Not only do they have inim­itable expe­ri­ence when it comes to the phys­i­cal and men­tal logis­tics of sex scenes, but they’re also unafraid of speak­ing can­did­ly about inti­ma­cy, nudi­ty, and even trau­ma. In fact, while Petra Von Schatz, a Paris-based adult actor and on-set pho­tog­ra­ph­er, founder of La Bran­lée porn col­lec­tive, and inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor trainee who’s also worked across both adult and non-adult sets, was once ner­vous of fac­ing stig­ma as a porn actor in a non-porn world, she now believes this expe­ri­ence has giv­en her the ​“sen­si­tiv­i­ty that goes beyond the pro­to­col of what inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tion can be”. ​“When I tell the cast I’m a porn actress, I can feel a shift,” she explains, ​“because I’ve done it too, and so they feel allowed to ask things like, ​‘Is it awk­ward for you to also be naked?’.”

“Peo­ple have said that they’ve been asked ques­tions they’ve nev­er been asked before about their com­fort lev­el as it relates to inti­ma­cy,” adds Jas­mine. ​“Peo­ple have said they’ve felt more cared for on our sets than in some of their per­son­al relationships.”

Most, if not all, of porn’s inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors have so far learned on the job. But now Bartyzel’s Red­Cheeks, which launched in 2022, offers those in the indus­try the chance to expand their knowl­edge, or even begin their porn jour­ney. As per the most recent cur­ricu­lum, a Red­Cheeks five-week work­shop com­pris­es 10 mod­ules, cov­er­ing eth­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing in inti­mate scene pro­duc­tion, the his­to­ry of pornog­ra­phy, com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­niques, con­sent, bound­aries, safe­ty, and doc­u­men­ta­tion, and more. ​“I want­ed to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent type of edu­ca­tion, where there are no exams, grades, or cer­tifi­cates,” says Bar­tyzel. ​“And I want­ed peo­ple to not feel afraid of mak­ing mis­takes, and to be curi­ous about oth­er people’s per­spec­tives and give them feed­back. So I pro­vide them with the infor­ma­tion and the tools, and then I have them fig­ure out how to do things better.”

Bar­tyzel stress­es that it’s not just about teach­ing peo­ple how to ful­fil the spe­cif­ic role of ​‘inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor’, it’s also about edu­ca­tion for ​“a whole ecosys­tem work­ing togeth­er”. “[This respon­si­bil­i­ty] can’t just go to one per­son because if every­one ignores the inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor, they won’t be able to do much.” Bar­tyzel tells me that a lot of peo­ple who attend Red­Cheeks work­shops are inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers (as opposed to aspir­ing inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors), who sim­ply want a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how to ensure safe­ty on set.

It’s worth not­ing that, while a num­ber of porn pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies are adopt­ing the role, and oth­ers already have a sim­i­lar one in place, inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors are still large­ly exclu­sive to eth­i­cal porn mak­ers, and haven’t yet been wide­ly adopt­ed by main­stream stu­dios. Two adult film stars I spoke to, who asked to remain anony­mous, told me they’d nev­er come across an inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor on shoots. This tracks with Anarella’s expe­ri­ence. ​“What we often see with main­stream per­form­ers is that it’s new to have some­one car­ing for them like this,” says Martinez.

Lust adds: ​“I’ve heard from many per­form­ers that after they had this kind of treat­ment, they under­stood that in many oth­er sit­u­a­tions they haven’t had the treat­ment they’d have liked, but they didn’t realise before because they haven’t seen that it was pos­si­ble to do it in anoth­er way.”

That’s not to say main­stream porn stu­dios don’t have reg­u­la­tions in place and aren’t tak­ing care of their per­form­ers. As a mat­ter of fact, Lust says these stu­dios have ​“had their eyes on” eth­i­cal com­pa­nies like Eri­ka Lust for a while, and increas­ing­ly ​“want to work togeth­er to get bet­ter stan­dards in the whole indus­try”. ​“The porn indus­try might have had many prob­lems in the past,” she con­tin­ues, ​“but it’s def­i­nite­ly work­ing hard to become bet­ter and more aware, at least in the part of the indus­try that’s pro­fes­sion­al and seri­ous.” For her part, Lust is try­ing to bring aware­ness to the role of inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor – both in and out of porn – most recent­ly cam­paign­ing to get the (non-porn) role recog­nised at the Oscars as well as fight­ing for it to be a stan­dard prac­tice in the porn industry.

“Right now in Hol­ly­wood, cer­tain actors are hav­ing inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors baked into their con­tracts, which I think is awe­some,” says Jas­mine. ​“For us in the adult indus­try, that might look like per­form­ers say­ing, ​‘I’m going to bring my friend with me for sup­port’, but, instead of tak­ing two peo­ple but pay­ing for one, it would be real­ly great if [there was an indus­try stan­dard, so every stu­dio] could say, ​‘Our bud­get includes an inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor, as well as men­tal health sup­port before, dur­ing, and after’.”

Even if that’s not a wide­spread real­i­ty just yet, Jas­mine says the cur­rent fledg­ling shift is anoth­er exam­ple of how porn actors are becom­ing increas­ing­ly empow­ered in a more democ­ra­tised porn indus­try. ​“This all comes from the shift in tech­nol­o­gy where we’re able to put out our own con­tent, and mon­e­tize and monop­o­lise our own images and bod­ies,” she explains, ​“which puts us in a bet­ter place to nego­ti­ate areas that per­haps there may have been con­sent vio­la­tions around in the past. Nowa­days, con­ver­sa­tions around con­sent don’t just stop with, ​‘What’s going on today?’, we’re also ask­ing, ​‘Where’s this film going? How am I going to be described and titled?’.”

In light of Red­Cheeks’ suc­cess, it’s clear that there’s a demand in the adult indus­try for bet­ter guide­lines and pro­to­cols that will make all those involved in porn feel safe. And, while the spe­cif­ic role of inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor is in its ear­ly stages, it’s already hav­ing a huge impact for those who’ve worked along­side it. ​“It was so much more com­fort­ing to have some­one to talk to on-set, espe­cial­ly about things that can be dif­fi­cult or embar­rass­ing to bring up,” con­cludes Von Schatz. ​“It’s com­ing slow­ly, but you can already feel the change.”

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