What Really Happens During Intimate Scenes on Film Sets? | Ep 111 ft. Michaela Carattini

MAX 0:00

Hi, nice to meet you. Would you like a coffee? Here are some tic-tacks and I'll see you on set in 30 minutes.

MICHELA 0:05

Um, I think there's a certain segment that wouldn would wouldn't consider not hiring an intimacy coordinator. I think there's uh a lot of um well, we'll ask the actors, you know, what they want and 'cause I know early on there was some resistance. Yeah. A lot of them were around intimate scenes or unsafe uh situations that women had found themselves in. And so they often don't think about the other person on the other side of that scene. And sometimes they only think about, for example, the woman, or they they only think about the person who's considered to be most valuable on set. So we don't think about, for example, stunt doubles and stand-ins and lighting doubles.

MAX 0:43

Welcome back to two unemployed actors. I'm Max Belmonte, and today we are tackling one of the most vulnerable and rapidly changing parts of our job, onset intimacy. If you've ever felt awkward, unprotected, or just unsure of where the boundaries lie during a sensitive scene, this episode is for you. My guest today is Michela Carattini. She's not only a SAG AFTRA accredited intimacy coordinator and the founder of Key Intimate Scenes, but she's also an actor, filmmaker, and mother. Today, we're unpacking what actually happens on a closed set, the exact words you can use to advocate for yourself when things get blurry, and how a busy creative balances the hustle of acting, filmmaking, and running a company. Before we dive into today's episode, a gentle note that we do touch on some sensitive themes around sexual assault during our conversation. It's an important topic, but we know it can be difficult or triggering to hear, so please prioritize your own well-being, whether that means listening with a friend or taking a break.

Speaker 5 1:47

Two unemployed actors.

MAX 1:53

Michela, welcome.

MICHELA 1:55

Thank you so much. It's so nice to meet you. Yes. So nice to be on Gadigal Country today, because I move around a lot.

MAX 2:02

That's the nature of the industry, isn't it?

MICHELA 2:03

Yeah.

MAX 2:04

You go wherever the check clear is. Exactly. You're an actor, an intimacy coordinator, intimacy coordination trainer, uh, and a filmmaker as well.

MICHELA 2:11

Yeah.

MAX 2:12

Does one of those identities feel more like home to you than another?

MICHELA 2:16

I mean, acting is the one I've been doing the longest. Um I was professional actor from the age of 14, and I'm now 46, so you can do the math a long time. Now, today, uh, I feel like I really enjoy the rotation of different kinds of work in the industry, and they're fulfilling in very different ways. I use the term crop rotation, which is kind of an indigenous form of agriculture in Central America and used in other places as well. But this idea that you have to um change the crops because certain crops take nutrients out of the ground and that ground dries up of those nutrients, and then you have to change them so that they can renew those nutrients and different nutrients are taken out of the ground. And I feel like that's a really accurate analogy for the way that I use my career. I need different nutrients, and I can't just keep taking the same one over and over and over because that leads to burnout. So they each give me something different, some different kind of nourishment that helps me continue my career and my longevity.

MAX 3:21

Certainly in the arts to wear many hats with experience and professionalism is a challenge. And yeah. Um but from 14, I mean, it's it's what a grounding to be able to learn so much in the industry that you can still use to fuel you in those many uh projects and wearing those many hats.

MICHELA 3:39

Yeah, well, I think anybody who works in the industry knows that it every project is completely different. But I think you do, after many years, kind of get a a sense of security and the insecurity and adaptability to whatever comes your way. And uh yeah, so I I do appreciate just how long I've been here. I have taken breaks, I have done other things.

MAX 4:02

Okay.

MICHELA 4:03

Um, but uh I've always come back.

MAX 4:06

Well, speaking of one thing, um, you received an actor nomination for best indie film with Carmen and Boliude. Baluday. Balloo Day. Yes. I knew I would ruin that. That's okay. Carmen and Baluday. You produced, you wrote it, you directed. Um what was the most creative fulfilling part of getting that specific project off the ground? Or perhaps it was the business behind it trying to produce it and make it in the first place.

MICHELA 4:30

Well, I had lots of help in each of those roles, and um, and for me that was a critical aspect. I really like working with other people. I really like collaboration, and I think film is one of those things that you really can't do on your own. It's one of those arts that you you need other people to make a good product, and um and so when it's really good, collaboration is magic. It's greater than the sum of its parts. And uh so that aspect That aspect?

MAX 5:00

That's alright. At least at least I can pronounce the title of the film now.

MICHELA 5:04

So there is you're not alone in that.

MAX 5:08

It's been a day.

MICHELA 5:09

Um it's it's a Nigerian name, yeah. Uh Belude. And uh yeah, so uh the collaborative aspect I really enjoy just coming up with magic and ideas with other people, and I enjoy that as an actor as well. I don't enjoy monologues, I don't enjoy self-tapes by myself. I really love playing uh off of another person and using their energy and using whatever they're doing to create something new that I couldn't have on my own. And so for me, that's also the magic of filmmaking. Um, you have a lot more control when you're in other roles like director and producer, over framing, over the editing, over the end product, over the messaging that you're you're sending out. Um and so I appreciate those aspects that I don't often get as an actor. And um yeah, and then seeing being in a cinema, yeah, you know, with people all around you that don't know it's you watching a film, watching something you wrote, uh it's very vulnerable. I think it's more vulnerable than acting someone else's lines or a role that somebody else wrote, because you can kind of hide behind that still to a degree, although the emotions might be really real and vulnerable. It's not you.

MAX 6:28

Did that surprise you when you first had that experience, sitting in a cinema and and watching Carmen and Baludae for the first time with an audience?

MICHELA 6:37

I think the vulnerability didn't surprise me. I I knew I would feel vulnerable going, gosh, I hope somebody gets this. I hope somebody laughs. I hope somebody thinks what's interesting and funny and meaningful to me will be to someone else as well. I don't think that was a surprise, although I felt it viscerally. The surprise was the the joy and the fulfilment when people did get it, when people did laugh, when when people cried, when people came up to me, or they still I still get phone calls. I just saw the film on Netflix and and I loved it and I felt like somebody saw my experiences in in this world. And that's what we wanted. I I think all of the filmmakers on this film. They wanted people who don't normally get their experiences um seen and validated.

MAX 7:25

So it's so rewarding then to be able to see your work up there with an audience that actually is engaged with it. That's that's fantastic.

MICHELA 7:32

That's the best part.

MAX 7:33

If we can move on to the evolution of intimacy coordination, I know because coming from an actor who's been on set and been in some interesting situations, certainly from a vulnerable perspective, um it it i it's it still feels new, and I'm yet to actually work formally with an intimacy intimacy coordinator. So there is time. Before if we talk about the evolution of it, before intimacy coordination became a standard, how were these scenes typically handled? Um and and what were some of the dangerous consequences you've heard or seen from a director just yelling action and expecting everything to fall into place?

MICHELA 8:07

There are many different ways the scenes were handled. Um and I was part of Women in Theatre in Screen Australia.

MAX 8:15

Okay.

MICHELA 8:15

Um and we held forums in um 2015, 2016, 2017, specifically for women in the industry to ask them what their challenges were, what their issues were. Um we had huge forums, hundreds and hundreds of people showed up, and we noticed themes in uh what issues were coming up. A lot of them were around intimate scenes or unsafe uh situations that women had found themselves in. So the Sydney Morning Herald reported on us, so I'll I'll just mention things that were already um had consent to be publicly made. Um so one of the uh attendees mentioned how her ribs were broken in a rape scene um that she had to to act. And um, you know, we we'd another uh attendee mentioned how she was just really sick of playing prostitutes and and characters that were over sexualized all the time and asking, she said, Oh, as an actress you get really good at taking your clothes off. And um, so they ranged to kind of much more subtle aspects of casting of what kind of roles were available to kind of quite dangerous situations where power was being abused and exploitation was happening.

MAX 9:33

Feeling unsafe all the way through to being assaulted, really.

MICHELA 9:36

Yes.

MAX 9:37

Because no one I I I doubt she consented having her ribs broken. Did did anyone step in at that at any stage and say just let's we have to stop or for that particular situation?

MICHELA 9:47

From what I remembered, she wasn't taken seriously or listened to. Um you know, I I know myself I've uh portrayed one or two uh violent sexual scenes as an actor where I was playing the survivor or the victim. And I remember one in particular, um, it wasn't particularly graphic or anything like that. I had to make a lot of the sounds of a sexual assault happening, and I actually uh had to hold the camera in my hand to to just make it look like the phone camera that the character was holding was um was going all over the place. And so I I made the sounds and I fell to the ground and they had the chasing sequence beforehand, but otherwise the other actor wasn't anywhere near me.

MAX 10:30

Yep.

MICHELA 10:31

And this was filmed in a public park, and uh and somebody was walking their dog in this public park, and uh this dog was so concerned about me that it would not stop barking, ran over to me, would not stop barking until I got up and I said, I'm okay, you know. Thank you.

MAX 10:48

It's amazing.

MICHELA 10:49

And somehow um that dog understood something that maybe all the humans on the set around me didn't understand because it was pretend. Everybody knew it wasn't really happening, but it still had an effect on me. So we're learning this now from psychology, from neuroscience, even from sports psychology, that the things that we do in the pretend space have a real biological effect. We still produce adrenaline and cortisol when we're pretending to run away. We still produce the attachment hormone oxytocin when we're kissing someone, even if they're not our real life partner. So we're learning about how the pretend space still affects our bodies and what we need to do to look after ourselves.

MAX 11:30

As an actor working in the industry, you hear about things like that. But um Yeah, and you want to hope it's getting better. But I guess um now we're in a situation where where I started intimacy coordination wasn't a term you heard. So I like we're making progress in the evolution.

MICHELA 11:47

Yeah, well, it's it's really interesting because the the term or the name or the title, um, I mean, intimacy choreographer was first used in 2006 uh by a woman in the US, Tonia Sina, who wrote about it in her thesis, in her university thesis. And she was starting to do this work of of on in theater. And um then uh when the very first film production hired uh somebody to do this role, it was The Deuce Um HBO hired Alicia Rodis. Um and I think that wasn't until maybe 2017.

MAX 12:25

Okay.

MICHELA 12:26

Um and and so they started using the term intimacy coordinator. So they kind of moved it from intimacy choreographer or intimacy director to intimacy coordinator. And then Ita O'Brien over in England, um, intimacy coordinated Sex Education, that was around 2019. Um, and and uh Australian Equity flew over Ita O'Brien to Australia to train several of us. And that was the first time I heard the title.

MAX 12:55

Because I was gonna say, how long did it take for the standards that were sort of set or or evolving in the US, the UK, as you as you mentioned, to make their way to Australia? So what 2017 did you say?

MICHELA 13:04

Uh no, Ita O'Brien came over, I think it was around 2019.

MAX 13:07

2019, okay. Yeah. Okay.

MICHELA 13:09

But the the interesting thing is I'm really talking about the title very specifically, because I think the work was being done in many different ways before that. And there's so much that we borrow from the Rainbow community, from the kink community, from First Nations um storytelling practices, there's so much that intimacy coordinators have brought back in terms of the care of the storytellers and the actors. Um we know that African Black Theatre in the 60s and 70s was looking at how do we care for actors having to tell these stories of brutality and slavery and enslavement, and um how do we uh end rape and sexual violence. If you talk to, I think, most makeup artists or wardrobe people or s or stunt coordinators, many of them have said, Oh, I had to do some aspect uh of this work in my job before this role existed, or I was looking at, you know, how do I look after these kinds of scenes too? Because I recognized that vulnerability, or I didn't know what to do because I was trained. So I think it's really important to acknowledge that it wasn't invented in the US or in the UK. It's just kind of that the title really took on the Me Too movement had happened, you know, and it it was the way it sort of formalized the process.

MAX 14:21

Yeah. More so than different people with other roles on set having to sort of shoulder some responsibility for it.

MICHELA 14:27

It really gained a popularity that it had never gained before, and it all came together in one separate role.

MAX 14:34

Right. Yeah. And and who were those early pioneers or mentors in the space that that you looked up to when you were first developing your own sort of intimacy coordination methodologies?

MICHELA 14:46

So I mentioned Tonia Sina, Alicia Rodis, and Ita O'Brien, who I've uh been lucky enough to have trained with all of those um names that are that are out there whenever you talk about intimacy coordination. But one of my most influential mentors was Kaja Dunn, who was an intimacy coordinator that was really um advocating for cultural competency in intimacy coordination. She was African-American intimacy coordinator, and she uh was looking at how critical culture is to the concept of intimacy. She was looking at how varied understandings and ideas of consent are in different cultures, and how race and identity play into this space in a really critical way. So um I have to say she was my most influential mentor and she was the permission I needed. She gave me the permission I needed. It's funny how sometimes we need somebody else to give us permission to look at how to um take the the work and the training and decolonize it because um in that space it was almost entirely white women.

MAX 16:04

Right.

MICHELA 16:05

And um it I think it suffered from a lot of the same issues that white feminism suffered for from in that uh people weren't necessarily aware of or looking at um the intersection of power, you know, because we are talking about power dynamics and we're talking about interrupting them and we're talking about intimacy coordination and providing a a consent-based process.

MAX 16:29

Yeah.

MICHELA 16:29

And I don't think we can talk about consent without talking about power. Yeah. I don't think we can talk about power without talking about identity and hierarchies and yeah. They're probably my most uh influential. And then I started uh I happened to meet a Akala Newman, uh a wonderful First Nations artist, and uh Adeeb Razzouk, uh wonderful Syrian artist, here uh around the time when I was looking to train other people. Um I had been working on Nine Perfect Strangers in 2020. It was during a lockdown. I think we were the only one of the only places shooting in the whole world.

MAX 17:07

So northern New South Wales was a huge production. It was a great coup for Australia. I know it was is great for the economy. And the arts during lockdown, good lord, the stories of people getting stuck when when when musicals and plays were cancelled, they couldn't even get back to their home station. And the whole idea of government support when you you're not you're not a business in the sense that you know you're working from project to project. How do you how do you say you need the help when you can't it's difficult to quantify it?

MICHELA 17:36

I had a a dear friend um uh who took his life during who was an actor um during the the lockdowns and uh I I felt like the state of mental health in the industry was very real. We now have the statistics um from the entertainment assist study um out of the University of Victoria that gave us so information, so much information on what's actually going on. But um for for me it was such a beautiful opportunity to work on this project, to work with leading epidemiologists. I mean, I got to ask them questions I'm sure no intimacy coordinator ever got to ask.

MAX 18:17

Um, because we were intimacy coordinating and epidemiology aren't necessarily the two terms you hear in the same sentence.

MICHELA 18:24

No, well, but we are looking at for the first time because of COVID, what can be transferred mouth to mouth, you know, and and actually a lot of things. And things we never thought about before as actors. And this is a workplace, and this is an occupational work hazard, and what do we need to be doing to try and and minimize those hazards for actors in the workplace?

MAX 18:44

Right. So if anything, the pandemic might have helped in elevating that as a thought.

unknown 18:48

Yeah.

MAX 18:49

As a process.

MICHELA 18:50

I think it did.

MAX 18:50

Um at a time when intimacy coordination formally was still young.

MICHELA 18:54

Yes. And and because of the production being uh a very kind of high-value production, I had access to experts in um in those fields where we could kind of figure out those questions and privacy and confident confidentiality, etc. Um, we could figure out some of those questions together, which I feel very, very blessed to have had. Um and at the same time, I had my family locked at home. I had two young children that I was supposed to be homeschooling. I um was flying back and forth um from Sydney to to northern New South Wales. And I was very aware that if I got sick, if I got COVID, you know, everyone was screwed.

MAX 19:43

Yeah. It's it's yeah, for the project and and at home. Suddenly you end up quarantined in neither places.

MICHELA 19:50

So I at that moment really wanted to start building a community, building um uh other intimacy coordinators that I could hand over to if you know something happened to me.

MAX 20:02

Is that where the idea of you creating a business um came from, or had you already established key intimate scenes by that production?

MICHELA 20:11

I had been a little bit interested and concerned about liability as an intimacy coordinator, especially when this was very new. Um so I have my master's in criminology, so that from Sydney Law School, so that is a legal background, which may be why I was paying attention.

MAX 20:26

You're looking at it also another layer of complication, but necessary, a liability lens.

MICHELA 20:30

Yeah. I just what is there were a lot of defamation cases happening in Australia in particular, and I just thought I don't want to be in a I want to make the culture and the industry and the onset experience better, but I don't want to be made completely responsible for everybody's behavior because it's not possible to be.

MAX 20:49

And then one thinks about insurance in the other place and and how that's covered and assessed. Oh wow.

MICHELA 20:55

So as far as I know, um, and and you know, talking with my mentors as well, there wasn't anyone else in in the world who was insured under the title intimacy coordinator. So they maybe were insured under a choreographer or something else.

MAX 21:08

But I that was really important to me because just for many aspects, particularly, you know, liability. Yeah. In the worst case scenario, you want to be protected and particularly in that space, you can go in with the best training and the best of intentions. But if someone receives something in a different way because of their own experiences, for example, then it can be quite difficult. And yeah, you it's good to have that back up as a safety, I suppose.

MICHELA 21:32

Aaron Powell Yes, and also just um we're not on set all the time, you know, and just just to be really, really clear about what we are responsible for and what we aren't, and um what we can do and what we can't. And it's really about risk minimization. We can't we can't zero risk any more than a safety officer could. Um but I had to go through a couple of insurance brokers and finally I had this amazing one who we negotiated. Apparently they had to be a time closed. Yeah, apparently they had a room of lawyers discussing what the potential risks were in my job.

MAX 22:05

At least they were accepting then that it's not a trend. This is this is here to stay. Yeah, that's that's that gives some comfort. But and and you got the result you needed.

MICHELA 22:13

I did. I I became insured under the title intimacy coordinator, and that felt really that that felt like a relief. And um and so the lawyer together with that had suggested to me that I needed to have a company, a PTY L T D, so I wasn't kind of risking liable. Exactly. And um so together with that, as I mentioned, I was really looking for a community. I think this kind of work is is um first to the scene kind of work. It's very confronting. You are advocating for other people, it can be emotionally draining, and you need a community, you need peers, you need mentors, you need other people to debrief with for your own mental health, for the sustainability. Exactly. So I was looking for that at the same time and and they showed up right when I needed it.

MAX 23:00

It seems like yeah, it all it all did come together at the right time. Yeah. Um almost underwritten, if you like, by a a massive you know, American production of Nine Perfect Strangers, which is also helpful. Because because you're an actor yourself, do you find that you have a specific shorthand with the cast when you step into the intimacy coordinator role? Or how does your acting brain change your approach compared to other intimacy coordinators, perhaps?

MICHELA 23:24

I definitely think it's uh helpful to be an actor coming into this work. I I think every training program in the world for intimacy coordination requires as a prerequisite that you have experience working in the medium that you are hoping to intimacy coordinate in. Because you can't just walk on set not knowing, you know, where you have to stand and how you have to get out of the way, and how you can't talk during there's a take, and how you have to wear dark colors so you don't show up in the reflection. And particularly for an intimacy coordinator, because we're not just uh safety, we're also creative, you know, we have to understand where the camera is, what the framing is, when we're coming up with choreography, when we're coming up with um the movement direction of intimate scenes. And and so being an actor and uh knowing the processes of actors and um knowing the situation that they're in and knowing from the director what their vision is and what story that they're hoping to get across to audience is is really critical. It it allows us to come up with the creative ideas that are within everybody's boundaries that still tell the story and and meet the director's vision.

MAX 24:44

Is another consideration budget too in a way that, you know, is this scene half a day or is it shot across three days? You know, that can present its own sort of challenges. I know for me probably one one unique situation turning up at 7.30 for my call time. First scene, 8 a.m. I met my for the first time, I met her the actor I'm doing the scene with, who was we were playing um two people in a relationship of three months, and the first scene was in bed together. Um so yeah, hi, nice to meet you. Would you like a coffee? Hear some tic-tacks, and I'll see you on set in 30 minutes. And uh the director saying, Okay, we want you nice and relaxed, and it's not like someone talking at you going, we want you nice and relaxed, and looking like you're don't think about pink elephants. And I just went back to humour and made a few jokes, we're nice and relaxed, had a bit of a chat, and what we feel comfortable with, and I guess it was the common sense lens. Um, and that was kind of then we're straight into it. And if hey, if you don't feel comfortable, let me know. You know, and that was kind of the approach. Whereas, you know, if you're going into a large budget production, perhaps the scene is three days instead of two hours. The approach might be a bit different.

MICHELA 25:55

Yeah, I I mean I would say the approach has been different on every project I've worked on. I've worked on very small projects, short films, um, independent experimental theater, and obviously I've worked on very big projects as well. You approach them each individually with the with the individuals and the artists involved and very carefully because it's it's someone's creative baby.

MAX 26:20

Yes, of course.

MICHELA 26:21

You know, I would argue that um you can have an intimacy coordinator on just about any budget. Um you may not be able to do everything that you had wanted or imagined on the budget you have, but I think that's true in every department.

MAX 26:38

Absolutely. Exactly. Now that you've produced a film, I think you can say that more than most, yes. Yeah. I I guess another uh maybe the more important question then is for actors who haven't worked with an interpacy coordinator yet, um, can you walk through the anatomy of a closed set and what what that would look like or how that's approached?

MICHELA 26:56

I mean a closed set simply means that only the people who absolutely have to be there to shoot the scene are there. And only the people who absolutely have to be on the monitor to see see the scene are uh are on the monitor. So what that is is different for every production. And uh a lot of our work is actually done in pre-production. I think this is something that people don't realize.

MAX 27:26

So they made in rehearsals.

MICHELA 27:28

Um yes, we can have rehearsals, but often for a screen we don't get those. So I'm not even talking about rehearsals yet.

MAX 27:35

Okay.

MICHELA 27:35

I'm just talking about production meetings. Um I do get a lot of calls uh from productions who are like, can you be on set tomorrow? And I sadly have to say no because I'm completely unable to do the work without pre-production. And pre-production includes at its most essential um one-on-one meetings with the actors who are performing intimacy so that we can get a sense of what are their boundaries, what are their concerns, what are their mental or physical health issues.

MAX 28:05

And again, this is even outside of rehearsals. We're not even talking about. This is outside of rehearsals.

MICHELA 28:09

This is pre-production. Yeah. And um meeting with the director to understand how do they want to shoot it, because if the director says to me, I'm just shooting a hand, that's a completely different scene and a completely different risk analysis than if they're doing like a wide shot, you know, in outside, you know, in a park. Um so uh, you know, you have to have those conversations and then you have to take all the information that you have from the director, from the producer, from the actors, from any other relevant departments, if it's you know a sexual assault scene, then you also have a stunt coordinator involved, you know, because there's if there's any violence involved, you have a stunt coordinator involved as well. You might, depending on the age of the actor, you might have the office of the children's guardian involved. You know, there are other players. If um it's a nude scene and um you know something affects the rating. If we have pubic hair, if we don't have pubic hair, you'd be surprised. We're gonna have hair and makeup involved, right? So uh we have to have these conversations in pre-production, and then we have a meeting um that with the uh director, the first AD, the cinematographer, and the producer or representative of production. And we and production decides in that meeting, they tell me in advance who has to be on that set for that scene. You know, because the DP will know, oh, I'm gonna be on the you know, the slider and I need somebody pushing me behind, or I need the focus pullers there in the room, or I don't need the foc focus pullers in the room, you know. And sometimes sound will say we can be behind a screen, we don't need to see anything, you know, as long as the sound equipment's in there. So those discussions are had beforehand and um a closed set list is made, right? It should be attached to the call sheet along with all the other information so that once we're on set, we're not having these discussions.

MAX 30:00

Let's talk about the physical tools of the trade, then like modesty garments and barriers and things like that. I mean that again, you touch on that on the one-on-ones with the actors in pre-production, like what what's expected, how comfortable you are, but also what we can do.

MICHELA 30:16

Yeah, I don't like to use the word comfortable because I think for a lot of actors acting isn't necessarily comfortable, and the kinds of roles and and states that you are uh entering um don't feel comfortable. So uh we look at what's safe, what's not gonna cause uh a physical injury or a psychological injury, and we define that as as something that you know interrupts your functioning for a long time afterward. Right? We're not throwing around the word trauma as as we do in daily life. I listened to your uh interview with Ivana Chubak, for example, and I love I love her of uh emotional daring. Yeah, the emotional daring is still anything can happen, you know. I but I'm just talking about the the physical boundaries, so you you know you're not actually gonna get shot. Yeah, you know you're not actually gonna get assaulted, right? And you can play with everything else. And so somebody uh having that that preparation and that knowledge, okay, I know what's gonna happen here, and I can't, I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to take part of my brain away to think about am I gonna be safe? I can use all of my brain to be emotionally daring. Yeah, because I know I'm safe. It's the scaffolding.

MAX 31:31

Yeah.

MICHELA 31:31

And so having that time to prepare, you know, because being naked can be very vulnerable thing, you know, on a set with everybody standing around you and cameras pointed at you and lights and knowing that your great grandchildren, you know, can see this footage one day. Um it's it's different than than being naked in real life. And uh and so having the time to to prepare for uh and know this is what I'm gonna do and this is what I'm okay doing, and I know what's gonna happen, uh, makes a huge difference to uh to the majority of actors. Yeah. So for all of those reasons, you know, I think if somebody is changing something significantly in the moment when you're on set, you can say, I haven't had time to um to consider this, and um, so I'm not willing to change what what we said we were gonna do. Um and if you want to change it, then I need a couple of days to think to think about it.

MAX 32:31

And it's not unreasonable.

MICHELA 32:32

Yeah. Or you know, let let's find a way to achieve what you want.

MAX 32:37

Yeah.

MICHELA 32:38

The story you're trying to tell. We're all here for the same objective. Yeah, that is within what we agree with. Exactly.

MAX 32:44

Yeah. You're a founding member of the Australian Intimacy Coordination Network. Yes. Uh is the network advocating for more awareness, I guess, within the acting community, so they know when to put their hand up, or or is it in um on the business side, uh making sure that there's a budget for intimacy coordinators to get involved at that early pre-production stage?

MICHELA 33:07

Aaron Ross Powell The network is really a peer support group for intimacy coordinators in the region because there are things about our industry, our law, our demographics, our union agreements, our experiences as um industry and and intimacy coordinators in Australia that are completely different from other countries. And I think there's an assumption that um, you know, whatever they say in the US or in England, yeah, copy paste here, and and that's just not true at all. It's it's um very it's a colonizer's mistake, isn't it? So um so the network's a great way for you all to a great way for you all to support each other, communicate with each other, brainstorm with each other, debrief with each other, offer each other jobs when um you know we can't do them, um, offer jobs to people who are maybe more appropriate for the role. So if it's um, you know, a First Nations uh story, I'm I'm gonna be putting a Kayla Newman, you know, up first is my suggestion uh as the most appropriate intimacy coordinator because the inner workings of intimacy within that culture uh are something that that she's part of. I love the the current saying around making any content around First Nations, nothing about us without us. And I feel like that should really go for most every culture.

MAX 34:32

It's not like we're not talking about something that's entirely unreasonable. Like it almost common sense.

MICHELA 34:37

Yeah.

MAX 34:37

You're trying to tell a story, be true to the story, and how do you do that?

MICHELA 34:40

Yeah. So I I think maybe that's one of the most important things that um certainly key intimate scenes members are trying to put across. Um as I mentioned, we have an Arabic uh intimacy coordinator, an Aboriginal intimacy coordinator. I'm my father's indigenous Panamanian, so Latin American, my mother's Aussie. And um we have uh in our training cohort this year, we have a deaf intimacy coordinator for the first time. So we're really trying to um put across the importance and uh of cultural competence and and the potential harm that you can do, particularly in the space of intimacy and storytelling, if you are walking in ignorant of the culture and the symbols of that culture and the harmful tropes and stereotypes that currently exist in our storytelling um that are particularly tied to intimacy. It's it's really interesting um how that's been used, how sex has been used to um to degrade uh particular populations. Yeah, I I think maybe that's gonna be something that I think is incredibly important. And tied to that is the importance of closure practices. So this is something I really wish schools would do more.

MAX 36:04

Acting schools?

MICHELA 36:05

Yes. So we're we're very good at teaching actors how to get into character.

MAX 36:10

Yeah.

MICHELA 36:10

And we're not great at teaching how to safely get out again. How to deroll.

MAX 36:14

I find that from personal experience, like music works for me as a way of sort of getting out of a really whether it's a violent fighting scene or whatever whatever it might be, if I'm having to be particularly vulnerable in a certain way that feels really super vulnerable for me, but someone else might be like, oh yeah, I'll use music to try and distract and help. Um what are some of the ways to help?

MICHELA 36:36

What we know from the evidence about um effective derolling and closure practices that are important for a large number of meetings, um a large number of reasons, um uh including potential secondary traumatization and all the things I discussed earlier about the the having real biological effects and needing your body needing to complete the stress cycle when you've been put in a very stressful situation.

MAX 37:02

You know, for me it's all about becoming that character in that moment. Yes. And if that character is being extremely vulnerable, then that's me. Yeah. And my body doesn't know.

MICHELA 37:12

Yeah. And it's not, I really want to emphasize it's not just the actor who's playing the victim or the survivor. This is often more difficult for the actor playing the perpetrator or the criminal or the, you know, the doing the thing that they in their realm.

MAX 37:27

The killer, the uh aggressor, whatever it might be, whatever the context is Yeah, that can be even harder to um perhaps even others in crew watching or being a part of it.

MICHELA 37:37

Yes, and witnessing uh like a very real simulated, you know, rape over and over. So there's there's certain populations that are more vulnerable to um to secondary traumatization in this way than than others. And certainly if you've had an experience in your own life that is similar, um that then that also makes you uh more vulnerable to having to sit through a a lifelike simulation of it over and over. Um But um the the important things we know about closure practices to make them more effective is that they need to be mirrored or bookended. So what you do at the the top of your day, you need to do at the end of your day. Um so that your brain recognizes it. So you know, if if you do a little handshake with your partner that you came up with, you know, do that at the top and do that at the bottom, and your brain goes, Oh, I recognize that. Okay, so that we're going into that space and we're coming back out of it now. Um the other thing that we know makes uh closure practices more effective is to say them out loud while you're doing them. And um, it may feel a bit silly, but to say, you know, um, goodbye, Hamlet, hello Michela, or hello Michela, uh, sorry, hello Hamlet, goodbye, Michela on the other side. Um it strengthens uh the effectiveness of that closure practice. So we actually there's a there's a whole body of evidence um uh around this that is is not being utilized that um this is where my expertise is and um that's so interesting because so much of our lives, our working professional lives as actors is trying to get into the into the moment.

MAX 39:22

Um and you know, there's five percent work and discussion on how to get out of it.

MICHELA 39:26

Yes, if if that. And then there's no discussion about other kinds of of um I'm gonna keep calling it secondary trauma that we experience. Um I remember in the documentary the show must go on, Sam Neal would talk about how the end of every production felt kind of like a divorce. Just you you become so close, you work on becoming so close to the people that you're working with. The better the actor you are, the more closer you are, right?

MAX 39:52

Because you're actively so engaged with everything and everyone around you. It's a great family sort of team environment.

MICHELA 39:58

You're actively trying to create chemistry. Um, and that this could be you know playing mothers or sisters or lovers or whatever it is. You might be months, you know, away from your family. Uh, you might be on tour um or on location, and uh and then all of a sudden you never speak to any of those people ever again. And this is another kind of thing that we go through. Post-production blues is another word I've heard, showmance.

MAX 40:26

Post production blues.

MICHELA 40:27

We've got these words in our vocabulary. We know they happen, right? Yeah, but we we've haven't had the science behind them, we haven't had the ways um that we can manage this before, and we have those now, and I would love to see those taught more in schools.

MAX 40:44

Absolutely. I I I think, yeah, absolutely. If it feels like we're in a different place from an industry perspective where producers won't sort of raise an eyebrow when we need to account for that the line in the budget for pre-production of intimacy coordinator. Is it commonplace that producers would factor in the need for an intimacy coordinator, or is it simply they're reminded of the need and then have to, or is it not even in consideration yet for most productions?

MICHELA 41:12

I think there's a little of each column still in existence. And um I think there's a certain segment that wouldn't wouldn't consider not hiring an intimacy coordinator. I think there's uh a lot of um well, we'll ask the actors, you know, what they want.

MAX 41:26

And 'cause I know early on there was some resistance. Yeah. I know some vocal um actors even uh and directors in America were like, what is this process getting in the way of my art?

MICHELA 41:38

Yeah, whenever a famous actor makes a comment, I get a phone call from a newspaper and I'm just like, you know, these people are not experts on on consent or intimacy coordination, they're just famous. Um but I think what's often not considered is you know the the very well-known celebrity often has usually has more power than the actor they're working with. Sometimes more power than the director or the producer, even. Um so that that doesn't make power dynamics disappear. It just changes how the power dynamics are. Yes, and and so they often don't think about the other person on the other side of that scene. And sometimes they only think about, for example, the woman, or they they only think about the person who's considered to be most valuable on set. So we don't think about, for example, stunt doubles and stand-ins and lighting doubles who you know sometimes get asked to sit in these positions on top of each other or something. Yeah, they they're human beings, yeah. Extras. They're they're all human beings. Yeah, they all need to be consenting to what they're asked to do.

MAX 42:47

Where can our listeners follow your journey and learn more about uh key intimate scenes and intimacy coordination as well?

MICHELA 42:53

Yeah, well, I think our website um has some great resources. I have a lot of free resources on the website, including uh a closure meditation, an entrance and an exit meditation made specifically for actors with all the evidence that um we know helps make them more effective. And it's read by Akala Newman, uh who's got a beautiful voice uh that you're listening to.

MAX 43:18

Lovely. It helps.

MICHELA 43:20

Um, and uh yeah, we have lots of other resources like what is an intimate scene and when do you need an intimacy coordinator? Um lots and lots of information on there. Um so that's keyintimatecenes.com. And we are on Instagram at Key Intimate Scenes, K-E-Y-I-N-T-I-M-A-T-E.

MAX 43:39

I'll be sure to put all the links in the show notes so it's even easier for people to find you. Excellent. Huge thanks, Michela Carattini, for pulling back the curtain on intimacy coordination and sharing such practical, actionable advice for actors at every stage of their career. If you want to learn more about the work and training offered, absolutely head over to keyintimatecenes.com. I will put all the links in the show notes. Um if you got something out of today's episode, do us a massive favour, hit subscribe, leave a review, and share this with a fellow actor who you think might need to hear it. Um I'm Max Belmonte. Thank you, Michela. Um keep creating, keep advocating for yourselves, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Two Unemployed Actors.

Speaker 5 44:19

Yay! Two unemployed actors.