Words We Use
But before we launch into the guide proper, here are a few words on what we mean when we talk about kissing, nudity and sex on screen.
Firstly, to cover most scenarios we’ll use the word intimate to talk about a scene which contains kissing, nudity or sex. And we’ll make this a blanket term so it can cover a whole host of scenarios:
- flirting
- sexual relationships between characters & actors
- full or partial nudity
- kissing, touching and more
- simulated or unsimulated sex acts
- and so on…
So an “intimate scene” in the context of this book can mean a lot of things and can cover a lot of ground.
And there is one other important point we need to make: this book isn’t about making or acting in pornographic movies.
For most actors there is a fundamental difference between porn and mainstream film and although there is certainly an overlap between the two, what we are talking about here is giving advice to actors who are involved in mainstream films where there are intimate scenes of varying intensity.
And to clarify, by “mainstream” we mean films which have a storyline which happens to include one or more scenes of a sexual nature. Pornographic films, on the other hand, are films about sex which happen to include a storyline – or not!
