5 Tricks Actors Use to Avoid Arousal While Filming Steamy Sex Scenes

While some sex scenes in movies are comical, there are others that last just a minute with barely enough time to care about yet forward the plot line that two people did the deed.

There's also those where the camera pans away leaving everything to our imagination while solidifying that the two actors' characters got together.

Then there's the intense and quite seductive intimate scenes in movies where the camera angles pan slowly, dissolve, and linger sometimes lasting several minutes. Those are the scenes that sometimes feel very voyeuristically awkward or uncomfortable because they're so real, very long, or just shy of pornographic.

Even television shows streaming on our favorite platforms have these very intimate sex scenes that would never have been allowed on network, primetime shows.

Now we've always heard that sex scenes are not even close to what they appear on the big or small screens. If anything, there's lots of cuts or pauses in filming, body doubles jumping in, and even laughter with these embarrassing shots. Plus the camera lights, microphones, all the crew on the set, and cameras right in the actors' faces.

But, arousal can happen, especially with male actors, in these sexy scenes according to US Magazine.

The Five Tricks

Push-ups and jumping jacks help the situation by relocating blood according to US Magazine.

Intimacy coordinators are also part of these movie scenes. They make the entire thing feel like work, because it is a job, after all. There's literally an entire interview process and meeting with several people discussing the layout of the scene taking any excitement out of it, however if arousal happens intimacy coordinator will stop the scene for a logistics conversation.

According to the Backstage website, modesty garments are also used to cover or shield parts of the body which blocks any actual contact that could naturally arouse.

Finally, the director is often giving lots of direction while shooting the scene; where to put hands, how to move, and so forth which also helps along with using several takes to shoot the scene.

Thanks to editing, voila, that romantic or steamy scene appears real.