Consent

Consent is the agreement of everyone involved to every single act in front of the camera: informed, voluntary, related to concrete acts and withdrawable at any time. On set Consent is not a form that is signed in the morning and then ticked off, but a state that has to last through the whole shoot day.

The term comes from Anglo-American production practice and has established itself in German erotic productions as a working word, because it describes how people speak to each other on set. The legal side of the same thing runs in Germany under mutual consent and works by other rules.

The four features

• Informed. You know before you accept what is being shot: which acts, with whom, over which duration, how explicit the result is. Anyone who only learns on set what it is about cannot consent in an informed way.
• Voluntary. Agreement under pressure is not agreement. Pressure rarely arises through threats; more often through shortage of time, a waiting crew, hints about future bookings, or a fee that suddenly hangs on an extra act.
• Specific. An acceptance applies to what was discussed, not to everything that sits thematically beside it. Anyone who agrees to a scene has not thereby agreed to a second setup with different content.
• Withdrawable. A yes can be taken back, even in the middle of a running take and without a reason. That is the core of the right to stop.

Why it is asked again before every setup

A shoot day rarely runs exactly to plan. A setup does not work in the picture, a position is changed, someone spontaneously suggests a variant. Each of those changes touches the basis on which consent was given.

That is why professionally run sets briefly match before every new setup: what comes now, does that match what was discussed, does it work for everyone involved. Those two minutes prevent the situation in which someone realises in the middle of the take that they never agreed to what is running.

A no at that point is not a conflict but information for the production. Anyone who instead hears that you have already come this far is not working with Consent, but with bargaining pressure.

Consent is not courtesy towards women

The principle applies to everyone on set, regardless of gender and regardless of experience. An experienced performer may also refuse an act that was not discussed beforehand, and they too are asked before something changes.

In practice that means: arrangements do not run only through direction, but between everyone who is in the scene. Two people who have spoken to each other for five minutes before the shoot work together differently from two who first meet in front of the camera.

How you recognise a set that works with it

There is a pre-talk, and in it you are asked about your limits, not only about your availability. There is a named contact who is not directing. Changes to the process are announced, not pushed through. And if you hesitate, that is treated as an answer and not as the opening of a negotiation.

If all of that is missing, it is not proof of bad intent, but a hint of an unstructured production. Which rules apply on our bookings is on the safety page.