Prep for Success: Breakdowns, Creative Meetings, Riders, and the Legal Team

This section equips you with the skills to lead one of the most critical stages of intimacy coordination: pre-production planning. Before a scene is rehearsed or blocked, you must lay the foundation for safety, creative clarity, and legal alignment.

You’ll begin by learning how to read a script through the lens of intimacy—identifying not just obvious scenes, but subtleties in power, touch, nudity, and emotional exposure. We’ll show you how to craft clear, comprehensive intimacy breakdowns that flag these moments and guide conversations with key creatives.

From there, you'll learn how to lead and document creative meetings with directors, showrunners, and actors—ensuring shared language around tone, genre, blocking ideas, and boundaries. You’ll gain techniques for balancing respect for the director’s vision with advocacy for performer agency and safety, becoming a trusted partner in shaping the narrative with intention and care.

We’ll also train you in writing rider language—the contractual clauses that define nudity, simulated sex, or other sensitive performance terms. You’ll understand how to align these riders with the specifics of the script and your pre-production conversations, creating language that upholds actors agreements while supporting the artistic goals of the scene.

Finally, this section teaches you how to accurately communicate rider language and make sure is delivered on time. You’ll learn how to work with production and legal representatives to guarantee that performers receive their finalized riders within the SAG-AFTRA rider guidlines—providing clarity, legal protection, and peace of mind for everyone involved.

By the end of this module, you’ll have a replicable, professional-grade pre-production workflow that sets the tone for safe, consensual, and powerful storytelling.