{"id":2445303,"date":"2026-06-04T20:30:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T20:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2445303"},"modified":"2026-06-04T20:30:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T20:30:03","slug":"s-j-chiro-talks-being-supernatural-intimacy-coordinator-on-magic-hour-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/s-j-chiro-talks-being-supernatural-intimacy-coordinator-on-magic-hour-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"S.J. Chiro talks being supernatural intimacy coordinator on \u2018Magic Hour\u2019 | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cMagic Hour,\u201d the new romantic drama from director Katie Aselton about a couple who take a little trip out into the desert to work through some big challenges, has many tricks up its sleeves.<\/p>\n

In addition to boasting plenty of indie talent, with Aselton (\u201cThe Puffy Chair<\/a>\u201d) starring alongside Daveed Diggs (\u201cHamilton<\/a>\u201d) while working from a script she co-wrote with her husband Mark Duplass (\u201cBackrooms<\/a>\u201d), there\u2019s also a core supernatural element that arises fairly early on. But rather than take us away from the relationship of the couple, it brings us closer to both of them, including in the film\u2019s intimate scenes.<\/p>\n

For these, the film turned to S.J. Chiro, the veteran Seattle filmmaker who recently directed the locally filmed \u201cEast of the Mountains<\/a>\u201d and has also begun increasingly working as an intimacy coordinator<\/a>. This means she\u2019s one of the go-to people helping choreograph intimate scenes on productions like \u201cThe Year of the Fox<\/a>,\u201d \u201cPenelope<\/a>\u201d and now \u201cMagic Hour.\u201d For Chiro, it\u2019s about making sets a supportive, safe place both for actors and the crew working on them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intimacy coordinator works really hand-in-hand with the director. They\u2019re there to actually make things better and take pressure off of the director,\u201d Chiro said, comparing it to being like a stunt coordinator in how the role serves the film. \u201cThe collaboration is so fun, so great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though the supernatural twist of \u201cMagic Hour\u201d complicated the intimate scenes, Chiro said her work remained the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to give anything away, but it was a kind of spiritual visitation. But the truth is, the actors were engaging and touching,\u201d Chiro said. \u201cSo we treat it the same way we always do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chiro said she now hopes intimacy coordinators can become a standard role on productions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just work that I really believe in,\u201d Chiro said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also a believer in this work is Mel Eslyn, president of Duplass Brothers Productions, which produced \u201cMagic Hour.\u201d (She also directed the aforementioned \u201cPenelope\u201d and the recent \u201cBiosphere.<\/a>\u201d) She said that, after experiencing sets that weren\u2019t safe when it came to intimate scenes, she\u2019s made it so all Duplass Brothers productions now have an intimacy coordinator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw how (an intimacy coordinator) affected, in a positive way, everybody on set, not just the actors. So since then, I made it a companywide requirement. Even if we can\u2019t have them on set, they\u2019re available remotely, so a safe space is created regardless,\u201d Eslyn said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, you can\u2019t shoot a movie without a director or a cinematographer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eslyn said rather than limiting a filmmaker\u2019s overall vision, intimacy coordinators free up the actors to explore more areas of vulnerability, which was a key part of her film \u201cBiosphere.\u201d After working with Heather Mar\u00eda \u00c1cs, who she said was a \u201cgreat\u201d intimacy coordinator on that film, Eslyn was determined to never go back to having productions without one. It\u2019s not just about serving the film, but ensuring productions don\u2019t put anyone in unsafe or uncomfortable positions, which Eslyn said she\u2019d experienced personally when working on a local project years ago.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a Seattle production that very much scarred a lot of us,\u201d Eslyn said, recounting how she was asked to serve as a stand-in actor due to budget constraints in what she identified as being \u201cvery unsafe\u201d intimate scenes. She now considers intimacy coordinators critical to ensuring bad experiences like she had don\u2019t happen to others. \u201cWhen all this stuff (the role of intimacy coordinators) started to come up, I was like, \u2018Oh, I was put in a very uncomfortable position.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For Chiro, no matter the production or budget, she sees the work of an intimacy coordinator as being intertwined with both making sets safe environments and creating the best films possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people ask me to do this work, they\u2019re doing it for a reason,\u201d Chiro said. \u201cIt\u2019s a wild world on set.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMagic Hour,\u201d the new romantic drama from director Katie Aselton about a couple who take a little trip out into the desert to work through some big challenges, has many tricks up its sleeves. In addition to boasting plenty of indie talent, with Aselton (\u201cThe Puffy Chair\u201d) starring alongside Daveed Diggs (\u201cHamilton\u201d) while working from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2445304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2445303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SJ-Chiro-talks-being-supernatural-intimacy-coordinator-on-\u2018Magic-Hour.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2445305,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445303\/revisions\/2445305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2445304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}