Consent & Safety

AORTA films’ shoots operate on the basis of
explicit, ongoing, enthusiastic consent.

AORTA films collaborates with our performers to devise each film’s content and make agreements for the shoot well in advance of shooting. All crew and performers engage in transparent discussions about shoot schedule, expectations, and crediting. Pay rates for all crew and performers are shared with full transparency across all team members. Scene negotiations are based on explicit, enthusiastic consent, and undertaken in advance of the shoot, with check-in’s on the day of shooting to update shifting needs and desires. Performers determine a plan for barrier use with their co-stars and director, and share recent STI test results before shooting begins. All cast, crew, and collaborators are all encouraged to call pause or stop at any time, for any reason, to ask for adjustments or changes that prioritize their safety, comfort, autonomy, and mental health. In creating films, our first priority is the deep respect for and holistic well-being of our performers, crew, and collaborators.

Following the shoot as we move into post-production, we are committed to representing performers and collaborators in our films with the pronouns, body part words, and identity descriptors that they have supplied us with. We do our best to represent performers and scenes in a way that feels most authentic to them, and always welcome updates or edits if a performer would like us to alter the language we’re using.

In addition to AORTA’s short films and features, the artists that AORTA curates for Community Hardcore and BEDDED are paid for the distribution of their content, with transparently negotiated contracts and ethical, transparent pay rates. We use the same post-production guidelines for these programs that we do for our shorts and features, and utilize performer-supplied language for our writing, marketing, and tagging.

We believe that a deeply rigorous practice of safety, communication, and care is what allows us to be adventurous, experimental, and ambitious. By “paying for your porn” you help us maintain rigorous standards and ethical pay rates for all of AORTA’s work.