Naked And Afraid No Blur
🔞 ALL INFORMATION CLICK HERE 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻
Naked And Afraid No Blur
It looks like you were misusing this feature by going too fast. You’ve been temporarily blocked from using it.
Nation & World
Newsletters
Log In
Subscribe
Originally published April 10, 2016 at 7:01 pm
The Discovery reality show “Naked and Afraid” features two contestants, both nude, in the wilderness in search of food, water and shelter. But the people who make these shows possible are the five full-time visual effects maestros who painstakingly blur all the private parts.
SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. — At first blush, it is a perfectly normal modern production office: standing desks, an indoor putting green, a casual dress code. There is a Whole Foods right around the corner.
At one desk, a 50-year-old man with gray hair and a gray goatee stared at a computer screen that displayed a fit man, completely naked, swinging from a rope, à la Tarzan. The clip played in a loop, over and over again.
At a nearby computer, a 43-year-old man scrolled through a spreadsheet, preparing for the day’s assignment.
“Boobs blur insufficient,” read one directive on the spreadsheet.
“More opaque crotch blur for him,” read another.
Welcome to the production offices of the Discovery reality show “Naked and Afraid.” For the uninitiated, the premise of “Naked and Afraid” reads a little like a “30 Rock” parody of a reality show: Two contestants, both nude, roam a faraway land in search of food, water and warmth while enduring the harsh elements in locales such as a Bolivian jungle or the Himalayan foothills.
That premise is certainly what draws viewers. But the people who make these shows possible are the five full-time visual effects maestros who painstakingly blur all the private parts.
“This is a totally weird work environment,” said Shaun O’Steen, the 45-year-old leader of the team, which calls itself the Blur Man Group. “I mean, what job can you say, ‘Oh, my God, look at that penis,’ and not have to worry about HR?”
His colleague, Erin Gavin, added, “I’m definitely used to looking at spreadsheets, but not like this.”
The stakes for a network like Discovery are high. The show produces real ratings for the network, as does its spinoff, “Naked and Afraid XL,” which debuted to the best numbers of any first-year unscripted cable show last year with an average of 3.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen. (The shows have broken through in other ways: “Saturday Night Live” had its own “Naked and Afraid” spoof this month featuring Peter Dinklage and Leslie Jones.)
The risks are high, too. After the first wave of success for “Naked and Afraid” in 2013, other naked-themed reality shows like TLC’s “Buying Naked” and VH1’s “Dating Naked” followed. Two years ago, a woman sued VH1 and the production team of the show “Dating Naked” after she contended that a blur did not fully cover her crotch. (The suit was thrown out.)
“It’s something we live in constant fear of,” said Steve Rankin, an executive producer, referring to prospective lawsuits. He added: “The Discovery Channel is not an R-rated network. It’s seen by families. We don’t want to upset people.”
Just a few years ago, these designers were having a difficult time finding regular work. They were all graphic artists, and most of them were moving through different jobs in television.
Then the production company Renegade 83 conceived of “Naked and Afraid” and Discovery gave it the green light and a Sunday night time slot. But the only way to do a kind of nude “Survivor” was to find people who could make it suitable for broadcast.
“People talk about the whole aspect of nudity,” O’Steen said. “That goes away really quick.” He added, “There’s a job you have to do.”
For O’Steen, the task is slightly complicated by one more fact: His desk is opposite that of a 27-year-old who is the only woman and, by far, the youngest member of the blurring group. She is also his wife.
“That’s the No. 1 question I get,” he said. “’Don’t you feel weird about your wife looking at naked men all day?’ Well, I look at naked women all day.”
That does not mean they do not have their disagreements. Later in the day, O’Steen and his wife, Ilgin Esemenli, got into a debate over whether fake breasts or real ones were easier to blur.
“The real ones are easier to work with,” she said.
While her colleagues insist there is a numbness to all the nudity that settles in after being exposed to it all day, Esemenli confesses that sometimes she cannot help but wince.
“I’ve seen things that I’ve never seen before,” she said, looking a little pale.
She has learned to set limits, such as spending her lunchtime surfing the Web. Lunch and the unvarnished human body do not mix, she said.
The job is not for everyone. O’Steen estimates that about 15 people have cycled through over the years, many finding it all a little overwhelming.
“One person didn’t last very long, maybe two weeks tops,” O’Steen said. “He said, ‘I just can’t.’”
And like any job, it can be tedious. They labor at their computers using a stylus and a tablet to create an amoebalike blur. It requires examining each episode, frame by frame, finding and blurring and carefully replacing anything — like a leaf — that got covered while blurring. It takes at least 50
The point of the editing process is to make the blur as elegant as possible, so that it does not disrupt the viewing experience. Compared with some other shows, the blurring on “Naked and Afraid” is smaller and smoother.
“A blur is not necessarily appealing,
It took a season for the team to perfect the art of the blur, and they can be sensitive to slights about the work they do.
“They’ll discount it: ‘Oh, it’s just a blur job,’” said Johnny Hestich, a 49-year-old designer, referring to others in his industry. “But it can get really hard. I’ve been doing this for three years, and I’m thinking, ‘Man, this is kicking my butt.’ ”
Even so, it is hard to escape the fact that the show is about naked people.
“We were walking by the other day,” said Mathilde Bittner, an executive producer of the show, describing a scene at the Blur Man Group’s workstation. “There are these crazy notes. And it said, ‘More vagina,’ ‘extend the crotch shot,’ or ‘bug biting vagina.’ ”
Contestants have been known to occasionally make requests. (“Some of the guys have asked for bigger blurs and have been like, ‘Help a brother out,’” Rankin said.) But the blurring is not meant to titillate. Better-looking people do not get smaller blurs, the producers said, though people whose bodies are in less than top shape may get bigger ones.
To date, they said, no untoward body parts had slipped through the vetting system and onto television screens.
The last line of defense is Adam Burns, 34, a supervisor whose specialty is spotting what others have missed. “I can recognize a nipple from 600 yards in the background behind a leaf at this point,” he said.
Reflecting on the work, he began to laugh.
“Thankfully we stay pretty hectic around here,” he said, “so I don’t have a lot of time to sit back and think about the path my life has taken.”
If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.
An error occurred while retrieving sharing information. Please try again later.
0:00 / 0:14 • Watch full video Live
site categories
News
Film
TV
Awards
Lifestyle
Business
Global
Video
Podcasts
Sustainability
Subscriber Support
Get the Magazine
Customer Service
Back Issues
E-edition Access
The Hollywood Reporter
About Us
Advertise
Careers
Contact Us
Accessibility
Legal
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Privacy Preferences
AdChoices
Follow Us
Icon Link
Plus Icon
facebook
Icon Link
Plus Icon
twitter
Icon Link
Plus Icon
instagram
Icon Link
Plus Icon
youtube
The Hollywood Reporter is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2022 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All Rights Reserved. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is a registered trademark of The Hollywood Reporter, LLC.
Our Sites
Artnews
BGR
Billboard
Deadline
Fairchild Media
Footwear News
Gold Derby
IndieWire
Robb Report
Rolling Stone
SheKnows
She Media
Soaps
Sourcing Journal
Sportico
Spy
StyleCaster
The Hollywood Reporter
TVLine
Variety
Vibe
WWD
optional screen reader
About Us
Advertise
Careers
Contact Us
Icon Link
Plus Icon
The Hollywood Reporter is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2022 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All Rights Reserved. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is a registered trademark of The Hollywood Reporter, LLC.
Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter
Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter
"We've had some guys ask for a bigger blur," says Erin Gavin as he gets candid on why "the crotch is the easiest" and butts are OK to show.
A version of this story first appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe .
“Do you have a problem with nudity?” That’s the first question I was asked during my interview.
Obviously not, because it’s naked bits all day long here. Let’s say somebody’s building a fish basket, working with their hands in front of their boobs or their junk — there’s a frame-by-frame process of cutting out arms and other things from the footage, putting the blur over across the original plate and layering the rest back in. Our job is to make it seamless for viewers so they’re less aware of the blurs. It can be extremely tedious work, so we’ve seen people come and go from here. They just don’t have it in them.
We like to think the fake boobs are easier to pixelate because they don’t move around as much — one of our guys, Shaun O’Steen , says he never really appreciated fake breasts until he started at this job — but, realistically, the crotch is easiest. There’s only one, and arms rarely get in the way.
We just did an episode that was predominantly male. That’s a little easier, but we’ve had guys ask for a bigger blur. We won’t necessarily accommodate that. We strive to make them as plain as a Barbie doll.
There are instances where we have to blur more than the actual body parts, like danglers. That’s when you see a shadow that makes your mind think you’re looking at a penis. And we’ve got several scenarios with the butt blur. Currently the general stipulation is to show the butt unless someone has a wide gait.
We have a lot of in-house terms. There’s the weenie waggler — that’s the stuff moving around. There’s the nip slip, of course. Side boob is popular. Our mandate is to cover the side boobs as much as possible. We’ve got boob shad — you have to be aware of their shadows as well — and, if they’re in water, we call them floaters. There’s also spillage, peen, naughty bits, the chinchilla … I’d explain that one, but you probably don’t want to know.
The nudity itself isn’t gross. But we first see these people fresh out of their hotels. As the days go on, 21 of them for those who last, they become more deteriorated and you start seeing things. Things like ticks in places they shouldn’t be. That can be a little gross.
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter
Send us a tip using our anonymous form.
How Old Is Cree Cicchino
Terri Nunn Nude
School Girl Lesbian Sex