Going Hollywood
A great many people are sucked in by the glamour of Hollywood. Your first day, you find yourself surrounded by beautiful actor, talented artists, and an endless supply of craft services.
How To Randomize A Crowd
Most of the time, you’re not going to deal with more than a handful of extras in any one scene. That’s because extras are people, too, and people cost a lot of money. Still, every once in a while, you’ll get a crowd scene. The problem with a crowd of extras is that, at a […]
Managing Background Actors
If you follow me on Twitter, you might have heard some of my frustrations with background actors on a small shoot I was helping out on. First of all, bear in mind that I definitely did not say any of these things on set. That would be even less professional than the extras{{1}} I was […]
Debating Actors
There’s an old TAPA post about wrangling extras that still gets comments from time to time, because it has some unflattering things to say about background actors. Extras are basically untalented actors… They tend to not listen to instruction, dawdle, or just plain wander off. If you’ve ever been a camp counselor or grade school […]
Do As I Do, Not As I Say
An AD by the name of Jason Roberts recently commented on a post from a couple months ago: I would like to think that you didn’t actually call background artists “untalented actors”. Maybe I am misreading your sense of humor. Just in case it wasn’t in jest, I would like to point out how very […]
From Extra to PA
Kate writes in: What do you think about someone who works as an extra (background) to network with crew? I laughingly find it easy to get a job as an extra (they call me pretty often), but harder to get a job as a PA, since that’s a “who you know” job versus a “what […]
Another Way to Network
I was hanging out on the set today, and I overheard a background actress talking with one of the set PAs. At a certain point, she asked “casually” (those are sarcastic air quotes; I actually paused while writing this to wriggle my fingers in the air): “Say, who’s in the office right now? Is [showrunner’s […]