Transcription
See that? I once spent over 12 hours on the set of the AMC television show Turn, pushing a wheelbarrow for 20 ft through the mud for take after take just for the sake of being that 1 second blur in the background of a single shot. I'm not saying this to complain.
In many ways, it's literally the job of the background talent or extras as they're often called to be present but to go unnoticed. Sorry. To form a kind of texture for the scene. And while extras play an incredibly crucial role in bringing film and TV to life by populating the area around the main characters to make sure the world of the film looks and feels realistic. Most of the time that's basically all they're used for. A blur of nameless bodies that are almost a kind of set design, adding context and realism to the story without drawing the audience's attention away from the story itself.
But you can also use them like this. or like this or this. As with any aspect of film making, there are some movies and filmmakers that defy the norm and use extras in fascinating, brilliant, or artful ways. Here's a subtle example of what I mean. Let's say you have a classic scene from a romance where two potential lovers are walking through a park. You could just fill their surroundings with the usual crowd of suspects, but what if you wanted to subtly highlight the emotional distance between these two leads in this scene, the romantic gap that they're afraid to close? That's exactly what Selen's song does in this scene from past lives, where every single background extra in the scene is romantically paired off as a couple. It inverts the way these scenes usually play out, as if all the extras are the ones in the romance movie and the two leads are the characters just going about their lives. It's not the kind of thing that's going to jump out at most viewers, but it's a fantastic little flourish that reinforces the story's subtext.
>> Book about metals.
>> A bad performance from an extra can potentially create a distraction. They might spike the lens by looking directly into the camera like this woman does in Michael Man's Heat.
>> Save the phony tears.
>> Or they might do something distractingly unrealistic like this kid in North by Northwest does by plugging his ears before a gunshot even happens. or they might make the easiest error like I did on another day I was an extra on turn by slipping into dramatic overacting.
Despite all the ways an extra can flub a scene, it's rare to find examples that actually make it into a final film or television show and are noticeable enough to actually matter. These things happen, but it's the job of the directors, the assistant directors who work directly with the extras and the editors to notice the flubs and work around them.
So, when I think of background talent that isn't quite great, it's usually not because of a bad performance from an extra, but instead the absence of extras where it feels like they should be present. In some movies like Heat, you find the world surrounding the main characters, teeming with people. Streets, cafes, bars, and offices all have other people going about their lives alongside whatever the main characters are doing. And then sometimes you watch a movie and you notice it feels a little artificial in a way that's hard to put a finger on. There can be many things that cause this, but occasionally it's because the locations in the film feel just a little too empty. This is the kind of thing that's not immediately noticeable in any given scene, but over the course of a film can really add up to create a world that feels uncanny. For an example of this, look at this scene from The RIP compared to a similar kind of scene from Heat.
Of course, I'm not saying quantity of extras is automatically better. Not all stories require a lot of background talent. Some take place in more isolated environments, or the sense of emptiness created by a lack of extras could be a deliberate storytelling choice. But it's also a way you can kind of cut corners in film making that isn't immediately noticeable, but where you'll ultimately feel the absence. Extras can kind of be like the seasoning that tie a scene together, really adding a sense of life and visual interest and motion to a film.
A lack of extras isn't always a creative oversight, though. There are a lot of practical reasons why a film might have less of them. They're an added expense. They add complexity and difficulty to blocking and shooting scenes. And more recently, CO played a big part in reducing the number of extras on set. And I think some of the habits that were developed during that time have lingered. But I think there are a lot of cases where the added cost and effort of having plenty of extras is worth it. And there are lots of directors working who make an effort to use extras in interesting ways.
In the current era of filmm, Scorsesei might be the king of this. In movies like The Irishman, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Killers of the Flower Moon, he consistently uses large groups of extras to an amazing effect, bringing these period worlds alive. Extras play a special role in period films, essentially acting as models for the costumes, which are often a big part of what defines the era. I really love what Scorsesei and his costume designer do in The Irishman. Often creating these beautiful color palettes for each crowd, treating the extras as a canvas on which the costume designer can paint.
Extras can also help build out the world of a film in science fiction. Movies like Bladeunner rely heavily on the extras and their costumes to help build the world. But maybe my favorite example of this is the dystopian apocalypse picture, Children of Men. Alfonso Kuran uses wide-angle lenses with deep focus to give us a wide vivid view of the world that surrounds the lead character. And this world is jam-packed with interesting characters actually doing stuff. What the background talent is doing in this film is crucial to defining the nature of the world and what life is like for people there. These extras aren't just pantomimeing conversations or walking to unknown destinations. They all seem to have something they're trying to accomplish or need. And even if we don't understand exactly what they're doing or why, the sense of desperation that builds up throughout the film is palpable. And much of that is created by this incredible background ensemble.
Plurabus, the new show from Vince Gilligan is another science fiction story where the extras play a critical role. Here, almost everyone on Earth has become part of a giant hive mind. And a lot of how this is depicted is through how the people who fill the world walk and move.
Sometimes having a ton of extras in your film is just necessary for basic realism. For example, if you're telling a story about war, you might need a huge army. One way you could accomplish this is by doing what David Lean did for Lawrence of Arabia by actually employing a real army. Some of the most noticeably impressive uses of extras are large crowds like this. The 1982 film Gandhi currently holds the record for most extras in a scene, clocking in at over 300,000 people for Gandhi's funeral. It seems unlikely a crowd this big will ever be amassed for a film again.
These days, it's just too easy to extend a crowd using VFX. What do you do if you're someone like Christopher Nolan who's dedicated to using as many practical effects as possible? In that case, you're stuck with more old school lofi methods. In Dunkerk, he already had 6,000 extras on his beach, but he needed to boost the size of his army. So, way in the back, he attached a bunch of cardboard cutouts to a fence.
Using background talent to create realism isn't just a numbers game, though. Often how extras are placed and move is just as important. If you watch classic studio films, you'll see scenes that have plenty of extras, but having the extras obscure the view of the camera for an extended period of time would have seemed ridiculous. Yet, this is exactly what Robert Altman does in the player. deliberately planting a whole table full of cyclists in distractingly colorful riding gear in this restaurant and then having them get up and block the view of the camera for an extended period of time mid-cene. Both in the name of realism and as a kind of visual gag, you can find less glaringly obvious versions of this move in many other movies. Filmmakers who do this are using extras to deliberately create a less than ideal shooting environment. And it's exactly that lack of a perfect view of the subject that lends the shot a sense of realism. It's as if we're seeing the camera struggling to capture something that's really happening instead of a perfectly choreographed fiction.
Another important part of realism in background talent, though, is making sure they look the part. For period films, casting people with haircuts that fit the period is important, but getting a diverse and realistic set of extras can take a lot of extra casting effort. One way directors find extras with the right look is by deliberately casting nonprofessional actors. In Terrence Mall: Days of Heaven, for example, they needed people who both looked like farm workers and who knew how to act like farm workers. So, he just went ahead and hired a bunch of farm workers for the film.
But another more risky approach to getting ultra realistic background talent to fill your scene is to use people who aren't extras at all. This is what Shawn Baker did for parts of the Florida project. Shooting on the streets as his leads acted in the midst of real people and then having producers go in and speak to people afterwards in order to secure permission and the necessary releases to use the footage. Don't take this as legal advice, but in some places it is legal to film people on public streets without their permission. And some filmmakers take advantage of this by just filming scenes on public streets so that they don't have to fill streets with extras.
>> I'm walking here. I'm walking here.
This approach has a lot of challenges though because you don't want those people to notice you're filming and look into the camera. The trick is to keep a very low profile or to hide the camera somewhere. Gdard did this in Breathless by hiding his cameraman in a little cart. Jafar Panay does this in it was just an accident by hiding a camera in a car. Not just so that people in the background don't notice, but also to avoid being seen and caught by the Iranian government after they banned him from making movies. Shawn Baker and director Soqing shot left-handed girl in a fully operational night market in Taipei, shooting on an iPhone to be less noticeable. It works amazingly well. The environment of the film feels incredibly authentic because it is. And only occasionally do you catch one of the people in the market noticing that someone is filming.
But what if your story requires your very recognizable lead actor to run in his underwear through one of the most crowded places on Earth? This is exactly what Alandro Initu needed for Birdman. But closing down Time Square and paying to fill it up with paid actors would have been way too expensive for the film's budget. So they decided to have Michael Keaton actually run through a busy time square. Here the reaction from real people to a famous actor in his underwear running through Time Square isn't a problem because in the story that's what's happening. A famous actor is running through Time Square in his underwear. So it makes sense for people in the scene to be reacting. But you still have to protect your crew and you want to keep people from looking at the camera. So, they placed a few paid extras strategically on the street for crowd control and hired a drum line to create a distraction and then just shot the scene.
Ultimately though, for me, the most interesting uses of extras are not the most realistic ones. Selen Song's Park full of couples perfectly paired off in idealistic love isn't realistic, but it helps tell the story. Some directors push this kind of thing much further, turning the use and choreography of extras into its own art form.
One of the directors who does this you're probably already familiar with is Wes Anderson. I like his use of extras the most in the French Dispatch where the background talent is carefully posed in these frozen tableau. When the extras do move in this movie, they move with a kind of clock-like precision. But Wes Anderson didn't invent this. He's just following in a tradition of filmmakers who have perfected the art of staging extras.
One of the most notable of these directors is Akira Kurasawa, who would carefully choreograph the movement of his extras within a scene to create a sense of rhythm and composition in motion. For example, look at how this crowd of journalists creates a perfect separation to balance the composition where this character is standing in the foreground. Extras in his films will often move in a flow from one perfectly balanced composition to another. Or they might move their heads together in carefully timed synchronicity. Curasawa was the master of this, but you can see extras used similarly for composition and rhythm in a lot of Spielberg's work. Notice the role extras play in this scene from Jaws to create a kind of motion and activity in the background or the way they're used in this one.
It's rare to see a scene shot like this today. But if there's a director who has pushed the limits of choreographed chaos further than any other, it might have to be Jacqu Tati. In his masterpiece, Playtime, the way the people that populate his immaculately constructed post-modern city are dressed and moved create this kind of expressionistic representation of modern reality.
In some ways, it starts to break down our idea of what an extra even is. For example, in this scene from La La Land, would we call these people extras? probably not usually because they're performing a choreographed dance and they're the subject of the scene, but the dance is being performed by people who would typically occupy the space in the story that is being occupied by extras in a film. That's much closer to the way extras are being used in playtime. They're not performing a dance, but they're also not just moving around in a naturalistic way in the background while the subject is in the foreground. They are the subject. Look at these extras who are just standing in the back doing nothing but slowly rotating. Tati constructs scene after scene that might look normal at first glance, but which becomes hilariously absurd the closer you examine it. A gag might be built just out of the contrasting costumes and postures of two extras that are sitting next to each other. Through this, Tati constructs a kind of maximalist chaos. In many shots, there's no clear subject or lead character. The subject is instead the chaos. Your eyes might land on this woman who's exhausted from dancing and then jump to the waiter tripping and the patrons reacting before drifting over to whatever's happening here. The point of these shots isn't so much to construct intelligible action as much as to capture an overwhelming feeling and heighten its absurdity for comedic effect.
Swedish director Roy Anderson also uses extras expressionistically but at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum in songs from the second floor. It's as if every character, extras included, has had the life sucked out of them. They are motionless and dejected in the background. Occasionally, wandering groups of business people pass by whipping each other. For one of the most interesting uses of extras I've ever seen put to film, watch this moment.
You don't need incredible acting to be a good extra. Most of the time, you're just performing mundane tasks that we all do in everyday life. Standing in a crowd, walking down a street, having conversations at a restaurant. But it does take a little bit of skill. You have to perform these things as naturalistically as possible for long periods of time while silently pantomimeing. For the sake of getting clean sound, you have to pretend to party without actually yelling or partying. You have to pretend to talk without actually talking. And despite the allure of Hollywood, it's relatively unlamorous work. My time on turn involved standing in an uncomfortable period costume in the cold for hours waiting to be told what to do. But hanging out on a film set can be fun. And getting to see the inner workings of the machine can be very cool if you're interested in the craft of film making. Being an extra is probably the easiest way the average person has a chance to do just that. I just wouldn't expect it to be a stepping stone to your big break. While some people like Brad Pitt have been extras before they eventually became lead talent, getting access to a speaking role because you were an extra is extremely rare.
It's entirely possible to make a great movie with little to no background talent, but for many films, the extras are one of the most important elements in bringing the world to life in a realistic way. And I appreciate the role the people who show up for these parts play in the art of film making as well as the filmmakers who go the extra mile to make sure their background talent is elevating the story in unique and interesting ways. So much of the art of film making is about these kinds of little details. the 12 hours of work for a single blur.
Like extras, I'm fueled by coffee, but getting coffee shop quality coffee at home can be a total hassle. You have to keep your beans fresh, get your grind right, time your pour over correctly, etc., etc. So, usually at home, I settle for mediocre flavor, or I lock in on that one cup I know I can get right. It's a safe bet, but lacks variety. Cometier, my sponsor for this video, makes it so much easier to explore the world of coffee by providing an entirely new way to make it. They precision brew it at 10 times the strength and then flash freeze it into these little pucks to lock in peak flavor. These capsules let you make a perfect cup of coffee in seconds with no machine. When hot coffee, just pop out the frozen puck and add hot water. It sounds hyperbolic, but I'm not kidding when I say that. Every coffee I've tried so far from Cometier hits that sweet spot of perfectly balanced and smooth while still maintaining the bold unique flavor you want from higherend roasts like this. Sourced from award-winning roasters like Intelligencia out of Chicago or the incredible Counterculture and Black and White, both out of my home state, Commenter has an amazing selection to choose from. My favorite so far is the Decaf Blackat Espresso from Intelligencia. I love being able to have great coffee later in the day. And this is some of the best flavor I've found in any decaf. Being able to have that in seconds at home is awesome. If you prefer an iced latte over hot, you can just start with milk and ice and then drizzle in a thawed capsule and stir. Or go with an iced coffee by doing the same thing with water. For me, a Cometier has added a lot of variety to my coffee routine. It's perfect for the days where I'm locked in editing or writing a video. I can have an afternoon pickme up without having to take the time to break out of the flow or needing to compromise on the flavor or quality of the coffee I'm drinking. It's fun to be able to try a much greater variety of roasts while still knowing I'm getting the ideal flavor every time. These little capsules are fully recyclable. They have no microplastics and they're super portable. I recently took a couple with me on a backpacking trip for easy, perfect coffee mid-hike. Camera departments, grips, give it a try. If you haven't tried Cometier yet, you can get $30 off of your first order by going to comet.com/toomasflight or by clicking the link in my description. Thanks again to Cometier for sponsoring this video.