What's it like working on a film set? Working as an extra

It's really tough to get into the film industry. So many people go to LA every year with the idea being that they are going to be the next big thing and almost all of them fail. I think it is rather important to kind of accept the fact that you are very unlikely to become famous, or even to get a speaking role.

The thing about working in films though is that chances are it is not nearly as glamorous as you might be thinking. The actors are worked very hard and even though we stand back and think that they all live these lives of complete luxury, that is just for the top folks. A vast majority of the people that work in and on films do not achieve greatness and the work is actually quite exhausting.

I have worked on a number of film sets though the years and mostly this is because I went to high school with a production assistant who is a part of a group that does contracts with a lot of films. Most of these films are lower budget but they all need a bunch of people in the background so they can create the illusion of real life. Getting work as an extra is actually really easy, but the job isn't likely to be what you think it is.

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First off, check your ego at the door. As an extra you are just one step above irrelevant as far as the production is concerned. If you fuck about, you will get kicked out and nobody is going to miss you. You are not supposed to stand out and if you try to do so, you will also get kicked out. The film is not about you and if you think that you are going to get your "big break" as an extra you are delusional.

There was a pretty decent TV comedy called Extras and I think it did a pretty good job of explaining what working in this field is like

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In all of these episodes Ricky Gervais' character and his friends spend most of the day simply sitting around waiting to be told to do something. This is essentially what working as an extra is all about. You will do a ton of sitting around and doing nothing. Nobody really cares whether you are comfortable or not and there is a lot of cigarette smoking going on.

There was one film that I worked on that had an outdoor scene that was merely an establishing shot for one single action sequence that involved a motorcycle. There were dozens of people involved and some animals as well. We spent a good 6 hours on this one scene and to this day I have no idea where that ended up or even what the film or TV series was. I know Clive Owen starred in it and that is about it.

Working as an extra is a good experience so that people can get a good idea of how not-so-glamorous the film industry is for people that are in it, and how huge the productions actually are. It was really amazing to me the amount of people that were involved in just that one shot and smaller shots that I was involved in had dozens of people involved even though the film had very little in the way of budget. As far as I know none of the scenes that I was in ever were involved in a huge blockbuster and I have only seen a couple of things where I can so much as pick myself out of the background, let alone see my face.

I suppose if there is one benefit of working as an extra is that you have virtually no responsibility and you get paid pretty well too. I did it on a weekend where I had nothing else planned and was paid something crazy like $250 just to mostly sit around waiting to be told where to stand next.

Costumes are changed, the people you are acting with changes, and often most films have the same extras in the background on a lot of different scenes. They do a pretty good job of making you look different enough so that people don't notice it is the same people in the background over and over.

I did find it a bit humorous on several occasions where I was in a group and some of the people there took it really seriously as if they were hoping that the director would take notice of them and put them in their next film or something. Let me tell you something: That is not going to happen.

I know the story of how Harrison Ford was a carpenter on a movie set or something along those lines but for the most part the director and producers aren't even going to notice that you are there at all. They often will not even speak to you and it is the job of assistant directors or production assistants to give you very basic instructions. If you stand out or cause a problem you might get warned once, then you will be kicked out and probably blocked from ever participating in this sort of thing ever again.

Your name will not be in the credits.

For me, I wouldn't do this anymore because now I know that any work of this sort is going to involve a very long day and nobody on the staff cares what your obligations are outside of the film set. If you claim that you have somewhere to be do you really think they are going to shut down the set because of you? ha!

I'm happy I did this a dozen times or so just so that I could see what it is like to work on a film set. Now that I have seen it I have a newfound respect for actors and especially the people who are on the other side of the cameras. These are seriously long days with no definitive beginning or end and it looks to be a very stressful environment. As an extra none of this stress is yours to worry about. You basically get paid a couple hundred dollars to just sit around all day and while that sounds great to some people, trust me when I say that it stops being awesome after the first day or so.