Anyone here been an extra? You know, those chumps in the background who are just glorified scenery, like a tree or a rock.
I have sketchy memories of it now, but I did a bit of extra work back when I was a teenager through my aunt who had started to get into that sort of thing. Was a bit of a laugh at the time, I remember being an enthusiastic audience member in the background clapping during an episode of Pobol Y Cwm.
The weirdest one though was some two-part BBC Wales drama whose name I’m not sure I ever found out. Not weird in the sense of its subject matter, which as an extra I may never know, but weird because the scene we were extras in was of a big night out in Clwb Ifor Bach. So there’s me, a self-conscious teenager dancing (I never danced back then) with a glass of flat pepsi in my hand, pretending to be drunk and having a great time.
It was fucking traumatising at the time. Crew members would dance up to you and say things like “go dance with that group over there” where I’d have to mosey up to complete strangers and dance with them like we went way back and it wasn’t a fucking weird thing to do in any way. It was bad enough that dancing played to every insecurity I had, but the fact that we had to do it in silence was eating me alive. No-one addressed the fact that if there’s no music, there’s no tempo, so everyone would be dancing to their own arbitrary beat. Instead, each group just kind of synchronised with themselves, shutting the rest of the room out as they strained their forced-relaxed smiles on their faces.
Kinda wish I knew what that program was now, as I’m morbidly curious to see if I even made it into the background of it, or to see how awkward that scene looked with people dancing to non-existent rhythms.
Had the option to be an extra or work in the wardrobe department on Band of Brothers. Choose the wardrobe department. Good pay, good food, didn’t have to get cold and dirty for half the day.
As mentioned before my mum did it for years. Here she is:
Used to get really good money sometimes and worked quite a bit (10-15 days a month).
She was an extra in the Phantom Menace and got paid for autographs at a convention, was even offered to be flown out to the US for a convention. It took a still from the film for even me to be able to spot her.
Used to be weird watching TV and she would crop up somewhere unexpectedly, very distracting.
I haven’t, but a friend of mine does from time to time. Remember him telling me he was in something involving dogs a while ago. The dogs got paid more than the extras.