Oh I absolutely love working with extras. They get treated poorly by a lot of crew which is infuriating to me as they’re essential to the shot and world building. I’ve made many for life friends thanks to working with them.

So let’s take a scene I set for Pachinko (Korean historical series). It was a fish market where the Japanese police beat a Korean resistance member and drag him away.

We had: • 5 officers + 2 cast officers. • 50 vendors / fishmongers • 10 children • 30 shoppers • 20 fishermen

We had stalls set up with real fish and eels and squid (it stunk after a few days in the summer shooting..) and we’d place the merchants at their stalls. I’d map and photograph them, note the name and we’d remember the position. Then we placed the shoppers and gave them paths to take and merchants to stop and talk at. Then we have everyone react to the scene as the officers drag the man out and throw him to the ground and get their emotions playing. The kids we have to have either running around or helping the parents. The fishermen are pulling nets up over the dock and unloading deliveries.

You have to constantly refer to the monitors to see the frame, ask the 1st AC (camera operators) how they move in the shot, and then time out when people should cross camera (wipe) or counter the actors movements.

The worst is when they do a pick up of a scene part way through and you have to explain in noob Korean because you just learned it where in a scene we are and then match the positions.

Hope that explains it a bit? But it’s super fun and continuity dependant. We also have between 5-10 minutes to set up 100 people before the director says it’s time to shoot.