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Filming an Invasion Without Extras

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the one-actor-films-immanent dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting blog post on how a World War II D-Day invasion was staged in a few days with four guys and a video camera using batches of smaller crowds replicated computationally to produce very convincing non-repeating huge crowds. Filmmakers first used computer generated crowds about ten years ago and the technique became well known in the Lord of the Rings trilogy but now crowds can be generated from no crowds at all — just a couple of people. 'What's new is that the new camera/apps are steadily becoming like a word processor — both pros and amateurs use the same one,' says Kelly. 'The same gear needed to make a good film is today generally available to amateurs — which was not so even a decade ago. Film making gear is approaching a convergence between professional and amateur, so that what counts in artistry and inventiveness.'"

11 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. And only a few years behind audio technology... by croddy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's been a few years now that amateur musicians could produce quality recordings at home with only a few thousand dollars worth of gear -- you only need to go to a traditional studio anymore to get into the real upper echelon of production value. It is nice to see movement in the same direction in cinema. Even if the entire entertainment industry insists on clinging desperately to 50-year-old ideas about copyright, despite the inevitable consequence of that doomed ideology, it's nice to know that we can lose them all and still not lose cinema and music as artistic media.

    1. Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... by damburger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Took the words right out of my mouth, although I'd like to add a much broader historical point;

      One of the notable characteristics of the twentieth century was the exponential increase in the cost of producing cutting edge media. You went from printing presses to radio transmitters to movie studios within a few short decades. The consequences of this were that the public discourse became dominated by those in society who controlled the resources, be it big business or government. Thus modern propaganda was born.

      A reversal of this trend is very much welcome. As it stands, some people (usually the worst people) in society have a megaphone with which to shout down anyone who disagrees with them or their peers, leaving most of us effectively voiceless and apathetic. It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.

      --
      If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
    2. Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... by wumingzi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even if the entire entertainment industry insists on clinging desperately to 50-year-old ideas about copyright, despite the inevitable consequence of that doomed ideology, it's nice to know that we can lose them all and still not lose cinema and music as artistic media.

      Yeah, but...

      There are two sides to the film business. Production (the business of turning a script and thousands of man hours of work into 2 hours of film) and distribution (the business of copying that 2 hours of film, getting copies to the theaters, DVDs printed, advertisements run, etc. etc.).

      When you look at summer theater fare, the cost of distributing the film often costs as much as making the film did. That business is expensive, it's not getting a lot cheaper, and unfortunately, the studios still have a lock on it. While new technology will allow you to make a feature film more cheaply if you're clever, getting it out of the film festival
      circuit and into real cinemas where people besides your friends will see it is still largely locked in that bad old world of Hollywood distribution.

      Music has been set free not only by cheaper production, but much cheaper distribution. Broadband means I can stream songs from your band's myspace page in real time. I still can't do that with film at any reasonable quality level.

      I don't think it's hopeless. The quantity of bandwidth marches upwards year after year, and the cost we pay for it goes down, but I don't think we're there yet.

    3. Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... by j-cloth · · Score: 5, Funny

      It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.

      Try reading slashdot with all comments visible and see if your statement needs any modifications.

  2. oh noez! by that+IT+girl · · Score: 5, Funny

    While that is cool technology, it also means my chance of ever being in a movie just dropped from "extremely slim" to "Nicole Richie". :(

    --
    10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
    20 DRINK COFFEE
    30 GOTO 10
    1. Re:oh noez! by badasscat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While that is cool technology, it also means my chance of ever being in a movie just dropped from "extremely slim" to "Nicole Richie". :(

      Your chances actually dropped to that level about 15 years ago.

      I'm not normally one to drop the "!news" tag, but how do you guys think filmmakers have been creating these gigantic crowds over the past decade? There was a special feature on the Gladiator DVD that showed them doing exactly this - it went through the entire process of it. There were only ever about 40 people in the Colosseum during any given fight; they were digitally duplicated to create the illusion of a huge crowd. (It's pretty comical to watch the scenes as they were filmed, with one tiny little section of ravenous fans and the rest of the place empty.)

      That wasn't the first time the technique has been used, it's just an easy one to reference. I would doubt the LotR crowds were created any differently.

  3. Re:oh noez! - don't worry by Finallyjoined!!! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not all it's cracked up to be.

    I was an extra in the Da Vinci Code, apart from 3 breakfasts & 2 lunches every day, everything else was exceptionally boring. Especially where a bunch of us had to do the same thing 30 times, but in different places, to simulate a big crowd.

    --
    If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
  4. And now... by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...the Townswomen's Guild reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor.

    Chris Mattern

  5. Too bad... by J0nne · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...they didn't use this technique to generate huge crowds of servers.

  6. Wow! by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 4, Funny

    Invasions that involve hardly anyone at all?

    Too bad we can't do that in real life.

    Gosh! That was deep and out of character for me.

    Um, uh, in Soviet Russia... uh... you profit from a beowulf cluster of these... or something.

  7. Very little to do with the cost of Extras by Aquitaine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There have been a couple of comments to the effect of 'Extras don't cost THAT much, do they?'

    No, Extras don't cost that much. A non-union extra gets paid about $75 for a day's work, where a day can be half an hour or 14 hours. A union Extra might get $125 and a better sandwich.

    The problem is that it takes forever to organize and shoot scenes with a lot of extras, particularly where even a couple of people acting like douchebags can wreck the whole scene. The last film I did any extra work on was 'My Super Ex Girlfriend' and there were about 200 of us in the small park at 72nd and Broadway here in NYC. Our job was to gawk at a building on fire. Sounds pretty simple, right?

    Yeah, until you realize that 3/4 of the extras think that being an extra is their ticket to fame. I happened to get 'placed' right near one of the lead actors as he emerged from the subway, and as we shot and re-shot one minute of that scene 5 times (over the course of 7 hours), other extras would elbow me out of the way because they wanted to be 'near the star.' There is a whole sham community around being an extra where you attend a class outside of New York or LA and some local agent in your nearest mid-size city (say, Philadelphia) 'signs' you and just sends you out on a bunch of extra calls. The agent gets a fixed rate for every warm body they send, you spend a day doing very little, and your agent hopes you never realize that real actors don't work that way.

    If I were producing that or any other movie with extras, I'd use as few extras as possible. Not to save money. Just to save the people I am actually employing full-time a lot of aggravation.