Posted on 03/09/2015 9:01:41 AM PDT by KeyLargo
This Is How Hollywood Has Been Fooling You All Along
When it comes to contemporary Hollywood films, there's often more than meets the eye. We're not just talking about an elaborate use of special effects and CGI, its those smaller more finite details that are so often easy to ignore.
On the set of any movie, along with the crew, actors and stunt doubles you'll also have 'extra's' - people like you and I paid to simply be a warm prop, background fodder if you will. A crowd milling about in a scene or a customer in a shop. Extra's can get paid quite handsomely for just a few days work depending on the film. But when it comes to scenes involving giant crowds, how do the movie studios afford to pay all those individuals and how can you possibly direct 20,000 people?
The truth is, they don't.
Thanks to the ingenious work of the Inflatable Crowd Company (talking about finding a niche in the industry) the majority of the 'crowds' you see in films are actually just inflatable or latex dolls. Filmed at a distance, add in a few noticeable facial features, wigs, props and some everyday clothes and you'll find during the heat of the moment you won't even notice the difference between 'extras' and their inanimate counterparts.
They are so believable in fact, that they've already been used in Iron Man 2, American Gangster, Seabiscuit, Blades of Glory, Ocean’s 13, The Prestige, Million Dollar Baby, Friday Night Lights, We Are Marshall, Contagion, The Fighter, The King’s Speech _and Spiderman 3 - _all without you even noticing.
Find out more about the illusionary work of The Inflatable Crowd Company and see lots more images from various film sets via their official site. Next time you're watching a blockbuster, keep an eye out, you might just see their handywork.
Via Inflatable Crowd Company x
Many, many years ago there was a special on TV about cut-outs of people being used to fill stadiums in movies. They were called, if I remember correctly, hanging cut-outs to simulate stadiums being full.
She cleaned up a bit in the picture on the left.
I was warm scenery for a Scott Bakula flick called “Necessary Roughness”. Filmed at North Texas State and they paid us with a boxed lunch and a lottery for a car.
It was interesting watching how the film was made and how mad the powers that be got at the bored crowd for behaving like a bored crowd.
They use computer animation to simulate crowds now. Can’t use cardboard when you have overhead panning camera shots.
So much of Hollywood is just one computer cartoon these days.
They will be able to use holograms to do that some day. For now, they just use holographic performers onstage.
The Chinese did it the hard way: 
It looks like you’ve found where my wife’s Goodwill donations have gone
And when they don’t outright use computers to replicate a crowd, they piecemeal replacement of the crowd (I think they used 3,000 extras in Gladiator and then used computer pasting to fill the area seats).
there is an eerie resemblance..
Obie without his ...
“They use computer animation to simulate crowds now. Can’t use cardboard when you have overhead panning camera shots.
So much of Hollywood is just one computer cartoon these days.”
LOL Yes, that is true. My only point was that the poster seemed to think that simulations of crowds was a new thing. It has been going on for decades.
Otto died. They stored him in a garage and he fell apart some years later.
Not new. Dummies were used for some of the wounded soldiers at the train yard in GONE WITH THE WIND. The Union (Organized labor) protested but caved when not enough live extras could be found for the scene.
I still like epics with a cast of thousands! FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, HELEN OF TROY(1956), EL CID, BONDARCHUK’S WAR AND PEACE, WATERLOO.
Now you press a keyboard and you have a cast of ten thousand.
BEAT me to it!
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