First time doing music video with LOTS of extras....

Sithxace

Sithxace

Well-known member
I am doing a music video shoot at a night club doing club scenes and require lots of extras. I have invited more than I need just to be on the safe side. Any tips or lessons anyone learned with dealing with so many people?

This is my first time doing a shoot with so many. Any help would be great thanks!
 
have food/water/soda/snacks to keep them quiet and happy otherwise they'll stampede.
 
Yes, you definitely need some people wranglers, or your extras will walk out or misbehave. The good news is that your extras are likely to be happy with the sort of entertainment and refreshment available at a nightclub anyway - just make sure you don't get them drunk.
 
Make sure you have an AD just for that. Have a holding area for the extras. keep them only 4-5 hours, you won't get much more out them if they are there for free, but definately don't keep them longer than that unless you want to feed them. I would suggest having them come in shifts depending what you want to do. definately plan out all your shots, and have a megaphone
 
Well luckily I hired a number of breakdancers, so they should be entertaining as far as there dancing goes. I was planning on feeding them at the end or midway with pizza and soda.

The shifts sounds like a good idea, toughest part about this is you don't know who is gonna show and whos not. Ive told everyone because I rather have too many than not enough.
 
If you need the group doing different actions, number them off and have the 1's do one thing, 2's do another, and so on
 
the shoot was this past sunday n it went well! stared bad, call time was 1130 n no extras showed up until reallly 1pm, i was goin nuts until i got some. so out of about 80 who confirmed were coming, about 25 came. didnt help daylights saving was the night before so loss of sleep plus sat night n st patricks weekend... crazyness, and it was raining hard all day.

did the best i could n thought i did well with everything, but now with me watchin footage, there def angles and shots i wish i wish i wish i shot or mistakes i completely missed when shooting some shots.
 
Sithxace said:
the shoot was this past sunday n it went well! stared bad, call time was 1130 n no extras showed up until reallly 1pm, i was goin nuts until i got some. so out of about 80 who confirmed were coming, about 25 came. didnt help daylights saving was the night before so loss of sleep plus sat night n st patricks weekend... crazyness, and it was raining hard all day.

did the best i could n thought i did well with everything, but now with me watchin footage, there def angles and shots i wish i wish i wish i shot or mistakes i completely missed when shooting some shots.
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Well, a lot of that was out of your hands it seems, so don't feel too bad. It's hard enough trying to schedule actors for a shoot, not to mention 80 extras. I did a music video about a year and a half ago where I wanted the band to get a ton of extras, at least 30. They said that'd be easy. I got about 12. But working with tons of extras is basically like sheepherding and good AD's are capable herders.

Here's the video I did, so you just gotta do what you can with what you have:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QWPyEJIvPI&feature=channel_page
 
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