#extra work

I’m new here! What kinda film work do you do? Other than COVID wackiness, what’s it like? 😅 Sorry I’m just so curious!

Got this reply on my post about being on set and wanted to make it a separate post. 

So from November 2018 up until the quarantine, I have been working predominately as a set tour guide (first for the Official Walking Dead Studio Tour and then for Warner Brothers Studios) and filling my free days with background/extras gigs. 

I have genuinely loved both jobs. Being a tour guide is super fun because it relies heavily on my improv and people skills as well as history nerdery (Warner Brothers has 91 years of film history and you customize/improv every tour!). 

And being an extra has allowed me to learn more about the film process without being in a stressful job - background gigs are largely boring, but between the boring is a LOT of fun. I’ve gotten to work some honestly amazing shows and movies - especially in Atlanta before I moved out to LA. I worked Watchmen, Zombieland 2, Doom Patrol, Lodge 49, and American Soul ... among many others, those are just some of my favorites. 

Watchmen: I was actually in 3 episodes and 3 different decades, but this is the only one where you can actually tell it’s me. LOL. Most unfortunate, because this was my worst outfit. 

Zombieland 2: T-800 Front right zombie is me! :D I was in most of the finale scenes, from running in the field to the attack on the base. Absolute favorite project, hands down. But SOO many cold nights covered in chocolate syrup. 

Doom Patrol - Danny Street. Best group of people to work with, and my highest paying gig. I got a pay bump for the baby bump. :P

Lodge 49 - Conjuntio I got called for a lot of pregnant roles... IDK why. We were a group of all pregnant bridesmaids. 

American Soul - My first gig and most featured part (!!). One of the Soul Train dancers hit on me and my boyfriend/brother (??? nobody could decide) started a riot because of it. I actually speak, but they used my dialogue when my face was off camera so they didn’t have to upgrade me. Yay loopholes. Still a great crew and wonderful cast. 

Being an extra is mostly being a walking set piece. Your job is to be present, but not distracting. You spend a lot of time pretending to be talking or eating, for the most part everything must be done completely silent so that they can hear the main characters speaking. You sometimes get to wear really neat clothes, other times you show up with your own clothes and wardrobe decides what they like best. Believe it or not, I owned that pink dress from American Soul. But my Zombieland outfit was fitted on me and then custom distressed (made bloody and dirty and torn up) by the wardrobe folks for me. 

You do a LOT of walking back and forth or other repetetive motions. You’re there to make scenes look authentic and fill space. So you follow directions about where to walk and when, how much space to take up. Sometimes you stand at *just* the right spot so the camera can use your head as a framing device. I’ve told folks before, it’s a great way to learn about being on set, it is NOT a good way to become a real actor. 

I’ve been crazy lucky to be featured as much as I have and none of it counts as real acting. Pretty much none of it, maybe excepting the American Soul, would be useable as part of a reel. But it has been SO invaluable as a way to work in both Atlanta and LA at a time when I needed more paychecks coming in, I’ve met a ton of great people, had a lot of fun, and used a lot of my knowledge to improve my work as a tour guide. 

Going forward, it looks like I’ll be shifting into more work as a studio clerk than a tour guide and working regular hours so I won’t be doing as much if any background work. But I’ve already done a bit of clerking for both Warner Brother’s Props and Costume Departments and maybe I’ll make a post about that work separately. 

How do you like your extra works?

Mine is bloody and scary

Okay, so the day job interfered with me getting everything I wanted to do this weekend. I’ve still got Ransom’s Holiday Tales to kick off. I’m going to try to get that out today but if I don’t, it will be later in the week. Just wanted to let you know. 

So, and they’re so pissed at me at work but considering I’m doing 2-3 people’s jobs right now I’m having a hard time caring, I’ll be out the next two days with that extra gig I was telling you about. SO excited! It’s been almost two years since I was on a set (that was Halloween 2018 in Charleston back in January 2018). We will have 250-300 extras each day so the biggest thing for me is that I’ll (hopefully) get to see a lot of people I love from different sets since I started doing this in 2012. 

Sometimes we’re not allowed to take our phones on set and you can’t be on them if they do. With that many people in period dress, we’re likely to be there more than 12 hours each day because that’s what they typically do. (And there are a lot of costuming changes. I have three different outfits lol)  We sign NDAs so we can’t take pictures or talk about anything but so happy and grateful to see my friends. 🙏🙏🙏

You’re welcome! And thank you, I’ve done a lot of different shows/movies since then and most sets aren’t like Dare Me, it was just an exception.

The director and the guy who played the football coach fought because the director kept telling him to go back to point 1 (where he started the scene) but the coach and the football players insisted he hadn’t moved at all so he was already at point 1. The director kept arguing that he wasn’t, so the guy walked off.

 It's with great honor to say that i am an extra for Stranger Things season 3!