I've always wondered about how people become extras. Does it pay well?
I got the first job when a casting agency posted on a Facebook group for Americans in London that they were looking for Americans with military experience to be in
Green Zone. I emailed them a photo and that was it.
I met a guy on
Green Zone who passed along the casting email from
Robin Hood (different casting company). They were just looking for anybody to play soldiers (there were hundreds in the movie). I had to go to a big casting call for that one. They measured everyone, took our pictures, and had a quick interview about what skills we might have they'd be interested in (military experience, horse riding ability, sword fighting, etc).
The casting took hours (there were hundreds of people to process), but they said everyone who waited would get to be in the movie, so at least nobody wasted their time waiting.
As for money, I generally got somewhere between £125 and £200 for the day, which would generally be about 10 hours. So it doesn't pay spectacularly well, but then again it's not like working in a coal mine.
The variation in pay depended on what time we started, what time we finished, and what we had to do in the scene. In
Green Zone it was an office set either walking around or sitting at a desk, no crazy start or finish times = £125. On
Robin Hood there was a scene shot in a big pool at Pinewood Studios which paid more because we got wet, and another one that took place at night so we got paid more for having to be there at a ridiculous time.
We rarely went longer than 10 hours because the overtime costs would quickly add up, and they watched the clock closely.
