Doing Stand In Work: Tips for Movie & TV Extras

Video Transcript

"My name is Paul Lewis and I'm Rodney Smith and we are here to talk to you about how to become an extra for TV, movies and commercials. Now we have spoken about extra work but there are also some things I know that you have done, stand-in work. Yes, there is stand-in work. Do you want to explain what stand-in does. A stand-in is, I don't want to say they are furniture, but they are kind of used to stand with a lead actress stands in between takes so they can set light, camera angles and all those types of technical things because you know these actors, these high paying actors, they don't want to stand around for hours. They want to wait in their trailer until they are actually needed on the set to shoot the actual scene. The thing is though, you have to be similar in body size, in proportion to the actor because all the lights needs to be adjusted for the real actor. So I know there was one time they actually did not get it right once where the actor that he was standing in for was a lot bigger than you are. A lot bigger than me. You know we are a little different in size but I did get used to that day but I was a little nervous about it but sometimes they get it wrong but most of time they get it right."