In many movies, there will be scenes featuring large crowds; be it a baseball game, or pedestrians walking on the Golden Gate Bridge, or travelers at an airport, people crossing a traffic intersection, etc.
In which situations do movie producers have to get extras to sign waiver forms, contracts, legal documents or privacy-related documents? You cannot get the whole crowd to do this - and I think Will Ferrell has a movie in which he acts a scene which was actually filmed at an actual NBA New Orleans Pelicans game, with the stadium crowd and all.
Is it only if a person is filmed in the movie in such a way that is close up enough to be able to actually identify them? Or to better phrase the question, in which situations could an extra (or random real-life bystander) sue movie producers for violation of privacy for having been featured in a movie without their knowledge or consent?
Absolutely everyone called onto set will sign a waiver. I did extra work for a few years and all those crowd scenes are full of professional extras. Some scenes in arenas have cardboard cut outs interspersed with actual ppl. Now a days, a lot of big crowds are CGI.
If you are a “featured extra” you’ll get a pay bump according to whatever the union rates are these days.
As for something like a real game, there will be disclaimers saying that filming is happening in the arena and by attending the event, you are ok with being filmed.
Generally extras are hired by the movie and paid a standard rate.
But from time to time, scenes are shot on an actual street. There’s no need to pay people or have them sign releases if they’re in a public street.
Take a look at the the credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. All the outdoor scenes were clearly just shot on the street. Note the woman just above “and” in the final freeze frame. She’s clearly just a passerby who wondered why that woman was throwing her hat in the air.
As another example, see Medium Cool, many of whose scenes were shot in the chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention.
The downside is that those scenes can be a problem if people notice the camera and stare into it.
So it’s a mix. Many, if not most scenes use extras for the crowd, but some do not.
An example of a very large crowd scene where there are no extras is the Shibuya Crossing scene in Lost in Translation. Scarlett Johanson and a horde of regular folk. The producers didn’t bother to get permits to film there and just did it on the sly.
You can avoid people looking at the camera by hiding in a van or some such. Easier to do nowadays.
While there are different versions of the story, the shot of Dustin Hoffman almost getting hit by a cab in Midnight Cowboy (“I’m walking here!”) involved a normal taxi just driving by.
Etc. A lot of city street scene shots just use the regular folk in the background.
This makes me wonder; do American movie producers filming in foreign countries like Japan deliberately benefit from avoiding having to comply with all the laws in America regarding “You must have the movie extras sign waivers, etc.?”
Used to see this a lot in Chicago - crews in the Loop filming those bland “establishing shots” for shows that were set in the city but weren’t filmed there. The El stop I used to commute on often shot scenes for ER when it was on - enough that they left mounts for lights and such on the platform. They’d tell you straight up that it was a public space and they could shoot you without a release.
The crowds also may not be as large as they seem. I was involved with the shoot for a scene in a high school football game. The extras were all seated in one section of the stadium. The crowd shots were then filmed (with just one guy out on the field running around so that everyone knew where to look and when to cheer.) After several reps of this, the extras were all recostumed, then reseated in another section of the stadium. Then they one-man football team did his running around again. Rinse and repeat.
See also
I saw an end credit for “The Inflatable Crowd Company” in some movie I watched on DVD recently, but I don’t remember which movie.
It was the racing scenes at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., for the film Seabiscuit!
Some scenes in Rudy were filmed at real ND football games.
I know local people who were extras in Bull Durham, they just sat in the stands in most cases. The stadium at time was pretty small around 5000 seats. Their new stadium seats 10,000. The movie helped them get money for the new Durham Bulls stadium.
I was an extra on Sidekicks. They advertised for bodies to fill the seats. We didn’t get paid, but we did get fed. And yes, we had to sign a release.
Sad thing is, I had just started a new job when they were filming the big fight scene. If I had shown up on Monday instead of Saturday, I could have had a role as one of the corner judges.
Last I checked, if you are out in public you can be photographed and recorded without permission. If you don’t want to be observed, don’t hang out in public.
I was an extra in two crowd scenes in a Hollywood movie doing some location shooting in the town where I lived at the time. In both scenes – one of them set on a downtown street, one at a popular local beer garden – the area was blocked off and the entire crowd consisted of paid extras. We’d all had to fill out the appropriate paperwork early that morning before shooting began.