We used actual live humans for anything medium or close. Mannequins were also used, usually in the background of long shots.
It seems like NY is different from LA. My non-actor, non-SAG member son got union rates for union productions in NY. Of course, after a certain number of them ( 3?) he had to join the union if he wanted any more union jobs.
You could also put “working stiff”.
For what it’s worth, I saw an interview with Vayntrub where she was talking about her “Lily” commercials. She said she got paid $800 a day for filming those.
She probably already had the unlimited everything plan.
I always wanted to be a corpse on the original L&O, in one of the Jerry Orbach-Angie Harmon-Sam Waterston episodes. That was going to be my Make a Wish wish if I ended up with a horrible disease. (Yeah, I’m a horrible person to be thinking that…)
Now I want to be a zombie on TWD.
My intended was an MD and coroner. We used to have a great time playing “spot the dead body breathing” while watching shows like L&O, NCIS, etc.
If the corpse is in a zombie movie they get paid a little bit of “walking around money”.
Better be skinny. Atlanta Movie Tours does a Walking Dead locations tour hosted by a professional extra whose career highlights included Andrew Lincoln accidentally slamming his head against an unseen rock in a scene from Season 1. He told us that this far into the story, most of the zombies are supposed to be emaciated and skeletal, so the producers look for the skinniest extras they can find.
This calls to mind an earlier thread of mine.
LOLOL! That’s even better!
This thread reminds me of the hilarious Ricky Gervais/HBO series “Extras”. If you haven’t seen it, give it a shot. The series was also full of big name actors playing themselves, but acting like total tools.
For some reason I said Verizon when it is AT&T.
Trying to find the article I saw a little while ago about the faces of various ad campaigns like Flo and Jan from Toyota. I think she is probably making considerably more than $800 a day now. In the beginning of an ad campaign they are not sure how long it will go. Once the company decides to turn an actor into the face of the company their price goes up.
Dean Winters, who played Mayhem in the Allstate Insurance ad campaign was paid more for playing that character than he was for any role he had played up to that point in his career.
Was it this one?
Yeah but he has to be blown up, burned, crashed, run over…
I hope he doesn’t have cut rate insurance?
Maybe it has changed. My daughter was an extra - no lines, no focus- on a soap, and got residuals. A whole 30 cents when it ran in Italy. If you aren’t SAG then I’d suspect you get nothing.
Cartoon I saw in an agent’s office: Typical starlet on a couch snuggled up to typical producer. Her line " Tell me again about residuals."
Worst commercial is Hess toy trucks. Nowadays they sell out in a day, so they run the commercial on Thanksgiving and that was about it. Hardly worth it.
A few years back I was a background extra (although not a corpse) in a Hollywood movie that was doing some location shooting in the town where I lived. I made $9 an hour for a long day of shooting, plus lunch, snacks, and soft drinks throughout the day.
A very early role of Kevin Costner was a corpse in the Big Chill. He had a speaking part but all of his live scenes were cut from the movie.