It varies on what is needed for the scene. In some plays I have been in / worked on, they need actual crowd chatter to fill in the scene and then you have to make up converstaion that would go along with the scene. For example, if you need an excited crowd for a play, it is likely the audience can hear some of the lines being spoken out of the crowd, so you have to make up things like “here he comes!” or “isn’t this exciting” or whatever. In those cases you have to stay ‘in the scene’ so to speak.
In other cases, you are just background and it doesn’t matter what you say. That’s when things like jokes and commenting on the other actors happens. More likely in a tv show or movie since the crowd noise will be added later anyway, but we did it in play sometimes too. There is a joke about this in the movie “Waiting for Guffman” a spoof of community theater where you can hear all the actors on stage saying “hubbub” to each other.
It’s kind of like talking to a dog or a baby, it doesn’t matter what you say, it’s how you say it. So you can have a lovely romantic chat whilst sitting in a guy’s lap in the background of a park and be making horrible comments about the audience or the show itself while making smoochy faces at each other (this is a situation I had anyway.)
“Memories of Me”. Billy Crystal’s father is a career extra, and is dying. At one point in the film, they are having a drink in an establishment that caters to the hollywood extras when this scene takes place.
I have worked as an extra in several movies. (The word “extra”, by the way, seems to be dying out and is being replaced by “background people”.) The other extras and I talked about anything we wished as long as we didn’t talk too loudly. In “Syriana” I was sitting at a table smoking a (fake) cigarette and the other extra at the table and I spent the time talking about the difficulty of giving up smoking and critiquing the actors. In “Contact” another extra and I were in the background while Mattew McConnaghy was kissing Jodie Foster in the foreground. Matthew wasn’t getting it right and the directors shot the scene several times. The other extra and I spent the time discussing why McConnaghy was having so much trouble getting it right, whether he was doing it on purpose, and whether one of us should volunteer to show him how do do it. If you like movies and think you would enjoy learning something about how they are made, I strongely urge you to get a job as an extra if you have a chance.
In choir we were told that if we forgot the words we should just mouth “watermelon”. It does provide a nice variety of mouth positions which may look like an exciting conversation.
Back in the days of silent movies, there was no actual dialog to say, so leads as well as extras could say whatever they liked during filming as long as the lip movements looked realistic. Skilled lipreaders in the audience could then amuse themselves figuring out what the actors were really talking about. I’ve heard there’s a scene in *Greed * in which a man is making passionate advances to a woman, while actually telling her he’s being evicted for nonpayment of rent.
I was taught, “Cabbages and rutabegas, cabbages and rutabegas…” I always thought it would be really cool if all the extras said it in unison. And by cool, I mean frightening.
Some years ago I saw a documentary about silent films that brought up this very point. It showed a close-up of an actor in a western (Tom Mix, I think) smiling and saying – according to the title card – “Hi ya, pardner!” You didn’t need to be much of a lipreader to recognize it was actually, “You old son of a bitch.”
I’ve just been replaying the opening credits of The Prisoner in my head… Patrick McGoohan stomps down the underground corridor to the relentless drumbeat, flings open the double doors as the thunderclap sounds, slams his resignation down on his boss’s desk (breaking one of the saucers under the teacup), and the words that we’ve wondered about all of these years are finally revealed:
I’m a doctor and I want my sausages!
It explains so much about the series: in the end, it’s just the quest of one highly-educated man for his meat by-products. The secret is finally revealed!
I had a wonderful time.
I’ve never laughed as much in my life.
After some time, you get to know the other extra’s and if you have a fun team, it’s a great time to spend the day.
You do get to meet known actors.
And you do ‘act’ a bit yourself.
However: The chances of being ‘discovered’ by the director are slim.
I know one extra who made it as a B actor.
If you go with the attitude of: "I’m just background’, you’ll be allright.
Longgggggggg days.
Lowwww pays.
But: Fun.
I’ve played a hooker, a judge, a bag-lady, a scientist, a regular at a bar [this was a series and soooo funny] and various other occupations.
Oh yeah: NEVER look at the camera.
And about talking: We talked about anything, really. But SOFTLY.
Since a scene often has to be played over and over again, we - as extra’s - just blabbered away.
Later on, when the director had all the material, we sometimes had to make ‘real’ background noises.
If you ever happen to be an extra in a Woody Allen film, if you’re anywhere near the camera, make sure you say loudly “These pretzels are making me thirsty!”
