In reply to Kagura (msg # 667):

Actually, the pay for extras is based on whether you are a member of SAG or not.  Members of the union get paid more according to union contracts (usually $200-$300 per day).  If not, then it depends on the particular budget for the movie and typically runs from $50 to $100 per day (with about $75 being average), so you'd get that amount whether you are on set 1 hour or 8 hours.  (Yes, you would get overtime for being there over 8 hours.)  $64 is minimum wage in California, so that would probably be the lowest you would get, but there's nothing written in stone about the amount.

There is also additional pay if you have anything "special" done, such as makeup, speaking lines, etc.

Some people actually work as full time "extras" and don't do too badly if they can keep the work consistent and join the union.

Heath, my information is from my firsthand experience being a non-union, open call extra in a summer teen action movie, as well as my frequent "looking for extras" communications from the local casting office here in Pittsburgh. The rate is always the same (minimum wage for the first 8 hours + time and a half for anything beyond that), but as far as I know ONLY applies to non-union extras. I don't know what SAG or contracted (the ones who get little lines or show up regularly in a show) extras make.

I don't know where you're getting your information, so I can't speak to its validity, I can only tell you what my experience has been.

Ah, because you're not in California.  Things are stricter here, and there's more demand and supply issues back and forth.  My information comes partly because I'm an employment lawyer in California but not from personally being on any sets.  :)

So if you're not in California, you may have been paid as little as $7.25 per hour.  You may not have even been able to eat the catering, which is typical on sets in California (free breakfast and lunch, often).

I got paid whatever PA minimum wage was as the base, plus an additional 6 or 7 hours on top of that at time and a half (call time was 6am and we finished around 8pm) totaling something like $200 for the whole day, plus a pair of cheap seats at an upcoming baseball game - which I ended up not going to because my college marching band director had died the night before and I was in shock. We also got to eat the catered lunch, although that may have been because it was a Taylor Lautner movie, and they didn't want people walking off and giving their set badges to other people so they could come and ogle him or whatever. That, and there are surprisingly few restaurants in the area of PNC Park (where they were filming).

In 1993, I spent two weeks at a theme park and got paid about a thousand bucks to end up on the cutting room floor.

... that sounds... did you mean it to come out that way, FL?

Dunno.

O.o

It was easy money, I met new people, and I watched a stunt crew at work, and I got a story out of it. My presence in the final production was irrelevant.

Yes, yes, but take what you'd said and run it through your "juvenile dirty mind" filter.

I'll never tell.  :-)

Oh, okay then. I'll just forget about it… if I can...

Take the green pill.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:25, Sun 03 Nov 2013.

What's the subject line "kids on the slope" mean?

No idea.

On an unrelated note, I will be seeing the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special in a theater full of rowdy Whovians on Saturday, November 23rd.

Fun for you.  I've never seen Dr. Who.

Oh my god, FL, I am so freaking excited for that!!!! I'm kind of sad that 9 won't be in it, but having 10, 11 and the new 12 should make up for that. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the new Doctor will be different from the previous ones.

I'm so out of the loop.

In reply to FourLegged (msg # 688):

Both my older kids are fans of Dr. Who, but like Yoss, I've never watched it, even though it's on Netflix.  When we went to see Ender's Game, they were excited to see the Dr. Who posters and I didn't get it.

The opposite of Yoss, I think I see almost every movie in the movie theater.  I've seen about 5 in the past 2 weeks.

You guys are totally missing out on the awesomeness that is Doctor Who. It's classic British sci-fi at its peak. Doctor Who actually holds the record for the longest-running (never canceled) show in its genre at 50 years.

Granted there was a big gap in the middle of just under 20 years, but the fact remains that the show was never actually cancelled, and British television programming works a bit differently from how US television programming does.

Either way, it's worth watching. You don't even have to go back and watch the first 8 Doctors (although nobody ever really talks about 8… he only existed for a single TV movie back in '89) to understand what's going on. Russel T Davies and his team did a wonderful job of updating and explaining the world for new fans, while keeping the essential elements of the series around for returning fans.

Which only gives rise to the question:  Who is Dr. Who?

Well that IS the question. The one that nobody has ever answered. It's kind of… taboo. Like the Time War. You just don't go there.

So what's the logline of Dr. Who?

Crazy guy from the future is attacked by manakins.

At least, that's about as far as I got into the first episode

The future? No. Probably not. Well. Maybe. It's really not clear -when- The Doctor is from. That's part of the charm of the show.

Things we know about the Doctor:
1. He's an alien of a race called Time Lords.
2. His planet, Gallifrey, exploded leaving him as the only survivor.
3. "Spoilers".
4. "RUN!"
5. "He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm and the heat of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and can see the turn of the universe. And… he's wonderful."
6. He travels in a TARDIS which looks like a British police call box (the chameleon circuit got damaged while he was in the 1960s and he never bothered to fix it).
7. TARDIS stands for "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space" (if you were ever wondering where that particular game thread title came from, now you know)