Inflatable movie extras

Quote:

Originally Posted by PamNY

The people in that crowd scene might be inflatable.

I have no idea why this fascinates me so much. I don't even watch movies very often.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/0..._talk_savodnik

I was going back through old threads looking for something and I just noticed this.

Do you know the scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett walks out of the hospital and the camera pulls back and back and back to reveal a huge area filled with rows and rows of wounded and dead soldiers lying on the ground? Many of the soldiers in that scene were dummies.

I guess one advantage of inflatable dummies is that they take up less room for storage between projects.

(More GWTW trivia -- for the "Atlanta burning" scene where Rhett, Scarlett and Melanie are in a wagon passing through the burning city with buildings collapsing around them, the burning structure was actually the old set from King Kong. And Vivian Leigh didn't film that scene, because she hadn't been cast yet.)

I love it when there's lots of behind-the-scenes extras on DVDs -- it's fun to see how they create the special effects. And I much prefer movies that do not rely on CGI -- I would rather see a crowd full of blow-up dolls than a fake background that looks vaguely animated.