Stadiums used to be built so that the audience on the stands could feel their numbers and feel the rush of emotions being felt by tens of thousands of people simultaneously. If you’ve never been in a full stadium like this it’s worth trying, you can’t compare it to anything. Big crowds can often be seen in films, probably because they work really well to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of a scene. Now if you think that signing up as an extra on a big film production and getting that great crowd feeling, you might get quite disappointed as a low tech method of crowding is used on more and more film sets. Santa Monica based The Inflatable Crew supplies lifelike blow-up dolls for films like The King’s Speech, Flags of Our Fathers and Contagion. A stadium scene for Flags of Our Fathers had 5,000 inflatables mixed with just 750 real people to provide a little natural motion. Must have been quite a lonely experience for these 750.
