5. The Production of Extras in a Precarious Creative Economy

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, regional governments around the world and global film industry corporations have collaborated, if not colluded, to provide a steady stream of workers for film location shooting through legislated incentives. Seeking to reduce labor costs in relation to other fixed expenses, industry executives have successfully used incentives to reduce budgets. Meanwhile, regional policymakers have looked to film and television production as a panacea for anemic economic growth and declining employment indices.¹ Together, governments and industry have made labor into one of the primary fault lines in the political economy of film production. For the former constituents,