How to Plan Extras for a Saudi Shoot: A Producer's Guide to Background and Crowd Casting

Your art department can dress an arrivals hall in Riyadh in a week. Signage in Arabic and English, luggage trolleys, a coffee kiosk, a departures board flicking over.

What it can't dress is the crowd.

That part has to walk, wait, check a phone, wave at someone through the glass. A crowd is a set that breathes. You don't build it. You cast it.

And when it's cast badly, it's the only set anyone sees. The man by the gate who glances down the lens. The woman in the green abaya who crosses behind your hero in a mall, then again, twenty story-minutes later, in a hospital corridor. The passenger with a competitor's logo on his T-shirt.

Nobody leaves a cinema talking about a good extra. Everyone notices a bad one. That's the odd economics of background talent: get it right and it disappears into the world; get it wrong and it's all the audience can see.

This guide is for producers, production managers, first ADs and agency producers planning a scene full of people, from first brief to wrap, ending with a one-page crowd brief you can copy. If you already know what you need, our page on extras casting in Saudi Arabia lists what to send so we can review the request.

Background, featured or principal? Sort the people before you count them

The first mistake is treating everyone in frame as one mass. There are three layers, each selected, directed and cleared differently:

• Background. The people who make a location feel inhabited. Individually unrecognisable; collectively, the scene's credibility.
• Featured extras. People who appear more clearly than the general background: the shopkeeper handing the hero a bag, the passport officer stamping the page. Their face reads, and they may recur across set-ups.
• Principal cast. If a person speaks a line, or the scene turns on their reaction, that's a role, with its own brief and selection path. If you're still deciding whether that role needs a model, an actor or real people, we unpack it in Model or actor?

To sort them fast, ask the swap question of every person in the script: if you replaced them with someone of the same age and look, what would happen?

Why sort first? Because, for example, "50 extras" with six featured moments buried in the script ends with the first AD picking "the shopkeeper" out of holding on the morning. Anyone with a distinct moment gets their own line.

How many extras do you actually need? Start from the widest shot

"We want it busy" is a feeling. You can't book a feeling. The number comes from four questions.

1. What's your widest shot? How many people must be visible for the space to read as full? A long lens compresses the background and stacks people together, so it needs fewer bodies than a wide that reveals the whole location.
2. Per scene, or per day? Three locations in a day? If the same group travels with you, how do you stop the same faces appearing in the "souq" and then the "airport"?
3. What's the floor? Write numbers as a range, for example "25–35", plus the minimum below which the shot fails. A range lets us build a realistic confirmation plan; the final number is your call and the director's.
4. Who's in the front row? People nearest the lens carry the most weight. Spend your most precise selection there.

To be clear about our side: we don't commit to a headcount before seeing the date, city, look and shoot hours. Confirmation comes after we review the request, not before. If the scene can't survive a shortfall, agree standby talent up front and write it into the scope.

Wardrobe, continuity and direction

Twenty people in "normal clothes" means twenty definitions of normal.

• Set a palette. If the brand colour is red, you may not want a red background competing with the product.
• Ban logos. A visible brand on a T-shirt or a cup can sink a shot.
• Avoid fine patterns. Small checks and tight stripes can shimmer on screen (moiré). Solids are kinder to camera and edit.
• Ask for two options per person, so wardrobe can adjust without stopping the floor.
• Protect continuity. A scene across two days means the same outfit, watch and ghutra, worn the same way. A reference photo of every extra on day one saves a long conversation on day two.
• Give everyone a job. An extra with no job becomes an audience inside your frame. Heading somewhere, waiting for someone, paying a bill. And "nobody looks at the lens" is the day's first instruction.

Who supplies wardrobe? Sometimes extras, from a clear list; sometimes production. On our side, wardrobe, styling, hair and makeup are conditional capabilities: we coordinate them when they're in the agreed scope, not by default.

Riyadh is not Jeddah: regional and seasonal realism

A crowd breathes in a local rhythm, and Saudi audiences know their own country. A summer scene on the Jeddah corniche with someone in a heavy winter farwa is enough to pull a viewer out of the story.

• City. Dress and bearing vary between cities and neighbourhoods: white ghutra or red shemagh, summer or winter thobe, the cut of abayas. Not stereotypes; observation. How do people actually look here, this season, at this occasion?
• Occasion. A wedding is not a workday, and a football stand is not a hospital waiting room. Name the exact occasion, not just "public place".
• Age mix and groups. A souq has elders and families; a campus is young; a mall has everyone. Groups that must read as real families or friends often look truer cast as real groups.
• Children in the background. A guardian on set, hours that suit their age, proper breaks. We treat that as basic practice; more in our working guide to child actors in Saudi productions.
• Where we are. Headquartered in Al Aziziyah, Jeddah, with a second office in An Narjis, Riyadh; other Saudi locations are coordinated according to the brief and talent availability (see our Riyadh and Jeddah pages). Crowds sourced from the shoot city usually ring truer: travel adds line items, and people tend to look like where they live.

Call times, holding and welfare

Extras spend much of their day waiting. Waiting in the sun doesn't stay in holding. It walks into the shot.

• Stagger call times. For example, nobody needs a 6 a.m. call for a 2 p.m. scene.
• Build a proper holding area. Shade, water, seating, toilets, a prayer space, a meal on long days, and space for families when families are booked. This is what we mean by talent welfare: people's safety, comfort and rights from preparation through the shoot.
• Respect the heat. In the hot months, put wide exterior crowd shots early or late, and keep midday for interiors.
• Plan around prayer times from the start, not mid-take. International crews: the Saudi weekend is Friday and Saturday.
• Ramadan changes the whole day. Fasting and iftar reshape availability; see our Ramadan commercial casting planning guide.
• Access and transport. Airports, stadiums and some private sites need names and clearance in advance; remote locations need a plan for who brings people, from where, and when. A confirmation round the day before can save a morning.

Usage and releases: background talent has rights too

Usage means where, how, for how long and in which territories a person's image or performance appears. It doesn't stop at the principal cast.

• Name the channels up front. TV, social, outdoor, stills pulled from the film. Usage agreed before booking is far easier than usage negotiated after the shoot.
• Featured is not background. A face that reads has usage that reads. Agree featured terms before booking.
• A release has a scope. It isn't open permission for every future edit, cutdown or campaign.
• AI is never assumed. Using footage for model training or a digital likeness needs disclosure and use-specific consent from each person; it doesn't follow from a talent registration or a standard filming release. See our AI talent casting page.

A published example: 40 extras for Six Flags Qiddiya

MR Casting coordinated seven principal cast members and 40 extras for the Six Flags Qiddiya and Aquarabia campaign, including shortlists, confirmation and production logistics across Saudi Arabia and Spain. The full account is in our Six Flags Qiddiya casting case study. Our case studies page also shows a General Entertainment Authority campaign as an example of background and ensemble casting.

We won't stretch either example beyond what's published. But one general lesson holds for any crowd-heavy production: plan the crowd with the cast, not after it, because numbers, wardrobe, schedule and usage all hang on decisions made for the leads, and vice versa.

Eight crowd-scene mistakes, and the fix for each

1. The number is decided last. Fix: work back from the widest shot; range and floor.
2. "Normal clothes" undefined. Fix: palette, ban list, two options.
3. Featured moments hidden inside "extras". Fix: the swap question.
4. One call time for everyone. Fix: stagger by scene.
5. No standby. Fix: agree backups at the start.
6. Usage remembered after the shoot. Fix: channels, territory and term in the brief.
7. The same face in two "different" places. Fix: a group-allocation plan and reference photos.
8. A restricted site, no names submitted. Fix: check access before confirmation.

The crowd brief: a one-page template for production managers

A good extras brief is short, with no gaps. Copy this, fill one per scene, and send it (the examples are hypothetical):

For a template covering every role, use our casting brief template for Saudi productions. To request directly, go back to the extras and background casting page.

FAQ

Cast the set that breathes

The lead carries the story; the crowd carries the world it happens in. Make the world believable, and the audience believes the rest.

Sort before you count. Write ranges. Define "normal". Let the city show in its people. Plan shade, water and prayer. Settle usage before booking. Then we take it from there: reviewing the brief, shortlisting, checking availability and coordinating the booking within the agreed scope.

You'll know you got it right when nobody mentions the crowd at all.

Send your crowd brief

Looking for extras work rather than hiring? This guide is for production teams. A dedicated extras registration path isn't open yet; open calls, including extras roles when available, are posted on our casting opportunities page.