Inflatable crowds of blow-up extra dolls have been used in films such as The King's Speech, The Fighter, Iron Man 2, and Ocean's 13 to save on production costs!

Inflatable crowds of blow-up extra dolls have been used in films such as The King's Speech, The Fighter, Iron Man 2, and Ocean's 13 to save on production costs!

The Inflatable Crowd Company has been in business since 2002, and has been making artificial crowds of people for major studio releases since Seabiscuit. While they most of their business comes from films about “underdog sports teams”, their army of body doubles have still appeared in such diverse films as American Gangster, The Phantom of the Opera, Frost/Nixon, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Walk Hard, and Bratz: The Movie. Here's a complete list of Feature Films they've appeared in.

Studios have turned to inflatable extras as a cost-efficient way to produce large crowds when it would be too difficult to find enough extras or create them with CGI. Starting with Seabiscuit, they realized that inflatables work better than cardboard cutouts; if you change camera angles it gets really obivous the cutouts aren’t real people. The Inflatable Crowd Company has over 7,000 inflatable extras. To make them more lifelike, employees inflate them first, then give them clothes, make-up, wigs, and even masks. Check out this Photo gallery showing scenes from recent movies that you probably never would have guessed were full of blow-up dolls!
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