Loopers, the reason why background actors struggle to get speaking roles.
Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult for a background actor to get a speaking role? While, it does happen, for example, Tyler Perry is routinely known for upgrading background extras to a speaking role, many Hollywood productions hire “Loopers” instead.
What is a Looper?
As NPR explains in a 2015 report on the film industry, a Loopers “are voice actors whose work begins after the show or film is shot and edited. Their job is to record what people in the background of a scene could be saying. Their dialogue is never really heard at full volume — and it’s mostly ad-libbed.”
That’s right. When you are watching a TV show, the person you thought was talking in the scene may not even have been that person and instead, it is a voice actor whose job is to provide words to a scene.
NPR explains how the process works by describing a recording session for the show Bones. “On a sound stage at Fox Studios in Los Angeles, seven loopers are recording dialogue for the TV forensics series Bones. They’re working on a restaurant scene, speaking lines that people at background tables might speak, over lunch.
As they record, the loopers stand in a circle under two overhead microphones. A scene plays silently on a big screen. On cue, and often off-mic, they start to walk around and talk. They record random scraps of dialogue, to be mixed later into the scene they’re watching; they are creating human ambience.”
Sound mixer David Betancourt explains why Hollywood hires loopers. ““The beauty of it is it enhances the experience of what you’re watching,” he says. “If you watch without all of this stuff that gets filled in, in postproduction, it feels dead, it feels really flat. If it’s done right, you shouldn’t even notice it.””
So why is it so hard for background extras to get a speaking role. Betancourt says, “It would be too time-consuming,” Harris explains. “When they are shooting, their primary interest is everything the principals are doing.”
Now you know.
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