In cinema, the extras lay somewhere between roles and scenery. The depiction of the world in which a story moves is a result of conscious or unconscious choice. There are scenes where the extras are just an emphasis on verity; the narration would work without them. But some scenes don’t exist if they are not there.
The position and the function of extras will be approached through the notion of “Multitude”. To connect a political theory that examines the existence of “the many” with cinema, an industrial art, we must first look at the problem of reality in film. The relation between reality and constructed reality in film is attributed to the terms “active” and “potential”.
The “aura” is a term connected with presence in time and space and is that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction. Movies are artworks intended for mass reproduction, and there we should see what remains when “aura” shrinks and what we gain from its loss.
In film, objects and roles are brought in correlation. In scenes we are looking for the relationship between one and many, what narration demands from the anonymous at the background, what they offer and what they are capable of offering. Do they need to introduce themselves or is their figure enough? It is impossible to classify all the elements of a film, something will be always left. The excess does not exists at far ends, but between the classified elements. Sometimes the living background attracts our attention for a moment. At others, it affects us without us noticing. When it begins to assert a role, disturbs the hierarchies. These are the times we can possibly claim that the Multitude appears.