Who are you calling a dummy?
There were a great number of these floating around the sets on Band of Brothers, the vast majority of them short on conversation, personality, occasionally the odd limb and, for the most part, constructed of rubber. It can be far easier (and cheaper) to have a dummy laying around on the ground than a live body, especially if it had to be seen severely mangled – extras just hate it when you want to carve large chunks of flesh out of them.
Of course, dummies also had to be clothed and equipped just like the next man and, not only was this sometimes a stretch on the resources, they could also be a lot harder to fit than a real human being. Dead weight, they tend not to lift their arms when you ask them to. On the plus side, they don’t have to be asked to keep still. The pictures below are of a few being kitted out before being lovingly dumped on their marks.
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Checking dummies for gear and missing crew members attempting a novel but possibly effective approach at goldbricking…
It’s going to take more than a bandaid…
One of the Webbing team loses a game of brag as he compares scars…
On a more chilling note, the picture below is of the vast amount of dummies used for the concentration camp scenes; the sight of them piled in one of the hangars waiting for their turn under the spotlight made for a very chilling and macabre scene. There are also some exterior shots of the ‘concentration camp’. Conditions were quite miserable when the KZ camps scenes were being filmed, with wind and rain prevailing. At times the crew were forced to shelter inside the ‘camp huts’ and one of my colleagues has very vivid memories of looking behind him towards the back of the hut to see these miserable skin and bone creatures huddling pathetically in the shadows; these were not dummies but extras. The production had managed to hire some of the skinniest guys you could possibly imagine; in the canteen during fittings for these extras you felt like pushing your food over to them and saying your need is greater than mine!
They ARE dummies aren’t they…?
A few shots of the camp…
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