He’s a man of 30,000 faces

Joe Biggins

Inflatable extras supervisor. As owner of the Inflatable Crowd Co. in Gardena, Biggins can supply 30,000 inflatable mannequin torsos that can be used in crowd scenes.

Credits: “Cinderella Man,” which comes out on DVD Tuesday; “Friday Night Lights”; “Seabiscuit.”

Blow-up: “When [filmmakers] know they have to fill a crowd scene, they come to ask how it works with us and what is the ratio with real people and inflatables and what they get when they hire us to do a job. It comes from producers, art directors -- from a lot of different people. We work with several different departments when we do a crowd.

“The key is that we provide all of the texture of real people. We provide clothing and wigs and realistic masks that have been molded from real people and hand-painted so you get very little patterning. So when you mix real people in with mannequins it is a fairly seamless effect.

“The biggest crowd I have done is ‘Cinderella Man.’ We had 11,000 mannequins up, and they stayed up for about four or five months. They can last as long as any production would need; beyond that we recycle them and make new ones annually.”

Roots: “I was very lucky to be working for the line producer of ‘Seabiscuit,’ Pat Churchill. I was working as her assistant. I had done different kinds of special projects and problem-solving-type work over the years. I had worked for Industrial Light & Magic as a courier and worked in several departments over a decade. I had a lot of different experience, so when I came to Los Angeles I kind of understood the broader picture of how to solve different problems.

“One of the questions for ‘Seabiscuit’ was, how can we create the size crowds needed? At the time there were cardboard cutouts and we looked into computer graphics. I thought. ‘I wonder if we can do it three-dimensionally?’ I worked with a plastics manufacturer overseas and came up with the prototype, which was ultimately approved by the director, and the producer and we made 7,000 for the first crowd.

“They are made from PVC plastic, and it is the same material that you would find in any kind of inflatable pool toy and beach ball. They come flat. That is what makes it unique and practical because you can collapse them down into such a small package that they are easy to truck and ship anywhere in the world. And when you get there you blow them up and you have your humanoid form.

“On ‘Cinderella Man’ we were lucky to have a significant amount of prep time, so with just a crew of six people we took two weeks and filled the whole arena with the 11,000.”

Workforce: “Because we are so specialized, I have trained my supervisors, and I also travel on location. I go into each [location] and I bring as many people as we can afford, and from there we hire local people and train them very carefully. We work en masse and consult with [hair and costume departments] so we can create the best look for each production, and then we work on the masks.

“We know what we can get away with but also how important these details are to selling that illusion. If we don’t spend the extra time then it doesn’t look right.

“My warehouse has clothes that cover all different time periods and all different looks and, depending on a show, I’ll purchase things that we can use on one film and save them. I have done a couple of different Great Depression films at this point, so I have been able to reuse some of those materials.”

Inflation technique: “We take the blower off the vacuum cleaner and we have attached manifolds with hoses that fit into our valves, so we can work anywhere. All we have to do is plug into a hot outlet. Each one has three hoses that come off of it, so for a crowd of 3,000 we would have three vacuums and nine technicians blowing things up and then another couple of technicians masking and dressing and wigging and getting things ready, and then we move them into the stands together.

Age: 34

Resides: Santa Monica

Guild or union: None

Salary: “I keep a lot of the money in the company so we can stay up to date and continue to evolve, so we are a good way to keep budgets reasonable on films.”

Problem solving: “Weather is the biggest issue with inflatable mannequins outdoors. Nothing has happened yet because we have been able to problem solve as we go, but even on ‘Seabiscuit,’ on the night before filming at the racetrack, there was a tornado that touched down on the field. Fortunately, we had spent two days straight-tying every mannequin into their seats, so not much happened. The mannequins are actually pretty durable.”