Shot at the big time leaves Batman extras lost for words

It was the best of times and the worst of times for extras on the Batman film set, with some riding the escalator with the stars while others were left waiting under it.

More than 200 hopefuls - including professional film extras, comic book fans, models and two employees of the South China Morning Post - gathered under the Mid-Levels escalator in Cochrane Street at 10.30am on Friday after they won a place in the extras pool for The Black Knight.

At 11am, a production crew member picked more than 30 people to take part in the first scene of the day, in which Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) rode a section of the escalator surrounded by commuters.

Among them was Post arts editor Kevin Kwong, dressed in a smart blue suit, who was paired up with a professional extra to play a couple of business colleagues.

'One of the production guys came and asked for the good-looking people to come and stand on the escalator,' he said.

'We were supposed to be a pair of executives chatting on the way to the office. She told me not to talk or make any noise because they might get the sound of our voice, so we basically mimed our conversation.

'I thought I would do it for a laugh. What I really wanted was to see how it works behind the scenes. Now I realise that the extras don't talk, they just mime. They don't look into the camera and they don't look at the actors.