The Pitch

Directed by Mark Lewis

The Pitch from 1998 lasts about five minutes – the entire length of a single 35mm spool, its only movement that of a camera zooming out; in it, we see Lewis himself in the middle of the picture read a text in which he tells the story of the ‘extras’, those unnamed armies of so-called supernumeraries without whom thousands of films would appear desperately empty. As the camera zooms out, Lewis himself is reduced to an extra among extras.