JAPANESE film makers will be arriving in the Marlborough area today to make a documentary about crop circles.

They are paying £50 a day for extras to appear in the film and as the Gazette went to press yesterday they were still taking people on.

Crop circles have become big business all across the world, but although the amazing formations have appeared in other countries, England, and Wiltshire in particular, is regarded as the home of the phenomenon.

More than 50 crop circles have been recorded in the south of England so far this year according to the websites that are updated daily with details of the latest patterns to appear.

This month sightings of new formations have been running at an average of one a day.

There have been at least three new patterns in the Avebury-Marlborough area.

Crop formations are now a major part of the tourist industry attracting people from all over the world, especially Americans and Japanese who are fascinated by the annual appearance of the mysterious pictograms.

Tours of the crop circles are available for visitors and even helicopter rides to see the latest formations.

Dozens of different crop circle calendars appear each year and many new books on the subject appear.

Conferences are held every summer at which "croppies" gather to discuss the latest formations and their theories on how they are made.

Just about every possible theory has been expounded about how they are made, including aliens sending warning messages about how the earth is being abused, freak tornadoes and the effects of radiation on crops.

Farmers say they suspect teams of circle makers, keen to outdo each other with bigger, better and more elaborate formations, lie at the root of the phenomenon.

The England-based Japanese TV production company Media Nations Inc. Ltd is planning a reconstruction drama on the self-confessed pair of old codgers from Southampton, Doug and Dave, who a few years ago claimed that they were responsible for many of the crop formations.

Doug and Dave demonstrated on TV how they used wire sights fastened to the peaks of baseball caps to show them where to trample the corn using crude wooden planks.

Most of the practised crop circle observers, however, dismissed the pair as a couple of cranks. Nevertheless Media Nations Inc Ltd plans to spend the next five days reconstructing the Doug and Dave story.

Production co-ordinator Kanako Hiramoto said: "We are looking for extras to help our dramatised reconstruction filming.

"We need as many local people as possible, such as pub customers, media reporting the circles, also local farmers who are surprised to see intricacy of the circles which appear in their wheatfields."

The dramatised version of Doug and Dave's claim that they made hundreds of crop formations will be shown on the national Japanese TV channel Nippon TV.

Anyone who wants to be an extra can contact the company's London offices on 020 8568 1122. Information on the latest crop circles to appear can be found on www.cropcircle conector.com