One of the four short films produced as part of Chile Factory, El Llano De La Paciencia premiered in May 2015 at La Quinzaine des Realisateurs opening event at Cannes.
Shooting in the harsh environmental challenge offered by the Atacama Desert, the sound team relied on DPA Microphones’ d:screet 4061 omnidirectional, d:dicate 4017B shotgun and d:dicate 4018C compact supercardioid microphones.
Chile Factory is a collective launched by the Cannes Film Festival, CinemaChile (Chile’s promotional audiovisual agency) and Chile’s Audiovisual Art and Industry Council. El Llano De La Paciencia is the story of two friends who reunite and travel to the Atacama Desert to dig up a meteorite they left buried 40 years ago. Carlo Sánchez Farías, sound production mixer for the film, used two d:screet 4061s for close miking, along with the d:dicate 4017B Shotgun and 4018C Compact Supercardioid mics to capture the performance of the Chilean actors.
‘We were up against severe weather and landscape conditions — battling heat, wind, dust and sand — but the mics held up against those elements,’ he says. ‘I have been using DPA mics for the last year and chose them for this production because they have an outstanding audio quality and are built to be durable, while the design makes them light and comfortable. Over the five days of filming, I felt very calm and secure working with DPA mics.’
During production, Sánchez Farías often turned to the d:screet 4061s to accommodate the directors’ favoured wide camera shots capturing the landscape, which would otherwise be made impossible by a boom. Since the d:screet 4061s can be concealed in the actors’ wardrobe, they allowed close miking to capture the dialogue, without rustling clothes or wind noise.
‘The main goal for the production was to record the clearest dialogue possible to eliminate the necessity of ADR sessions,’ Sánchez Farías explains. ‘We wanted to preserve the natural emotion of the improvised dialogue and the 4061 capsules played an important role in these more intimate scenes. Both the d:dicate 4017B Shotgun and 4018C Compact Supercardioid microphones shined in their respective roles, picking up on the natural sound elements of the desert, which were added to the scenes during post for authentic ambient noise.’
Launched in 2013 by Dominique Welinski, the Chile Factory project selects a different country each year to invite four young directors from around the world to visit and work alongside a local filmmaker. The four short films are later combined to create a feature length film, which debuts at The Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. 2013’s Taipei Factory was the first project, followed by Nordic Factory in 2014.
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