Lakens (noun, translation: Sheet) written and directed by Christian Grobelaar, produced by Soaring Heights Productions. The film is a 25-minute short, created for Kyknet, Multichoice and the Silwerskerm Film Festival.
The film is centered around the character Lika, who after the death of her son, finds a flyer for a doorway that promises to reconnect her with her child, but what’s the catch?
Production took place over the course of two weeks during May and June, with an incredible team of professionals. Cast, cinematographers, set designers and lighting crews were all incredibly talented people. It was a pleasure to work and learn from these amazing individuals.
Sognage studios was once again tasked with production and post-production of all audio and music for the film. Due to the intensive production schedule we needed equipment that would serve us as flawlessly as possible. Multiple Sennheiser lapel microphones, Rode NTG-2’s as our shotgun microphone and a pair of Audio-Technica room microphones all being recorded into our Sound-Devices Mix Pre-6 and Zoom H4N.
On set we were looking to capture as much ‘wild sound’ (recording foley on set rather than reproducing it in studio) as possible. We knew the post-production process was going to be lengthy, as such we were looking to record as much foley, ambiences and room tones as possible.
Five distinct locations each provided an interesting challenge. Our primary set was an abandoned house in Randburg, Johannesburg, exclusively made up of brick walls and tiles, which meant a constant battle with reflections and reverberation from the room. Our solution? Towel racks, with lots and lots of towels. Having the approach of treating the space is definitely a mindset nurtured in studio, and while time consuming on set yielded a massive difference in on-set dialogue recordings.
Keep an eye out for our follow up Lakens blogs that will detail the post-production process and the Silwerskerm festival itself!
