Chile. El Llano De La Paciencia, one of four short films produced as part of Chile Factory, a collective project initiated by the Cannes Film Festival; CinemaChile, Chile's audiovisual promotion agency; and the National Council of Culture and arts of Chile, premiered on May 14 at the Directors' Fortnight, the opening event of Cannes.
During the production of the film, the audio team faced some adverse environmental challenges that were presented when filming in the Atacama Desert. To help capture pristine dialogue and ambient sounds during filming, the team relied on d:screet 4061 Omnidirectional microphones, d:dicate 4017B cannon and d:dicate 4018C Compact Supercardioids.
El Llano De La Paciencia is the story of two old friends who meet again and travel to the Atacama Desert to dig up a meteorite they had left buried 40 years ago. Carlo Sánchez Farías, sound mixer for the film's production, knew that DPA Microphones' products had the necessary features to overcome the challenges of filming in the open desert.
To address these issues, Sánchez Farías used a combination of two d:screet 4061s for the nearby microphone along with the d:dicate 4017B cannon microphones and the compact supercardioid 4018C to capture the performances of the Chilean actors.
"Recording audio in a desert is very difficult, as it is an intense environment, so the production of this short film was very difficult," says Sánchez Farías. "We were against the harsh weather and landscape conditions – fighting the heat, wind, dust and sand – but the microphones held up against those elements. I've been using company microphones since last year and chose to use them for this production because they have excellent audio quality and are built to be durable, while the design makes them light and comfortable. During the five days of shooting, I felt very calm and confident working with DPA microphones."
