Along with production sound mixing, my contribution to the movie directed by Sriram Srivigneswaramoorthy was thru building of lights and props. During preproduction I designed, programmed and fabricated custom light fixtures, as well as helped with the construction of the mystery monoliths. On set I was altering between radio link recording and gaff department supervision.
Hegemonial Lights
Due to director’s intent of shooting on high ISO settings in predominantly dark outdoor conditions, the setup had to be aimed towards augmenting the sparce natural scene lighting with animated colour accents.
This plan focused my efforts on mobility, use-case flexibility and autonomy, making sheer power output of a lesser priority.
A WebApp embedded on board of every fixture´s controller was a further key element of the solution. Enabling multi-user control & monitoring of every light on set via smartphone it allowed the whole department to operate remotely in real-time. Read more about the Hegemonial Ambient Lights.
Field audio recording
Pushed by COVID restrictions, we abandoned any near-field fish pole attempts, utilizing wireless headsets only. The four-channel mix captured by me was augmented only by atmospheric recordings and those from auxiliary/backup camera mics only.
This placed a higher responsibility on me and required a quality-focused field audio recording workflow. Besides monitoring and adjusting the gain of a multichannel recording I was constantly looking and hearing out for any potential disturbances that could flaw the final sound.
Constucting the Monoliths
As a member of set design department I coperated with Jana Bissdorf during the erection of “monolith” props. Being a key visual in a number of scenes, the hollow structures had strict dimensional tolerances and mobility requirements.
Small enough to safely fit thru the whole chain of logistics, the the car-sized coarse plasterboard blanks were partly remodelled, sanded and painted in metallic tones. At this stage we were already able to use the Hegemonial Lights. It was a great possibility to refine the lightning concept and train literally everybody in the set team in basic light control.
Photo: Ida Usikova 
