Last week Wednesday I took myself off to the set of
7de Laan to spend the day snooping around getting a feel for what a day in the life a 7de laan actor is like and seeing exactly how making the show happens.
The place that is Hillside is brought to buzzing life at a complex in Lonehill, Jozi called Studio Park. From the outside you’d never imagine that the shenanigans you see on screen could be hidden within the many buildings that cater to a variety of different production companies.
Danie Odendaal Productions makes 7de Laan and even once you’ve passed the front door and peeringly moved through the front office, the imaginary Hillside continues to be tucked away behind a big blue door with a warning red light that keeps the cameras and actors hidden from the real world.
When The Red Light Is On
The show is filmed behind two such doors in two different buildings and once you pass through them you go into two large studio’s that are the sets that create the places of Hillside.
I tried to take pics from the very middle of the one of the studios to give you an exact idea of what they look like as a whole but as you can see, it was strinickity to get the full effect in one picture.
The best way to describe it is that there’s a passageway down the middle of each studio and on either side - boxed on a lit stage of their own - are the sets for the different places in the show.
Each of the two studios has six different such sets each – three on either side of the passageway - all of which are very detailed.
Some of them are set up permanently while others are able to change - as in the case of the Hillside Times which changes into the Boekwinkel and is directly opposite the Deli and next door to Kyriakis Events.
Everything was in dark in these places as there was no action happening in them for the day with the morning scenes and bright lights happening in Oppiekoffie and in Hilda and Ou Baas’s kitchen - which are directly opposite each other.
Set up in the passageway in between are monitors, three cameras on wheels with camera-peeps behind them as well as mike operators wielding booms – all of whom whizz up and down the passage as they film into the boxes.
Lights, Camera, Action:The process of filming any scene involves the actors arriving on the set ready costume-wise etc, they rehearse where they need to be and what they need to do with the director – which they go through about twice – and then they film the scene.
Once they’ve finished a sequence of scenes, everyone chills out and watches the rushes on TV to see whether they’re happy with the results.
Scenes are filmed three months in advance to keep up with the time pressures of being broadcast daily. Filming happens every day of the week January to November – with two week long breathers at different times of the year.
To ensure that they finish everything they need to do for the month of December – during which time everyone is off - they do what they call a six-pack week where they film extra scenes from an episode every day so that they end up with an extra episode by the end of the week.
The length of the days they work are loong as everyone arrives at the crack of dawn - between 6:45 and 7:00am for their breckers – which is provided by the show’s catering department.
At 7:30 am everyone then goes off to get themselves organised for the day by running their lines, blocking and discussing their scenes with the director in the rehearsal room and having their make-up done which happens from 9am when the make-up department arrives.
While everyone does this the camera and on-set people get the final bits and pieces ready for action and filming starts at 10am according to the callsheet that every actor gets given the day before. This is a schedule that details which scenes are filming for the day, where they’re happening, who exactly is in them and which director will be directing.
There are four directors in total who’ll each direct different episodes, sometimes overlapping when they’re working a six-pack week. Naturally not all the actors are busy filming all the time so in between they’re able to get up whatever they’re in the mood for.
In instances where someone only needs to be in a scene after lunch they can go off to organise something or they chill out with coffee and biscuits outside on benches or they sit in the green room, which is a peaceful, slighty darkened room with a TV where they chat or listen to music etc.
Actor FuelIf everything’s going according to schedule they break for lunch between 1 and 2 pm – which is also provided by the caterers and which I guzzled down. I had fish, creamed spinach, butternut and salad and that was just a limited selection of what was for grabs which also included chicken, loads of other veggie’s, pap and cooldrinks.
After 2pm it was back to filming until 19h30 - which is when everyone on set’s day officially ends. After this the actors gets their new scripts for the next day, say their goodbye’s and head off home to learn their words and prepare for the next day.
From what I could work out the word-learning process seems to take the lead actors an average of about two hours an evening to get perfecto and then it’s to sleep and back again the next morning to new places, scenarios and stories.
It was trippy watching the actors do their thang – espesh seeing how quickly they all speak. Like you’d think with them needing to remember so many words it would slow them down a bit at least but instead they motored through them at pace as if didn't need to remember them first.
In between scenes many of them also flicked through their scripts, making sure of this and that etc while having their make-up tweaked before morphing into their other selves.
| 7de Laan Trivia |
Each month the show uses:
6 bottles of a hairspray
5 litres of shampoo and conditioner
20 boxes of paper
|
| All the red and white wine drunk in scenes is grapejuice, coke or water. |
| At least 30 outfits get washed and ironed every day. |
| Each actor learns approximately 2500 words each week. |
| Food ordered and eaten by characters at Oppiekoffie comes to R500 a day. |
| On-set catering makes meals for plus/minus 100 people a day. |
| The show does 40 auditions for new cast possibilities each week. |
| The show’s cast generally consists of 17 permanent actors and 10 regular guest actors. |
| The show distributes 50 scripts amongst the cast every day. |
| Actress Vinette Ebrahim's brother is Vincent Ebrahim, who plays Ashwin Kumar in The Kumars At No. 42. |
Who Lives In 7de Laan?
What’s intriguing is how the show’s based on a street that actually exists – which is something I’ve never realised before.
Apparently Danie Odendaal got the idea for it over twenty years ago when he’d regularly have breakfast at an Oppiekoffie type spot in Melville where he’d watch the people go by and wonder about their stories.
He approached SABC with the idea for the show, they turned him down saying they didn’t think doing a soap opera was the right thing for them to do and then, ten years later, they approached him to do it.
The title of the show went through various changes starting off with Die Koffiekan - which got shelved pronto - then it was gonna be “Hoe Meer Dae …” which was thankfully scrapped for being too similar to Days Of Our Lives and finally it got the name 7de Laan, based on an actual street/lane – what’s the diffs? – in Lonehill.
The show was launched on April 4th, 2000, it celebrated it’s 1000th episode on September 9th, 2005 and at the end of neext year it’ll be moving from Lonehill into new snazzy studio’s at SABC, which are currently being built for it.
And through it all the peeps of 7de Laan continue living their everyday lives – very possibly watching the show from their livingrooms. It would be fab knowing if they do and what they think of the show and whether they’re similar to the characters in it don’t you think?
And so it was I finished my lunch, spent more time chinwagging with the actors and then headed off into town with Dezi (
I drove obviously) to Inge’s boutique to try on her brightly coloured clothes.
Take a close-up peek at what things look like behind the scenes by clicking the pics to enlarge: