Filming a Documentary About An Outlawed Wine
These grapes were being harvested on the day we filmed, so capturing a few clusters still on the vine was priority number one for us.
Atmosphera Productions has been out-and-about in vineyards and a winery this month helping an international director get footage for an upcoming documentary about an (sort of) outlawed wine. The story is an interesting one: the grape is legal to grow, the wine it produces is legal to make but illegal to sell. Families with these specific vines in their backyard make the wine every year after harvest time and the wine itself lives in a sort of secretive infamy.
Filming a documentary requires a special skill set. Unlike a movie, things may happen once and they may happen fast. Film makers need to be on their toes constantly. There’s often very little time to work light modifiers so you take what you get. When shooting internationally, there are additional challenges like unfamiliarity with a different country, its culture and its teams. And language issues can be very difficult to overcome.
The director needed a vineyard to shoot some preliminary footage. After a local vineyard in the West Region was targeted, an introduction was made to the owners. There were some language differences but they were overcome with the use of a Portuguese translator. Once given permission to do the filming, we headed out into the vineyard as well as the collection facility.
We couldn’t have asked for a better day - sunny, breezy, not too warm, and during the harvest. This last point was key because the harvest only lasts about one week. Using two cameras we captured everything we could. This included machines and hands picking the grapes, transport of the grapes back to the winery, the cleaning and moisture removal processes, and the equipment inside the wine cellars.
Special care had to be taken with the cameras due to the dusty conditions of the harvesting process. Many lens wipes were cautiously used during the filming. And we learned to stand upwind from the action as much as possible.
The most important question that has to be answered is this: Did we walk away with free wine samples? The answer is no, but we were gifted a few bottles of bagaço - made from the mash of grape skins and stems left over from the production of wine, which is distilled to produce Portugal’s version of moonshine. Yes, it did burn going down.
The documentary work will continue into the Autumn with more footage gathered. Editing will be completed by an outside team and, hopefully, the world will learn about this grape’s story.
Tags: Wine, documentary, Portugal, fixer services, translation services, camera crew, film making
