Hello from sunny Porto! So here's a brief summary of what we've been up to since arriving 10 days ago...

The team is small but good - just me and my amazing sound-man/editor/moral-supporter, Dave. We've been staying with my parents (very much enjoying the home-cooking and sea views). Had to take some refresher driving lessons back in London due to my not driving for 5 yrs and forgetting how to - happy to report that my skills are now good enough to get us to and from the shooting location! yeeey. after driving in London this was easy peasy.

The first few days we didn't do much filming, mostly observed how people were using the shrine and how they were responding to our presence, also got to know the people who work at the shrine. Seeing as its such a small space I was a little concerned at first with disturbing the people who come to pray, but the camera being very small (Canon 5D) and using a monopod has helped to keep things discreet (more about shooting with the 5D in my next post). The shrine itself was always busy - specially on Sundays when people come on excursions - we counted 25 coaches!

We've been spending a lot of time in the museum (adjoining the shrine) with Eugenia, the lady who's in charge of archiving the various objects that are given by devotees as offerings to the saint - from gold necklaces to toy airplanes, screws from back operations to photos of loved ones, and of course the many, many wedding dresses. We sat in her office and filmed the people who came to give offerings. There was no way of predicting when people would show up, so there was a lot of waiting. Eugenia took the opportunity to teach Dave some Portuguese - he now knows many food-related words.

The biggest challenge was finding a focus for the film - the first few days were really overwhelming and it was only on the 3rd day that things started to become clearer. Although we did some straight interviews with Eugenia the best moments were when she was interacting with the visitors - listening to their stories, consoling, giving advice... She'd make a good councilor. Its interesting to see how people need to share their struggles and come to find that they're not alone.

Here are some pics of us with Eugenia - she wanted to listen back to her voice in the recordings.