I have wrapped production on Os Marnotos… sort of. I have a few more end-of-season weather shots I want to get. But otherwise I am now officially in post-production. Here’s the project description:
Os Marnotos (The Salt Workers) is a documentary short film about three generations of a family making sea salt by traditional methods in Aveiro, Portugal. The film will be in Portuguese with English subtitles.
The film is less about explaining salt production and more a visually lyrical look at this labor as a traditional practice. The visual plan is for a narrative series of sequences that focus on the stunning and stark visuals of the salt pan and the human bodies doing the labor.
The lyrical visuals will be set to music with some voice-over by the family members talking about making salt by traditional methods.
My goal is to portray the work as a dance with nature, a dance requiring strength, stamina, and mental toughness. Nature plays an important role in the film. Similar to any agricultural production, making sea salt is subject to weather, and the land provides wetland for sea birds and migratory birds, including flamingos.
The runtime of the finished film will be less than 15 minutes. The narrative arc will roughly follow the seasons of production. I will likely open with winter scenes. This will be followed by the opening and cleaning of the salt pans in the spring. Summer production follows. Selling the salt plays a small role. Then the film will cover the final fall production which leads to preparing the pans for winter. The film will likely close on a late fall or winter scene.
The Salinas de Aveiro is located at the mouth of the central canal that feeds into the Aveiro Lagoon. The lagoon has been the site of salt production for more than a thousand years. It is also likely that the Romans made salt here almost two thousand years ago. The canals of Aveiro are former commercial arteries used by Portuguese in making salt, fishing, and harvesting seaweed on the lagoon. Today, the canals are a tourist attraction providing scenic boat rides on the traditional moliceiros boats.