(Almost) all photos are screenshots of footage taken in and around Lisbon
At the stroke of these keys, it is 1:50 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, March 15th, the 7th day of The Busking Project. The project is in motion, unstoppable. The rest of my life is on hold; today, I broke up with my girlfriend (this was pre-arranged, knowing I would be away, but still difficult), and tomorrow we leave for Marrakech. I am sitting on a Renfe train from Lisbon to Madrid, closed-back headphones silently blocking the noise of wheels on tracks, the lurch and lean of the carriage making me feel increasingly carsick.
On my left: Belle, her feet bent up on the hard back of the seat in front of her, an elbow blocking the train’s muted fluorescent lights, using a camera bag as a head rest. On her left: Chris, shrouded under a hoodie, a silhouette.
And me: literally falling asleep while logging and transcoding three dozen movies from the previous day’s filming, my hands on the keyboard, lines of repeating letters inching their way across the screen.
Welcome to my new life.
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We arrived in Lisbon on the 10th of March, after a night writhing on the Sweat-Express, a train car set for Iberian dispositions and without operable windows. Dehydrated and brain-fudged, we set ourselves down beside a taxi rank outside Lisboa Santa Apolonia Station, just east of the city centre, and waited for our my friend to pick us up.
I love Lisbon, its cobblestoned hillside alleyways, its affably misogynistic males and its discordant mix of old and new cultures. Among its buildings (and people) remain hints of pre-inquisition tastes, but the rest of the world is encroaching through transnationals and tourists who have flocked to Lisbon. It is tough not to be sad while walking around the city, confronted with the stark contrast between the years of Portugal’s monopoly on the spice trade (when everything was built) and its more modern state of decline (with everything covered in graffiti). Still, traditions remain; perfectly cooked meat is served without complicated sauces, couples do not kiss in the street, and it is easy to get your hands on cheap and effective alcohol.
But I wasn’t excited to be back here—I was too nervous. Eleven months of effort and an investment of all-or-nothing proportions, failure for TBP would cost me more than a lot of money and embarrassment. I was worried about my team choices—since leaving London, Chris had been calmly accepting (and that was all), while Belle dealt out firm creative suggestions: don’t sculpt our scenes, shoot everything first and edit later, and don’t put ourselves in the film at all. It was concerning how firmly she stated that our documentary should essentially be undirected.
“Lisbon will be a write-off,” I admitted to myself, sitting on my over-packed bag ousted the Santa Apolonia, “but things will get better. Stay calm, prepare for the worst, salvage what you can.”
Our ride arrived. We dropped off our bags, and pretty soon we were filming around the city, the start of four days’ hard work. Here is a small list of things that went wrong:
The time-lapse remote we had been sold with the camera did not fit our camera.
The tripod head was broken.
We couldn’t (and still can’t) work out why our A-cam’s footage was so grainy.
Our new computer didn’t work for three days.
While trying to fix the computer, we missed a student protest (with music) and the only day of real sun.
The footage we captured was badly focused, badly coloured, badly lit, badly framed, and badly in need of direction. Almost all of it was unusable.
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At the time of writing this sentence, it’s 15:05 on Tuesday March 15th, on the Renfe Altaria from Madrid, nearing the port town Algeciras and the home of a photographer whom we met through Couchsurfing.com. We have fuelled ourselves with home made hummus and boiled eggs, caught up on sleep, and enjoyed some silence together.
I’m happy. The footage we took of Lisbon buskers — although not the greatest — did show significant improvements over the four days of filming. I expected my partners to be wholly unprepared as cinematographers (as was I), but not to show so much creative energy so quickly. The audio we got was above average (although not great). And I think I’ll be able to deal with my new bachelor’s life.
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And now, finally, it’s 17:31, and our train is pulling out of Fez on its way to Marrakech. In 5 hours we’ll be on the increasingly rowdy streets of Marrakech (there have been demonstrations). Thankfully, the Foreign Office has yet to declare the city unfit for tourism, and so we will still be covered by our insurance.
On my left: Chris, reading the Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron, having finished edits on a short story collection. This is him working: realigning his neurones from fiction to non-fiction, in preparation for the following ten months.
On his left: Belle, brow furrowed, scribbling down an increasingly incisive pile of notes on documentary techniques and treatments (I brought textbooks for all of us). Last night “Professor Crawford” gave us a lesson on the arch of our narrative, and we honed our themes.
And me: back aching, making mental lists of problems to overcome, and full of hope, fingers slowing down, eyelids getting heavy.
I’ll leave you with the quote of the week, from our first night in Lisbon. An elderly couple who didn’t speak any English had prepared a traditional Portuguese dish, invented by peasants who could only afford bread. The bread would harden over the weeks to the point of being inedible, so they invented acorda, a soup of coriander, salt, oil and garlic, into which the bread is placed. The experience is much better than it sounds (wet bread), and we were served this with other traditional Portuguese foods: salted cod, torresmos (what can only be described as a hardened brick of delicious pork), chaurico assado (cured sausage grilled on a clay hammock over a base full of flaming firewater), and a light homemade vinho tinto. By far our favourite meal of the trip.
With the best of intentions, Belle attempted to compliment the cooks. “It’s amazing how well poor people eat in Portugal,” she smiled. After a slight pause, those of us who had understood (thankfully not our hosts) burst into laughter—however well she had meant that to sound, its innocent lack of tact was inescapable. I am still laughing.