The Project

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SUMMARY

1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Introduction of the subject 1
1.2 Project goals 1
1.3 Justification of the importance of the project 1
1.4 Description of the organization of the report 2

2 EXPERIENCE REPORT 3
2.1 Pre-production 3
2.1.1 Research about the subject 4
2.1.2 Research of the language used in the documentary 6
2.1.3 Research of the characters 7
2.1.4 Video format 9
2.1.5 Equipment and staff 9
2.2 Production 10
2.2.1 The first steps 10
2.2.2 The Megaweeding 12
2.2.3 The difficulties 12
2.2.4 Filming schedule 13
2.2.5 Important details 14
2.2.6 Relationship with the interviewed ones 15
2.3 Post-production 15
2.3.1 The decupage and the script 15
2.3.2 The capture and the editing 16
2.3.3 The building of the narrative 17

3 FINAL THOUGHTS 19

4 QUICK HISTORY OF MARRIAGE 20
4.1 The marriage, from Classical Ancient History to Middle Age 20
4.2 The marriage and the family Modern Ages 23
4.2.1 Questioning of the bourgeois values 25
4.2.2 Romeo & Juliet and the modern love 26
4.3 The marriage and the family in the post-modern times 26
4.4 The marriage, the family and the gender differences 28
4.5 Sexuality, marriage and family 29
4.6 The marriage as a rite 30
4.7 The breaking up of a marriage 30
4.8 The kinds of marriage 31
4.9 Some definitions of marriage 32

5 REFERENCES 34

6 ATTACHMENTS 37

7 APENDIX 41



1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction of the subject

Considering that the documentaries made for Brazilian open TV have only approached the marriage theme from a religious point of view or from a legal point of view, necessarily relating it to divorce, or yet as a parallel in the comparison with the growing number of couples that merely live together, instead of actually getting married, as observed in the Rede Globo videos listed in the references of this report, we felt there was a need to approach the subject from a different perspective. In this project, we tried to question the origin of the desire to legalize the love relationship between men and women.

1.2 Project goals

In the last few years, the number of couples who have decided to live together, instead of getting married and legalizing the relationship, has been growing, as it can be observed on chart 1 in the appendix. The documentary I Declare You Husband and Wife investigates the subject by interviewing people who have opted for the legal marriage, as a civil contract - religious or not. The main focus of the video is the civil contract, its evolution and its importance to society. However, the documentary also investigates questions related to family and gender differences in this society. We emphasize that the documentary follows an intimate narrative and tries to bring out ideas about the theme, instead of presenting definite answers. We tell the personal stories of the characters so that the viewer may come across the proposed theme.

1.3 Importance of the project

I Declare you Husband and Wife is a personal and intimate project. This characteristic should not reduce its social and academic relevance because intimacy is greatly defined by the culture of each group. In relation to this aspect, it is interesting to note that all of the characters in the documentary always refer to a third party when it comes to talking about their decision of getting married, even though they have not really been forced to formalize the marriage. For that reason, having access to their personal stories is also revealing in the academic point of view.
The project is also pertinent because the subject is very current in the media, as we can see in the newspaper articles in the attachments 1 and 2.
In addition, this essay, which will be available to the public in the ECO Library, might be useful to other students, since it shows the path to the achievement of the proposed goals. This essay might also inspire other students from the university to accomplish their own projects.

1.4 Description and organization of the report

In the introduction to this report, the subject and the goals of the project were presented, as we tried to make the limits of the essay clear.
In the second chapter, we narrate the experience of pre-production, describing the moment of the definition of the theme and the research stage. In addition, we justify the choice of equipment and staff. We also narrate the production phase, when we actually did what was planned in the pre-production stage. Finally, in this chapter, we describe the post-production of the project, when the screenplay was actually put together.
In the third chapter, we present some brief considerations and in the fourth chapter, a summary of the research developed about the marriage theme is presented.
As an addition to this essay, the attachments and appendixes may give the reader access to parts of the materials utilized in the project.

2. REPORT OF THE EXPERIENCE

2.1 Pre-production

The idea of making a video about marriage came from the documentary The Gatherers and Me (Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse), by Agnès Varda. In the movie, the director "seeks" street walkers around France and, among those people, there is a couple in their 50´s to whom she talks. At a certain point, the woman describes the night she met her husband, and she does it with such details that space from what she was wearing at the time to the soundtrack. After hearing the long description, Agnès Varda asks the man: "What about her? How was she dressed when you met each other?" There is silence and then, finally, with an embarrassed smile, he answers: "I don't remember". Silence again and there is the cut of the scene.
At first, the situation brought up laughter to the student, but later it generated an intense curiosity about those two people, who did not appear in the film anymore. It was a desire of getting to know more about the couple, to see where and how they lived, finally, to enter "their world". From that mixture of grace and curiosity, the first lines of the theme appeared.
April, 2002. By that time the film was exhibited in the "It is all True" International Documentaries Festival, at the CCBB-RJ. The student was in the 7th term at the University and she had already thought about shooting a documentary video as a final course project. The choice of a documentary was due to the surprises that this kind of video brings. The absence of predefined dialogs in the script, the previous ignorance of the words and the characters' gestures attracted her attention. The festival stimulated that idea because there were great productions of famous directors and students, showing that the inexperience is not an obstacle, it is a reason to produce.
The fact that the student worked as a production assistant trainee in the UFRJ TV program, Rhizome, was essential to the project. During that time, she participated in all stages of accomplishment of a video, learning through practical experience about the various possibilities that the profession offers, and therefore better understanding her own skills.
Having decided that her project would be a documentary video, she lacked a theme. The French couple's scene was appealing to the student's memory. The scene brought up the desire of talking about affectionate relationship, but since it was a very wide subject, she tried to limit it and finally decided to discuss marriage. However, the theme was still very wide, since marriage can involve the civil registration, the ceremony, which could be religious or not, and is not limited to the Catholic religion only. Besides, that was a theme that had already been approached countless times on reports on TV and, therefore, there was the need to look for an aspect that had not been discussed yet. The student decided then that the central focus of the documentary would be the civil contract of marriage, an aspect usually shadowed by the religious ceremony on the reports about the subject.
After the theme was defined, the student opted "to forget about it", setting herself free, without the obligation to think about it, letting the ideas come to mind freely. Then, she decided to write down everything that came to mind at any moment of the day, on the bus, at work, at the university, at home, anywhere. The ideas could be questions regarding the subject, characters that she could like to find or creations in the aesthetics of the video. That phase of "brainstorming" lasted approximately two months.
In June, the result of the "brainstorming" was presented to her professor/advisor. From then on, a tentative schedule was established:
- July and August: researches about the theme, the language of the documentary and the characters
- September: recording (shooting)
- October and November: edition and meeting with the couple that she accompanied in the preparations of the marriage and in the ceremony