What started as a suggestion for a iPhone video diary to document the early days of Beacon Farms, which offers a second chance at employment and life to recovering addicts, has become a film that will be shown at the Camana Bay Cinema next month.
Director, producer and cinematographer Candy Whicker has spent the last three years working on the documentary, interviewing the staff and owners, and getting behind-the-scenes shots of the 34-acre farm, which the Haugh family bought in 2017.
She has spent the last few months, editing more than 45 hours of footage into the one-hour-and-three-minute-long film, which she concedes has been “quite daunting”.
Whicker, a former banker, became familiar with the project through her friend Sandy Urquhart, who is the chief operating officer at Beacon Farms. She first visited the farm in August 2019, after which she suggested to Urquhart that he needed to record what was going on at the farm.
“It is such an incredible story, you will forget the wonderful things that have happened here,” Whicker said she told Urquhart, and urged him to keep a video diary on his iPhone.
“I left it at that,” she said. “Then, two weeks later, Sandy called me and said he knew I’d made a short film about [Cayman artist] David Bridgeman, and he wanted me to make a film about the farm.”
She added, “I loved the idea and thought I’d give it a go.”
The farm grows tobacco for high-end cigars, as well as mangel beets for cattle fodder, and an array of fruit and vegetables. The staff mostly live full time on the farm, which offers them steady employment; a supportive, drug-free environment; and skills training to help find work in the private sector.
Whicker met with the Haugh father-and-son team who owned the farm, Granger and Scott, and an outline plan of the documentary was drawn up. “It was my project, but it was about them and the farm. I had full access, and would tell the story as I saw it,” she said.
Originally, the film was supposed to be about a year in the life of Beacon Farms, and she started filming in January 2020, doing initial on-camera interviews with members of staff, asking them about their lives and their recovery.
“I was a visitor in their world and they didn’t know me from Adam, and I knew I had to be very respectful. They were very open,” she said.
“It was all going smoothly, and then March 2020 came along and everything shut down.”
With COVID-19 locking the island down, Whicker was unable to visit the farm for three months.
She finally returned to Beacon Farms in mid-June, and figured the plan of making a film about a year in the life of the enterprise was no longer an option. Instead she pivoted, and started visiting the farm each week whenever she was on island, and also getting iPhone footage from staff who had been filming various events and milestones.
“I’d go there on Wednesdays, and whenever something was happening… I did that for another two-and-a-half years. I accumulated 45 hours of footage.”
She admitted she found turning this “mountain of material” into a film “quite daunting”, and she realised as a “one-man band” outfit, she needed some assistance in completing the movie.
She enlisted the help of former BBC journalist Freddie Rostand, who runs Rostand Production in the UK. They worked on the colour and sound of the film, re-engineered the story, and Rostand added the commentary.
With some last tweaking, the final cut of the film is now done, and ready for release.
It will be shown at the Camana Bay Cinema, with the premiere being held on 8 Feb., and public screenings on 15, 16 and 17 Feb.
Watch the trailer at www.beaconfarmsthemovie.ky.
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