Film(s): Completing the Cycle / A Tenner for your Time
Director: Tonks Blom
Completing the Cycle – Tonks Blom
Writer(s):
Completing the Cycle – Tonks Blom
A Tenner for your Time – Tonks Blom / Harry McAuliffe
Actors:
Completing the Cycle – Yasmin Fenton, Rick Leigh
A Tenner for your Time – Harry McAuliffe, Michael Mulqueen
Synopsis:
Completing the Cycle – In the wake of Portugal´s 2017 wildfires, Rick and Yas bought the land that would become Wolf Farm. Permaculture is more than survival, it is coming closer to nature, community and the courage to begin again. This is their story.
A Tenner for your Time – The homeless man Miles has adapted to his new life in the woods far away from society, when a seemingly helpful businessman crosses his path and offers to give him a second chance in life.
In a new Southend Film Festival interview on Blazing Minds, I got a chance to ask Writer-Director Tonks Blom a few questions about her films ‘A Tenner for your Time’ & ‘Completing the Cycle’
A Tenner for your Time will be playing at the Southend Film Festival on Saturday 7th June at 11am as part of the Mostly Made in Southend Part One
Completing the Cycle will be playing at the Southend Film Festival on Sunday 8th June 12pm.
Q. You have 2 short films which have been selected to play at the Southend Film Festival. Completing the Cycle and A Tenner for your Time. Can you tell us what we can expect from each of these films?
A. Completing the cycle has turned out to be a bit of a passion project for me. We knew very little of their work prior to joining Rick and Yas at their farm, and as the documentary developed, we started to realise just how much knowledge and passion they have for the sustainability and permaculture world. Our mission became to try and capture that and, their story in the best way possible.
A. Completing the cycle is a story about morals. About sacrifices and the fine line between being the victim and the monster. It also touches on a very important subject in our society today, the homeless. How we view and treat the outcasts that has left the conventional life, due to choice or circumstance.
Q. You wrote the script for Completing the Cycle and co-wrote the script for A Tenner for your Time with Harry McAuliffe. What were your inspirations for writing the scripts, and what was your process of writing with Harry McAuliffe.
A. Completing the Cycle didn’t have a script. The story started to grow as we got to know the people and the project and from there, we developed themes that we wanted to show and talk about that meant a lot to Rick and Yas, it was important that we gave them the freedom to tell their story, without losing their, voices in the process. We ended up with 8-9 different themes and about 5 made it into the film.
A. Harry was the person who prompted me to try and write a more commercial film, (most of my previous works have been more surreal and psychological) and I decided to focus heavily on dialogue to tell the story. I came up with the premises and together with Harry developed the dept and the symbolics of the script. Especially hard work went into the monologue in the middle of the film to try and capture a whole life story in a minute.
Q. What were some of the influences for the look and style of the films?
A. For Completing the cycle I looked a lot at ecological Documentaries in Sweden. I looked at style, pacing, how to build the story in a way that keeps the viewer engaged and interested. We were very limited on equipment, so I also looked at how other documentarians have worked around moving shots, handheld and working in difficult environments (like a forest).
For the monologue in a Tenner, my biggest influence for the shot came from Good Will hunting (1997).
Q. Where there any elements of the original scripts which you adapted during filming?
A. I wanted to have a big drone scene at the beginning flying through the woods, but I had to change that due to the amount of dog walkers around us, and the trees… So, we ended up with an areal shot instead, which turned out to look incredible.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments whilst making the films?
A. A Tenner – Seeing the monologue coming together. From the start I wanted the monologue to be done in one shot, no cuts. Michael worked hard prior to the film day on that specific element. When we started shooting my DOP handed over the camera to me and we run the whole thing twice. It was amazing to see how the monologue came alive in that moment.
My favourite part of the Documentary was the walks we did around their land. They told us about all the trees and plants and showed us the development from when they arrived to now and how much the forest had been generated and returned since the wild fire in 2017.
Q. Did you experience any issues whilst filming?
A. The Weather. We got caught up in a rainstorm in the morning of filming a Tenner, which ended up as a 2-hour delay, the set was soaked, my actors were soaked, and it drove us to bring in what became kind of the poster image of the film. An umbrella.
While shooting Completing the Cycle, we were in August, in Portugal. Some days the heat went up to 45 degrees and shooting, or doing anything at all really, became very difficult. You can see that one of our main interviews was shot inside their ruin, because it was the only place that was cold enough to be in during the day. There was also a lot of wildlife around us, bugs, bees, centipedes, spiders, boars, you name it.
Q. What do you hope people will take away after watching the films?
A. I hope people will take some of the drive and passion about living life in your own terms and doing something positive with that. I think that goes for both of my films.
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are working on?
A. I have lately been working on video content for musicians. I have been shooing story driven music videos and music content for several bands in UK. I am currently moving up to Manchester to continue my filmmaking there.
Q. If someone is looking to direct their first film, what advice would you give them?
A. Work with the people you trust and listen to what people tell you. There is a lot of competent people out there and having a team that you trust are good at what they do and follow their advice when they give it to you can take a project from good to great. And If you can’t make something great, then make something that is good enough, experience is never wasted.
A Tenner for your Time will be playing at the Southend Film Festival on Saturday 7th June at 11am as part of the Mostly Made in Southend Part One
Completing the Cycle will be playing at the Southend Film Festival on Sunday 8th June 12pm.
You can find out more about Tonks Blom on the Website and Instagram
You can film out more about the festival and purchase tickets for Completing the Cycle / A Tenner for your Time here:
Published in various websites, Philip is a reviewer who is best known for his interviews and media coverage of independent projects including; films, books, theatre and live events. Always on the lookout for something different to cover!
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