Production Diary - The Walking Stick

Once a month I’m going to talk about a specific production, what it was like to film it, and what was involved in making it happen.  This month I’m going to talk about The Walking Stick.

The Walking Stick, like The Medea School of Melodrama, is a short film that was originally made for an SPC-TV production called Tape & a Stick. 

The basic idea was that each week there would be two objects that you had to include in your short film and there were three films per episode.  I think it was a cool idea, since there were multiple people who submitted shorts so you could see how others would use the objects.  However, it only lasted for three episodes – Tape & a Stick, Balloon & a Sock, and Soup & a Cow.  As one of the producers on the show (Morgan Thomas and LT were the others), I tended to do as many shorts as we needed to fill up the episode.  Sometimes it was just one, sometimes it was more. 

The Walking Stick was produced for the first episode and the objects were – of course – a tape and a stick.  Since you could use any type of tape and any type of stick I chose to use a camera tape and a nice, period looking walking stick (i.e. a cane).  It’s hard to say if the plot came first or the objects or if they sort of popped up in my head at the same time.

The story is based on a common theme in ghost lore – haunted objects.  A ghost can haunt a house, a park, a cemetery, or the land itself - most people are familiar with that idea.  A little less well known is that ghosts can haunt people – they often manifest as poltergeists but not always, and some are thought of as guardian angels.  Spirits can also haunt objects – the most famous type is a haunted doll, a toy like a stuffed clown, but any object could be haunted.  Beds, chests, books, anything that could have a personal significance would work.  So why not a walking stick?  Someone had an expensive cane made especially for her and decided to stay to take it with her when she died – or at least go wherever it goes.

The plot is very simple – which is good for a short film (although simple plots are I rarely do, even for shorts).  A woman named Jennifer is walking past a store when she sees a nice looking cane sitting outside the shop.  There is a price tag of $2 but no one is around and the store is closed so she just steals it and heads home. 

That night she hears the sound of someone walking around downstairs using a cane. While she is trying to work up the courage to go see who or what it is, suddenly a ghost appears in her room.  The semi-transparent form of a women dressed in late 19^th century clothes sits on the bed next to Jennifer and stares at her.  She is holding the walking stick that Jennifer stole that day.

The next day Jennifer calls her friend, Frank, and he comes over.  She tells him about the ghost and the haunted walking stick and he doesn’t believer. That night she sets up a camera on night vision in an attempt to capture footage of the ghost and prove the ghost is real.  The same thing happens as the previous night with steps and the ghost appearing in her room. 

The next morning Jennifer checks the tape, sees footage of the ghost and then calls Frank.  He comes over, but when he looks at the footage he doesn’t see anything – the tape is blank.  Not only does he think she’s going crazy, he’s a real jerk about it – which earned the character the nickname “Frank the Bad Friend”.  A bewildered Jennifer sits on the sofa and stares at the stick after he leaves. The last shot is the cane leaning against a wall back outside the shop where she found it.

Simple story, easy to shoot – which is good because we had no script and filmed it in a few hours on one night. 

James McKinley, LT, and I were staying at my parents’ house over Easter weekend in April of 2002.  We were bored on Saturday morning and decided to make a movie for Tape and a Stick.  I had Horatio with me (my first camera), but I guess I didn't have any tape, low battery, or maybe it's just because we needed a camera as a prop that we didn't actually film with him.  Instead we ended up using James' camera and tapes to film it.

Anyway, I brainstormed for a few hours with James and LT and then whipped up the ghost story idea, made an outline, and set about casting the parts.  LT wanted to play the ghost, James was willing to play Frank, so that just left Jennifer - the main character - uncast.  I had recently filmed with Margaret Olson for some episodes in Season 2 of The Gift Bearer, so I immediately thought of her.  I called her up to see if she was available to film that evening and amazingly she was!  (FYI - the ghost's name is never mentioned, but we ended up calling her George (short for Georgina).  I have no idea why.)

The first thing we filmed were the store scenes where Jennifer finds and leaves the cane.  The location was actually pretty easy to chose.  We needed a store that sold a bunch of cool, random stuff and that was relatively close to the Homestead.  

Le Shoppe – a store in downtown Champaign – was perfect.  I was well acquainted with the owners after spending several years buying costumes from them for various productions including Destiny III, The Dragon & the Unicorn, The King of Elflin’s Daughter, and a crap ton of vests for Pandora’s Box.  It’s a great place to shop.  

The store was closing when we got there, but since it’s a small and often crowded place I had no intention of filming inside – I just needed to borrow their exterior window area which they were happy to let us use. They are nice people (i.e. please shop there).

After shooting those two scenes, we returned to the Homestead to film the rest.  The scenes with Frank-the-Bad-Friend were next.  It didn’t take long since the scenes were ad-libbed and I did very few shots for each (another mistake).  We talked about what each scene needed to contain in terms of information and dialogue before filming, then pretty much just let the camera roll. 

We ended the night with the ghost scenes, since we had to wait until after dark to film those.  We shot the stuff in the hallway first with the ghost walking back and forth, then did the scenes in the bedroom where Jennifer wakes up when she hears the noises, then sees the ghost and freaks out.  We filmed that scene a few times to make sure we got it right, then called it a night.  I’m not sure if we watched footage that night or the next day though, but I’m pretty we did watch it at some point.

The next day was Easter Sunday so we dyed Easter Eggs with my family.  James decided to decorate an egg as an ode to the Walking Stick, and drew the different characters on it.  It was totally awesome.

It was a spur of the moment film shoot with a general and somewhat generic storyline – and no actual script, which is rare – but it was a lot of fun to film and I think it turned out okay.  It was the best kind of shoot: short, sweet, and memorable.