The Legend Of Plainfield Farm

1979

Columbia College

Film school was great my first semester. The basic learning of film stocks, aperture readings, and motion. There was a small project the class had to accomplish for they're final grade. A simple film of a subject going from A, to B, and then back to A again. I came up with a humorous little ditty about a runner who runs up a huge flight of stairs, cheers to himself ala Rocky, and then is bumped into by a lady which causes him to fall back down the stairs. Easy and quick. Film class is going to be great!

For my second semester in Film Class our instructor, Dan Denello gave the class an assignment that was to show up to that point what we have learned in his class. This was to also reflect our final grade.

This film project was to be silent, no sound whatsoever. While the rest of the class went they're ways to shoot there own little projects with this mission in mind, I decided to pick a subject that was way ahead of what the other class was shooting. While they went off and filmed buildings, musicians, or some other artsy fartsy type of thing, I decided to film something I wanted to.

The title : "The Legend Of Plainfield Farm"

I had written this short story in my Creative writing class, received a cool grade on it, and that was that. But myself having some training in making my own little film epics on Super 8mm, I felt that it was time to try one of my ideas on professional 16mm.

For this project each student in the class were given a (1) 16mm camera, 2 rolls of 16mm film (each at the length of 4 min.), and then was told to make arrangements with the 'Cage' to rent out any other equipment that was needed. The 'Cage' was the supply room of the film classes. Here you could rent out tripods, lights, editing facilities, etc.

Since my idea was such an enthralling one a couple of friends in my class wanted to join me for this shoot. Great! A crew!

This was a great idea because that way:

#1 - We'd have more film to shoot. No way was my story going to fit at the length of 8 minutes, especially when you have to take into consideration the mistakes that will need to be cut out during editing.

#2 - Our Cage privileges would be doubled this way. More time in the editing room, more lights, etc.

Now we were ready.

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NOTE: Due to the fact that I have no idea where these people are at this time I will refer to my classmates Ann and John as the actors, and Jeff as the cameraman. The last two helped out as I said above. But as to what all they're real names are I have really forgot.

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PRE-PRODUCTION

Location

The Location of this grand epic was already set due to the fact that on our various road trips just cruising around my friends and I came across this old broken down farmhouse just outside of Bollingbrook IL. We had been there countless times in the past to 'explore' and look through the old newspapers and magazines that were left there by the past owners. This house just sat there rotting away. It is the place that I first got the idea to write the short story, and now what better place to actually film the story here.

This was a great area, but also a dangerous one. Surrounding the house were shacks that stood balanced to the point that if you kicked one it would collapse to pieces. We stayed away from these little things. We also had to watch where we walked due to the many open sewer and well shafts that lay just below the tall dried weeds. Yes indeed this was a great place for a good old fashioned horror event to take place.

Now some of you might be thinking what if something really did happen out here. What if someone did get hurt somehow? Well....That's show biz. True we didn't have any permission to be on this property, and well, we were responsible people. What could happen?

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THE CAST

I needed at least Four actors. Two male. Two Female.

Being this to be my first 'somewhat' professional' project it would only be right to use a star performer who has appeared in all of my little epics. My bud Perry.

The second male lead was pretty easy. One of my classmates John had agreed to join our little adventure. He had made some cool little flicks in the past and he also did some community acting so he fit in just right.

The two woman? Well lets just say that I guess I was just lucky enough to have a cool neighbor who also knew of my filmwork in the past. Her name was Valerie. In fact she lived a house away from my friend Bill. Getting to the location to film with her was no problem being as close to where I lived and all.

The other girl was another story. She too was one of my classmates from College but from another class. She really wanted to do this film and I accepted her offer instantly, but, she lived all the way on the Northside of Chicago. Now that is one long haul from the Northside all the way to Bollingbrook. Almost 2 hours, and that's not even considering the weather conditions.

So that was that. All the Pre-Production was complete. All the scheduling was done. We decided it was best for everyone to film every Saturday. So we all met Downtown that next weekend piled into two cars and drove off to Plainfield Farm for the first shoot.

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