The Book
The story comes from The Ghosts of Exeter, a collection of the city's ghosts written by Sally and Chips Barber and published by Obelisk, an Exeter publisher. In the book the White Lady takes up only a few sentences. Dean Ferris chose her for exactly that reason. A story this spare leaves room, and whoever adapts it can decide alone what to show and what to keep hidden.
Ferris lives and works in Exeter, and the film stays close to home. It opens from above, on a long street of terraced houses at night, with cars parked along both sides and the street lamps lit. Then it comes down to the pavement, in front of the sign for St Johns Road.
The Windows
A young man walks alone. We hear his steps on the wet pavement, his shadow stretches under the street lamps, his breath clouds in the cold. He stops in front of a house with three windows on the first floor. The lights go on and off one after another, and behind the glass a white figure passes. Ferris builds fear with the oldest tools of the ghost story: a street, a window, something barely seen.
Black and white decides everything, the make-up included. Millicent Walker built the face of the White Lady with shading and texture designed for that scale of greys. When we finally see her up close, for an instant and in negative, the fear is carried entirely by the eyes.
The Sound That Was Not There
There is not a single word in the film. No sound was recorded on set, and everything we hear was built afterwards by Greig Baird: the footsteps, the breathing, a minimal score that grows slowly. Starting from silence made it possible to choose every sound, put it in its place and measure it out, up to the final scream.
Why We Are Hosting This Film
We like the distance it travels, from a few lines in a book of local stories to two minutes of cinema. The crew worked on every element (the light, the face, the sound) as if it were the only one. Dean Ferris has worked in television and film for more than thirty years and has taught film at Exeter College since 2014. In his hands the ghost story stays what it has always been: a tale that is handed down, and that someone tells again each time, in their own way, on a street that really exists.
We publish it on the night when these stories have always been told.
The White Lady of St. Johns Road now has a home here, in our Independent Cinema collection.
Watch
Now streaming: The White Lady of St. Johns Road, Dean Ferris
