Salamander Hollow Healing Habitat has a perfect recommendation rating on Hipcamp, a website and mobile app offering outdoor stays and camping experiences. Its profile page includes 431 ratings and 354 positive reviews. And within the next year the property will receive some special thanks in a film’s closing credits.

The property owned by Mary Canning hosted about a dozen Emerson College students who spent a weekend last month shooting scenes for “The Bigfake,” a short film about a lonely retired park ranger who fabricates a Bigfoot sighting to draw people to his secluded cabin.

“[It’s] a nice thing to do on the property, get some young creatives making magic in the forest,” Canning said as she watched the young people work on their project.

Eloise Campisi, who is co-producing the film with Andrew Ricci, said the students found Salamander Hollow on Hipcamp while looking for a rural setting and booked a long weekend with Canning, who was particularly excited about the idea because she is an Emerson film alumna.

“It’s wonderful. I still work in film now, and they’re the future. And a lot has changed since I was a student in the early ’80s,” she said. “Also, as a parent and a grandparent, it makes me happy to see people making things and creating things.”

The students arrived at the campground on March 27 and spent the following three days filming. Campisi, who like writer and director Jacques Ciambra hails from New Jersey, said the visit to Warwick was essentially their first Massachusetts experience outside of Boston.

“I thought it was beautiful,” co-producer Eloise Campisi said a couple of days after returning to campus. “It was just a beautiful town to film in. We had a really, really lovely time.”

Canning purchased the property’s approximately 17 acres in the mid-1990s with husband Dr. Harry Goldman, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and died the following year. She opened Salamander Hollow — complete with a sleeping loft library, tipi and Slovenian beehive house — in February 2021. Two years later the campground received the Massachusetts first-place prize from Hipcamp.

The students spent much of March 28 filming wordless scenes around a cabin with actor Kyle D. King, who plays the isolated main character, Bert. Ciambra was awarded $8,000 from Frames Per Second, which bills itself as Emerson’s oldest film organization, to make the film, which is an extra-curricular activity. He said the money was used to book Salamander Hollow (though Canning comped them one day and night) and hire Bonnie Schneider and King, who are professional actors.

Ciambra, who aims to have the film span 15 minutes to 20 minutes, said he will now focus on editing and post-production and hopes the film will be released in the fall or winter. He explained the idea behind the film evolved from watching obviously fake Bigfoot videos on YouTube.

“Who would ever take time out of their life to do that?” he said. “It snowballed after that.”

Ciambra and Campisi said the project has been an excellent crash course in filmmaking and budgeting.

“I think everybody did great,” Campisi said. “What I really appreciated … is that everybody kind of had the understanding that we were all learning together. We’re all students.”

She also praised Canning’s kindness. Campisi explained that Emerson requires firearm props to be registered with the police department of the town or city in which it is being used and Canning reached out to Warwick Police to ensure protocols were being followed, though ultimately the decision was made to not use the prop.

“I thought she was so helpful,” Campisi said. “She was willing to go above and beyond for us, which was amazing.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.