PROVO — At first glance, it looks a bit like Hollywood.
Men in cowboy hats, women in long dust-kissed dresses and a horse whinnying in the background.
"Picture's up! Quiet!" echoes the call across the set. The chatting and scuffling stops, and Sheriff Henry Heath delivers his lines.
"Cut! That was great," calls director and screenwriter Tom Russell. The scene is finally how he wants it.
But this isn't California. This is Provo.
And the feature film's sound and production designers, heads of lighting, costumes and make-up and cinematographers aren't Hollywood hotshots, they're BYU students.
Thanks to a new experimental relationship between FirstLight Independent LLC and BYU's Theatre and Media Arts Department, students are getting a taste of full-length filming as they work with professionals on the historical drama, "For Robbing the Dead."
"I've done a lot of short films, but this is different," said Phillip Goodwin, first assistant director and a recent BYU graduate. "It's 1,000 times bigger in every direction. I don't think anyone has ever seen a movie that will be this cool that will be made by students."
But this is not a typical student film.
Not with talent like Margot Kidder (who played Christopher Reeve's Lois Lane) and Barry Corbin (a cowboy through and through) in supporting roles.
Actors Rance Howard (Ron Howard's dad), Jon Gries (Uncle Rico, from Napoleon Dynamite) and Larry Thomas (Seinfeld's Soup Nazi) are other big names in the cast.
"For Robbing the Dead" follows the true story of Heath, a sheriff in Utah in 1862, who is grieving over the loss of his daughter.
Soon after her burial, Heath, played by John Freeman, is given charge over Salt Lake City grave robber Jean Baptiste (played by David Stevens), who has been exiled to Antelope Island.
It's a story about compassion, especially toward those who aren't easy to love, said Russell, who is also a BYU professor.
Despite big names and a solid screenplay, the project only has a $200,000 budget, plus in-kind donations from BYU, the LDS Motion Picture Studio and free student labor.
The students are happy to do it — it's the best experience they could get.
"I had no idea they were university students," Kidder told the Deseret News during a short break. "They are so professional. It is so unusual for college students to work on a big movie like this. Moving from this film to a real independent film will be going down a notch."
"I think it's a coming thing; there will be much more of this," Corbin said during another brief lull. "When I was a student in college, you got taught by a bunch of academics who didn't have any experience. (These students) are working with people who work in the business."
And Bill Nelson is hoping that approach pays off.
As executive producer with FirstLight Independent and Rusell's longtime friend and collaborator, he wants to make sure these students leave Provo with their name on a film.
"We want to see to it that the students … get a practical lab for their academic theory," he said.
Prop master Jessica Sorensen has just one word for this new relationship: brilliant.
"We've had so many films that can't go anywhere because BYU can't make money," she said. "But this film can be seen in theaters (and) viewed by an audience like it should be."
The goal is a late 2010 release.
"The most exciting part, for me, is to watch these students perform so enthusiastically and creatively," Russell said. "We don't have (the Hollywood) kind of cash and clout, so they're wildly naive, in the best sense, and they don't know that some things can't be done. Which means they accomplish the impossible fairly regularly, primarily because they believe they can."
e-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com