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BROWNS SUMMIT -- "Quiet!" someone calls out. The crowd falls silent.

"From the tip-top," Les Butchart says. "Action."

Photography director Philip Dann advances the camera to capture a scene in Butchart's latest film, a Southern gothic drama called "Swimming in a Lake of Fire."

Butchart wrote this fictional story about Lucy Speckle and her father who try to reassemble their lives after committing a horrible murder.

The victim's brother has kidnapped Lucy. They have holed up in a decaying house on a Browns Summit farm.

"You move, I'll kill you, Lucy," Charlotte actor Chris Best says.

Feigning his best bad-boy persona, he aims a rifle out a window and pretends to pick off her rescuers.

"One shot, one drop, boys," he yells. "Where the rest of you boys? I got more bullets in this gun. I done dropped three of you. I ain't done yet."

"Cut," Butchart calls out. He applauds.

"That's your best work yet," Butchart says.

* * * * *

This is likely Butchart's own best feature film work yet, too.

It needs to be.

Now 54, the Greensboro native long has labored among Triad independent filmmakers to build the region's filmmaking industry.

With this film, Butchart says, the stakes have grown for himself, his film-making family and their new company, Highway 29 Motion Pictures.

"It needs to be profitable," he says about "Swimming in a Lake of Fire," his first feature for Highway 29.

"It also needs to be good. It proves that we know what we are doing as filmmakers, and that's what we need to prove."

For this low-budget film, Butchart has marshaled key assets unusual for a local independent filmmaker: his entire family and two investors.

Longtime acting and filmmaking friends fill out cast and crew.

Susan, Butchart's wife of 33 years, scouts locations and feeds everyone during breaks, often with food she made herself.

Son Lucas "Luke" Butchart, 27, is assistant director. Daughter Rosie, 22, cleaned the farmhouse for filming. Son Benjamin, 31, came from Salisbury as "dog wrangler" -- even his dog played a part.

"To have a family capable of pulling together to help make a film is pretty rare," Les Butchart says.

So is attracting investors.

Charlotte filmmaker Michael Vadini met Les and Luke Butchart when they worked on one of his films. Vadini liked the Butcharts, their script and their colleagues.

"It's really a family affair," Vadini says. "They are good, loving, hardworking people."

So, he agreed to invest $50,000 to $100,000 to finance up-front costs for the $300,000 project. Another silent investor put in a smaller amount.

Without Vadini, Les Butchart says, there would be no film.

"In the past, we were putting our own money at risk," Butchart says. "It's definitely a different ball game with this film."

His spirits got a boost with success in this year's 48-Hour Film Project. Crews create a short film from script to screen within 48 hours.

"L'apartment 406," written by Luke Butchart and friend Steven Oklesh, directed by Les and Luke Butchart and produced by Rosie Butchart, won best film and six other awards. It now goes on to national competition in April in Las Vegas.

"That 48-Hour film was like a bellwether kind of film for us, the signal that something had changed, that something new was possible," Les Butchart says.

In a separate venture, Butchart also has joined forces with another company, New Garden Media, as producer on the feature film "Elephant Sighs." The movie, which stars Emmy Award-winning actor Ed Asner, will be shot next month in High Point and Thomasville.

He hopes that "Swimming in a Lake of Fire" will give Highway 29 a start toward making four feature films and Web dramas each year.

He plans to have three episodes of a Web drama "The Hive" online in February. It focuses on five girls from troubled backgrounds who share a house and help each other with their problems.

His five-year goal for Highway 29: to build a small motion-picture studio in Greensboro.

"The overriding challenge now," Butchart says, "is to get a company on its feet in the next five years that can be a prominent player in the industry of filmmaking worldwide."

* * * * *

For 10 years, the Butcharts have run successful Umbra Strategic Media. They create promotional videos for the Greensboro Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, Center for Creative Leadership and Moses Cone Health System.

As for Les Butchart's other 30-year career, as an independent filmmaker?

It has mirrored the making of a movie itself: Action. Cut. Action. Cut.

"Without a doubt, I had not found my groove as a filmmaker," he says.

In 1977, he graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a broadcasting degree. He studied films, attended national filmmaking workshops and wrote screenplays.

Yet, of the 14 or so feature scripts that he has written since, "Swimming in a Lake of Fire" is only the third to make it to filming.

Others are sore subjects.

In the early 1980s, he spent $10,000 trying to turn his script for "Blue Ridge" into a film. But he couldn't find investors to help.

Butchart sought solace in beer, bourbon and tequila.

He followed the doomed "Blue Ridge" with a 50-minute featurette, "The Dam." He got a nibble from Miramax, which encouraged him to expand it to a feature-length film.

But he was still drinking. In 1987, he saw his creative drive and his marriage threatened.

That became the year that Butchart turned his life around. He quit drinking. He and Susan started attending church. They had Rosie. He also became an award-winning creative director for an advertising agency.

In the early 1990s, he expanded "The Dam" into a feature-length film. But Miramax's initial interest didn't pan out. He ran out of money for marketing and couldn't get it into festivals.

Once again, he had to rethink his career.

Then in 2003, he and his wife made a Christian horror film "The Devil's Game." Daughter Rosie, then 16, acted in it. It was shown locally but didn't made it to theaters for a regular run. It's sold only online.

"Low-budget films require a lot of personal sacrifice," Butchart says. "It is like a curse and a blessing. You are blessed to have ambition and cursed to have ambition."

He temporarily gave up film ambitions and turned to writing novels.

"It was frustrating to write scripts and try to raise money -- and fail," he says.

Three years ago, son Luke joined Umbra Strategic Media. That freed Les Butchart to write film scripts again.

When family members work together under pressure, "We have to be on guard to stay respectful of each other and try to be professional about making the movie," Les Butchart says.

"On the flip side, we try to make cast and crew feel like they are part of the family."

Despite the pressures of filmmaking, Luke and Rosie Butchart say they enjoy working with their parents. Although Rosie Butchart doesn't work with the others full time, she says their film projects have brought the family closer.

Their mother, Susan, keeps their work life organized and running smoothly.

"My dad has a million things on his mind," Rosie Butchart says. "She makes phone calls he can't make, makes sure he's not spending money on silly things and helps keep everyone happy and content."

Although it's easier to show frustration to family, Luke Butchart says, it's also easier to forgive and forget. "You can work through the frustrating times more quickly," he says.

His family's support means everything to Les Butchart.

"This is not about Daddy dragging his family into making films," he says. "This is about Daddy being inspired and enabled by his family to make films."

* * * * *

When he looks back on his past films, Les Butchart sees them all as preparation for "Swimming in a Lake of Fire."

He aims to make films for mainstream America, often with themes of grace and redemption and sometimes with a hard edge.

"Lake of Fire," for example, refers to a biblical phrase about a place of eternal torment, Butchart says. In the film, Lucy goes through a process of redemption as she pays a price for murder and other sins.

He hired actors Ariel Burke and Billy Ingram, who had appeared in another Butchart film, to play Lucy and her father.

Actors and crew often fill more than one role. Actor Chris Best handles special effects and art direction. Seth Hall works as assistant editor, production coordinator and social networker on Twitter.

Even Vadini, the investor, acts in the film.

The film benefits from another key asset: a new high-quality digital camera.

"Digital technology has evolved to the point where you can make a truly gorgeous film on a small budget," Butchart says.

Beyond Browns Summit, filming has taken them to locations such as McKnight Hardware, Spring Garden Community Church, Greensboro Inn, downtown restaurants and a bar, the Rockingham County jail and the towns of Ramseur and Franklinville.

Butchart aims to have the film ready by late February. He plans to enter it in film festivals, with the hope that a distributor will purchase theatrical distribution rights.

He is optimistic about its future.

In addition to a talented cast and crew, "My writing is better. The picture-making is better," he says. "You put those together, and something good had better come out of it."

Contact Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane at 373-5204 or dawn.kane@news-record.com