It’s a complicated setup for the first day of filming.

Dancers, musicians, actors and horses are all gathered around a bandstand at Pendleton’s Country Market in Lawrence.

The opening sequence of “Bunker Hill” involves the return of Peter (James McDaniel) to his Kansas hometown of the same name, where he runs across his ex-wife, Hallie (Laura Kirk), at a church cookout.

Various aspects of the scene are staged and covered from different angles. Things are going smoothly.

Then a voice yells, “Train!”

Immediately, everyone on the set goes into a frenzy.

The entire production turns its attention north where train tracks run parallel to the set. Director Kevin Willmott declares, “Get James in his jacket. Can we shoot this now?”

He realizes that McDaniel’s entrance into this patch of Americana has that much more drama, that much more energy, if it is done while a locomotive is whizzing past him.

Guitarist Thom Alexander, who is a member of the live band in the shot, launches into Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Its opening line beckons, “I hear the train a comin’.”

But something’s wrong with the camera.

“It’s not rolling,” one of the operators says.

More frantic scrambling erupts as the seconds tick away.

Fortunately, the equipment begins to work, and McDaniel delivers three different takes before the caboose streaks by.

“Cut,” Willmott shouts. Then the entire cast and crew go back to their previous spots.

Despite familiar actors, a seasoned director and a budget that can support a 35mm production, those involved with “Bunker Hill” are still very aware of one of the cardinal rules of indie cinema: Take advantage of any free opportunity.

“This is organized chaos,” says producer Scott Richardson. “This is the first time we’ve worked together on a show this size. (Willmott’s previous project) ‘C.S.A’ was like a bunch of little short films. This is one big focused movement in the same direction.”

Rural allure

Leading actress Kirk agrees.

“This is no ‘My Dinner With Andre.’ This isn’t even a ‘Junebug.’ This is an incredibly ambitious project,” Kirk says. “When I read the script I was like, ‘You’re going to have a burning town, people falling off horses and gunfights?'”

The 1990 Kansas University theater alumna has lived in New York since she graduated. There she wrote and starred in the 2000 film “Lisa Picard is Famous,” which earned her a slot at the Cannes Film Festival.

She first became involved with “Bunker Hill” while attending the “C.S.A.” premiere in New York.

“At the premiere Kevin said, ‘I think I might have something for you.’ Then I came here in March, and Kevin and Greg (Hurd, co-writer) told me the story. My jaw dropped,” she recalls.

The plot of “Bunker Hill” involves what happens to an isolated town in Kansas when it loses total communication with the outside world. Is it a terrorist attack? Is it the apocalypse?

The result is that people revert back to the days of the old west, where law and order are much less defined.

Adding to the allure of the project for Kirk – a Lecompton native – was the chance to revisit her Kansas roots.

“The first day out at Pendleton’s, it was such a familiar scene for me growing up in a rural area,” she says. “My dad came to visit with his wife. I’m in makeup, and the next thing I know I’m coming to set to do my dancing scene, and there’s my dad sitting there. They (invited him) to be an extra.”

Stranger in town

Although Kirk was intimately familiar with Kansas, not everyone else on the set was.

The film is populated with veteran actors such as McDaniel (TV’s “NYPD Blue”), Saeed Jaffrey (“Gandhi”) and Blake Robbins (TV’s “Oz”), not many of whom are experienced with the Midwest.

Kirk recalls, “One of the actors was like, ‘Is it all cowboys and people with cowboy hats in Lawrence?’ Then he got here and was like, ‘No, it looks like Williamsburg, Brooklyn.'”

Emmy-winning actor McDaniel had been to the state previously to work with director Willmott on a project about Brown v. Topeka Board of Education before becoming involved in “Bunker Hill.”

“I’d heard shades of this marinating in his brain for a while,” McDaniel says. “We’d been talking for so long that I think he envisioned me playing this role. It was a pretty easy one to say yes to. I like the fact that it’s in the form of a classic western. I’ve never done a western. This is as close as I’ve been so far. I’m a horseman, so that’s one of my main reasons for wanting to do a western.”

McDaniel admits there are certain challenges inherent to this particular role that he has never experienced in his 25 years as a professional actor.

He says, “Like in a classic western, this is a stranger who comes to town. And the stranger doesn’t say a whole lot, and that’s a very particular type of acting.”

Pace and complexity

This week production is taking place 30 minutes down the road in Nortonville, where the “Bunker Hill” brigade has annexed a two-block area of the humble downtown.

Filming will move even farther away from its Lawrence base on Sept. 6, when the towns of West Mineral, Edna and Sedan become the primary sites. Sept. 13 marks the official final day of shooting, but already the actors have agreed to return later in September for various pickup scenes.

“Everybody I’ve talked to in Lawrence and Nortonville has been totally behind this,” says co-writer Hurd. “They’ve been extremely gracious and helpful. We’ve found a lot of production assistants from young people in Nortonville.

“We’ve also got any number of former KU students involved in production, from lighting to assistant cameramen.”

“Bunker Hill” denotes the first foray into filmmaking for Hurd (an employee of Free State Studios, which is owned by The World Company). As such, he was somewhat stunned by the pace and complexity involved to mount a feature-length production.

“When you create a story, you inadvertently create a world. To bring it to life, you have to bring into being all the elements of that world, which requires props, costumes, makeup, buildings, sets. It requires all these things, so it requires all these different types of expertise,” he says.

So far his most memorable moment involves walking onto the Pendleton’s set that first day.

“It was exciting,” Hurd says. “We had a lot of extras, live music, dancing; there was a lot of motion going on. It felt like a movie set.”