Film crew takes over St. John

“Cut!”

Serena Belsby shouts out directions to her film crew from behind the bar at the Rialto Tavern in St. John.

“Let’s do one more take,” she says. “Just for the fun of it.”

Belsby and her crew comandeered the tavern and St. John’s annual Winterfest parade Saturday to film her upcoming feature film “The Merry Graingers.”

Fortunately, Belsby’s crew got two takes at the parade as it regularly takes one spin up Front Street before turning around to head back. The town did move the annual parade from its regular 5 p.m. start to 1 p.m. to accommodate shooting.

“That was so wonderful of them,” Belsby told the Gazette after wrapping the Rialto scenes. “I can’t say enough about how warm and helpful everybody here has been.”

For the next two weeks, the film crew will be rolling around the St. John area to book several scenes for Belsby’s debut movie.

Belsby has won several awards for her screenplays, including a first place prize for “The Merry Graingers” at the Hartley-Merrill International Screenwriting Competition at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

The national Independent Film Project organization ponied up some funding for the film based on her script. Belsby added several local organizations have also contributed to the film.

She said the film is a tribute to her family.

Belsby’s father and aunts and uncles own farms and ranches in the Rock Lake area. Though she was raised in southern California, Belsby said her summers were spent working on the Rock Lake ranch.

“I spent a lot of time picking rocks out there,” she said.

Father Ernie said Serena was always a talented writer as he watched the filming at the Rialto.

The story centers around a rural family. Her lead character returns home around Christmas to attend her father’s funeral. Planning to leave, the character gets stuck for the holiday with her estranged family.

Belsby said she wanted to portray a realistic rural family to present a contrast to Hollywood’s typically idyllic portrayals of country life.

“Everybody has a dysfunctional family, I guess,” she said. “But you never see rural families in the movies as anything other than the Waltons.”

She mentioned city friends of hers who assume horses are born with saddles strapped to their mid-sections.

The parade came into play as the character gets stuck behind the parade on the way home to attend her father’s funeral.

Belsby said the funeral scene will be filmed in two weeks at Miller Hall in Ewan.

After being freed from the parade traffic jam, the lead character stops off in the local bar to call her boyfriend over a pick-me-up glass of wine.

Belsby was unsure when the film would be finished, but said it will likely be released around next year’s Christmas.