On a sultry and peaceful late-August evening last year, a solitary barn in the middle of a southern Lancaster County cow pasture went up in flames.

Dozens of people dashed around, screaming and stunned as glowing embers rose high in the night air and the wooden structure came crashing to the ground.

Amidst the terrified screams came a voice across a bullhorn: "We need to roll all cameras, please," it said. "Keep rolling! Keep rolling!"

The burning barn wasn't the act of an arsonist but the well-thought-out climax to an independent movie, Mount Joy, that's being filmed in the area. Firefighters lit the blaze as friends and curious onlookers watched the cast and crew put together the film's dramatic crowning point.

Mount Joy is directed by Jack Lewars and written by Mark Mena, two friends and filmmakers who graduated from Hempfield High School in Lancaster County nearly two decades ago and have returned to their home town to make a movie.

Lewars and Mena watched intently as the barn was set ablaze, knowing full well they only had one precious opportunity to capture their film's climactic scene.

"With independent film, there's a constant negotiation with what you can get done and what you can afford," Lewars says. "There's always this hurry up and wait game."

Lewars and Mena are representative of a new breed of young filmmakers who are helping to bolster Central PA's budding film industry as the midstate becomes a canvas for their muse.

A LOCAL FOCUS

Over the decades, Central PA has seen its fair share of major motion pictures filmed locally, ranging from Oscar winners Witness and Girl, Interrupted to the not-so-critically-acclaimed like Major League II and Lucky Numbers. Some of Hollywood's biggest stars - Harrison Ford, John Travolta and Angelina Jolie - have been here.

Even local movie makers have garnered notoriety. Franklin Schaffner, a graduate of McCaskey High School and Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, directed the iconic sci-fi movie Planet of the Apes and won an Academy Award for Best Director for his 1970 film Patton.

The current crop of local filmmakers runs the gamut of independent documentarians with small handheld cameras to large teams working on million-dollar dramas.

Lewars, who now lives in New York, graduated from Penn State with a degree in film before moving to Los Angeles more than 10 years ago. He got a job working on a small independent film called Ivansxtc, which helped him land work in major films, including Sin City and The Bourne Supremacy. Mena attended Temple University and took an interest in writing short stories. It took the pair nearly three years to develop Mount Joy - a story about a fictional local band battling inner demons as they try to head out on tour - before they were ready to shoot.

But Lewars and Mena are far from the only filmmakers creating movies in the area.

Mary Haverstick, who has run Haverstick Films in Lancaster for the last three decades, is one of the most well-established and longest-working filmmakers in the region.

Haverstick was in her mid-20s and working at WGAL TV-8 when she decided she wanted to do something more creative with cameras and film. The problem was there were few local resources to get her started.

Enter William "Smokey" Roberts, a longtime award-winning filmmaker from Lancaster who worked on underwater documentaries with Jacques Cousteau. Haverstick turned to Roberts as a mentor to learn how to use the cameras.

Haverstick says she was constantly "learning the hard way" by making mistakes, but her endeavors eventually led her to create Home in 2008, her very personal feature film. Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden plays a woman from the 1960s in a troubled marriage forced to confront her mortality when she discovers she has developed breast cancer.

Home was a labor of love for Haverstick, who spent several years getting the film to the big screen. "To make it in film, it has to be something that your soul will never rest until you get it to an audience," she says.

Another local filmmaker who has spent several years on one project is Bob Black, a producer with Aurora Films in Lancaster. Black helped to create Another Harvest Moon, a film about growing old in a nursing home. The film was shot almost exclusively in Harrisburg for just under $2 million and features an all-star cast, including Ernest Borgnine, Piper Laurie, Doris Roberts and Cybill Shepherd.

Black, who grew up in Lititz, became interested in film in broadcasting class in high school. He ended up moving to New York where a friend got him a job at Oxygen Media logging footage and grabbing coffee for his superiors.

Black says he never thought he would be able to live in Central PA and work in film, but his work with Aurora has been ongoing for nearly 10 years and counting.

"When I was growing up, people didn't do this kind of stuff around here," Black says. "It's cool that film is opening up. The more people continue to do it, the more of a market there will be for it."

Cory Blasdell, a young filmmaker from York, is also living out his dream to be a filmmaker, forming Syrn Studios with his father, Rick. Blasdell graduated from Penn State last year with a degree in film and video production.

Blasdell says he's always been interested in film; he even created movies with a Lego camera in middle school. This spring he is filming a new movie, The Tunnel, a psychological thriller with elements of the Twilight Zone.

"You can watch a movie and think that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot going into making it," Blasdell says. "And then when the credits roll around, there are thousands of names of people involved."

Another filmmaker, Andrea Campbell, has also found her home working in Central PA. Originally from Bradford County, she attended Millersville University for broadcasting and decided to stay. Campbell got her start working at WITF before creating her Lancaster-based company Natural Light Films in 1999.

One of her biggest honors came in 2003 when her short film, Fake Clouds - a drama about a young boy growing up beside a nuclear power plant - was invited to be screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

Today, Campbell primarily creates documentaries and profiles for public television and non-profit organizations in which she "gives people a voice." One of her recent documentaries is Children in a Jar, which centers on homeless children who sniff glue out of baby food jars in Central America.

"Other people have these stories in their heads that they need to tell," Campbell says. "I just see other people and I'm inspired by them and want them to be able to tell their stories."

Allen Clements, executive producer of Postage, Inc., in Lancaster, debuted his own documentary, The Chameleon Club, in January. The film follows the history of the venerable local music venue through its origins to the present day.

Alongside Clements on the Chameleon project was Postage's creative director Joe Krzemienski. The two filmmakers met at a local Starbucks a few years ago and decided to share an office space, which has led to an enterprising post-production company that works on films, editing, animation and visual effects.

Krzemienski, an illustrator by trade, is working on his own film project, the ambitious short animated film Atomic Robo: Last Stop, based on a popular graphic novel series. As a kid, Krzemienski says he used to draw every day, but he never thought his drawing skills would lead him to animation.

"I'm doing exactly what my smaller self hoped I'd be doing when I was older - I'm making the things that I loved," Krzemienski says.

A GROWING INDUSTRY

Some may ask why so many filmmakers are popping up locally. Brad Kenyon, the managing partner of Aurora Films, says movie makers come to Central PA for several reasons. One of the biggest reasons large-scale productions have been seen is Pennsylvania's tax credit for films - 25 percent of the total costs as long as 75 percent of the film's budget is spent in the state.

Todd Shill, an entertainment lawyer with Rhoads & Sinon in Harrisburg, says there was very little to no independent film culture when he moved to Central PA 20 years ago. He helped to create Harrisburg's Midtown Cinema and get the city's annual Artsfest Film Festival off the ground.

Shill, who also helped to raise funds for Another Harvest Moon, says independent film has caught on locally because more people are appreciating film as an art form.

"People want to see something fresh - they want those fresh storylines," Shill says. "They're tired of the same old stuff."

Kenyon also points out the aesthetic of the setting, the local architecture and the Central PA work ethic as reasons for new local filmmakers constantly popping up.

"There are enough resources and talent around Central Pennsylvania to be as big or as small as you need to be on production," Kenyon says. "We welcome the fact that there are filmmakers in this area because it makes the community that much more artistically aware."

Clements (of Postage, Inc.), who moved to Lancaster from Louisiana a few years ago, says film is open to a lot more people now because the technical costs and equipment are drastically cheaper than in the past, and because websites like Kickstarter.com provide an outlet for filmmakers to secure financing through grassroots means. Technology has created a world where there are no geographical bounds to where a company needs to be located.

"People have access to tools to tell their stories," Clements says. "Social media has brought people closer together so they can say, 'Hey, you have a camera, I have a copy of Final Cut and you have a script - let's get together.'"

THAT'S A WRAP

Back at the burning barn on the set of Mount Joy, Lewars and Mena breathe a sigh of relief as firefighters douse the hot embers with water. The man on the bullhorn yells, "Good job, everybody. Thank you very much."

As they wrap up the scene, it's one more step forward in the long, arduous process in finishing a local film for the world to see.

FROM SHOOT TO SCREEN

Here's a lineup of some of the area's independent films and where they stand in the production process.

Mount Joy By Indie City Films (www.mountjoymovie.com) • Synopsis: A local musical group decides whether or not they're going to go on tour - if they don't end up killing each other first. • Status: Final shots are being filmed this month in Lancaster County. The movie is slated to be ready in time for movie festivals early in 2013.

Trust Me By Chris Fetchko Productions (www.trustmefilm.com) • Synopsis: The manager of a struggling rock band spirals out of control while trying to put on the most unique rock concert of all time. • Status: Directed by former Badlees' manager Chris Fetchko, Trust Me is in final editing and should be released in 2013.

Another Harvest Moon By Aurora Films (www.anotherharvestmoon.com) • Synopsis: Four elderly nursing home patients cope with growing older and dealing with life and death issues. • Status: Aurora just signed a two-year contract with Starz to show the film on the cable movie channel.

The Chameleon Club By Postage, Inc. (www.postagevfx.com) • Synopsis: An hour-long  documentary that chronicles the 27-year history of downtown Lancaster's well-known music venue. • Status: The film premiered in January 2012 and is now available on DVD.

Atomic Robo: Last Stop By Postage, Inc. (www.thefictory.com) • Synopsis: Based on a popular graphic novel series, Atomic Robo follows the story of a robot created by Nikola Tesla that is sent around the world to explore dangerous anomalies. • Status: The short animated film is currently in production and should be released sometime next year.

Home By Haverstick Films (www.homethemotionpicture.com) • Synopsis: Set in 1969, Home deals with a wide range of issues including breast cancer, alcoholism and family problems. • Status: After being shown on cable for a few years, Home is now available on DVD.