TEMECULA -- Picture this.

The sky is losing daylight and the crew has to work fast. The camera is on a dolly track more than 20 feet long in a sandy gully. On the hill above, actors have to trudge through tall, rather prickly grass on cue while more than 40 crew members swirl in the outskirts prepping the next shot. The assistant director rushes everyone along. And what do you mean, the generator isn't here yet?

In the middle of it all, surprisingly calm and with every reason to freak out, young screenwriter-director Mark Edwin Robinson peers into the camera monitor, looking for just the right image. Take three, he's got it. OK, cut, next scene.

Robinson apparently has a magnetic script. It attracted up-and-coming actors with solid work behind them, it attracted a Los Angeles film producer and it attracted enough financial backers to give it a half-million dollar budget.

Not bad for this Temecula 22-year-old, who is making an independent feature film -- his first venture into film production.

Robinson, who's father Dr. David Robinson is one of the film's executive producers, doesn't even have film school behind him.

What he does have, everyone involved agrees, is a powerful script -- a psychological thriller titled "The Gleam of Dawn" -- that he's been working on for more than two years.

"If I step back and look at the whole situation, I'll freeze up," an extremely busy Robinson said Monday night, as he took a few moments between shooting scenes in Temecula. He talked by candlelight, while crews hurriedly tried to get the late-arriving generator hooked up.

Robinson is not at all intimidated by his lack of directorial experience -- "I surround myself with people who are extremely good, extremely professional," he said -- and his actors do not seem concerned about either. In fact, it was a source of comfort for the film's star, Kelly Overton, who is taking on her first starring role in a film.

"It's like we are all in this together," Overton said Tuesday.

Daytime soap fans may recognize the twentysomething actress as Rain Wilkins from "As The World Turns." Broadway buffs will know that she made the lucky leap from understudy to a top-billed actress in "The Graduate" last year after Alicia Silverstone vacated the role.

The actors, the script

Robinson's "The Gleam of Dawn" script is what he calls an "actor-driven" story, about a young medical student, played by Overton, and a psychiatric hospital patient, played by James Haven.

Robinson believes his script -- inspired by overhearing some tapes of his father's interviews with psychiatric patients many years ago -- is what drew so much interest in the project.

Overton said the script was a big draw for her, that she "didn't even question" taking the part after reading it to prepare for her audition.

"Usually, I just read up to the point of the scene where my audition is," Overton said. "This time it was late and I was tired but I just couldn't stop reading it. I read it all."

James Haven, who portrays the troubled patient, said he was drawn to the role because of the "healing" the characters undertake.

"I couldn't imagine anyone else playing him," Haven said of his character Don. "I understood him immediately."

Haven, who has appeared in "Monster's Ball" and "Original Sin," is the oft-mentioned brother of the famed Angelina Jolie and the son of actor Jon Voight. Haven said hearing he got the movie part was the "seriously greatest cell-phone message" he'd ever received.

"It was, like, huge," Haven said. "I was teary-eyed."

That, he said, was because he earned the part on his own, with no thanks to connections through his famous family.

"This is the first time in my life that I've literally beat the curse," Haven said. "It meant the world to me to get this role."

"Quiet and unassuming"

Robinson, who said he started writing scripts when he was 16, graduated from Linfield Christian School in 1998.

One of his teachers there was Kurt Stavenhagen, who now teaches English at Syracuse University. He said Robinson tracked him down to send him a copy of the script -- a script Stavenhagen said is reminiscent of the "Sixth Sense."

"Mark is very creative and an interesting combination of a true soul and an iconoclast at the same time," Stavenhagen said.

School superintendent Karen Raftery said Tuesday she recalls Robinson as quiet and unassuming. "He appeared to be pensive and his mind was going all the time," Raftery said.

That was apparent during the filming, with Robinson often huddling to talk about the script with producer Brady Nasfell of Burbank-based Sodium Entertainment.

"I think most people who want to make movies have stars in their eyes … but Mark and David did it very methodically," Nasfell said of the father-and-son team. "They put the right people in place."

As a director, Mark Robinson is "interactive, collaborative" and a "humble guy with a great vision," Nasfell said.

And, again, the script came up.

"I think Mark has a good story, a solid story, and it's marketable," Nasfell said.

"The Gleam of Dawn" is nearing the completion of an 18-day shoot, with most of the locations in Pomona and the Los Angeles area. The Temecula shoot, in a gully behind Robinson's parents' Wine Country home, was for one night only -- all night.

The film, for those knowledgeable in the industry, is being shot on 35 mm film -- high quality and not cheap to work with.

Nicole Landers, the film's publicist, said the goal for "The Gleam of Dawn" is to hit the independent film circuit.

The competition is tough, though. Rachel Rosen of the Los Angeles office of the Independent Feature P0roject, better known as the IFP, said the affordability of digital cameras and technology has meant an explosion of indie films.

Rosen, who chooses the films for the IFP Los Angeles Film Festival and works on the Independent Spirit Awards, said her organization gets more than 400 submissions for the mid-size film festival -- and only 12 narrative, full-length feature films are selected.

Sundance, she said, is far more competitive.

Again, in the center of a swirling storm, Robinson is unfazed.

"I've never gone a conventional route," he said.

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (909) 676-4315, Ext. 2623 or tfigueroa@californian.com.