BELLE FOURCHE - Few people knew there was a movie being filmed at Belle Fourche earlier this week, but the film's producers were just fine with that.

The movie, "Set Apart," was filmed at locations around Spearfish, in the Badlands and at Belle Fourche.

On its last day of a month of filming in the Northern Hills, the cameras were focused on a Belle Fourche truck stop. Director and co-producer Ralph Portillo said the location was perfect for the script.

The crew may also have been perfect for the location.

The filming was so low-profile that beyond a "shhh" finger to the lips, cashiers at the Belle Fourche truck stop kept serving fuel and convenience store customers within a dozen feet of the camera's focus on one of the movie's more dramatic scenes.

Everybody seemed to agree with Mid-America Travel Plaza manager Mary Kay Budmayr that the crew was as nice a bunch of people working on a job that could be found anywhere.

More than a few locals - including City Council President Tim Bennett - spent a few hours watching the Belle Fourche scenes rehearsed, then played and replayed from different angles.

Dean Weinzetl of Belle Fourche had his motion picture debut while his two young daughters watched during filming Sunday. Weinzetl played one of three thugs trying to attack famed Hollywood actor Richard Roundtree.

For Roundtree, the rumble in Belle Fourche was an older hat than the black felt western style he was wearing.

The three goons who tried a well-planned attack on Roundtree's character during filiming at the truck stop in Belle Fourche quickly found two of them on the ground.

The third - Weinzetl, who is manager of the local Dakota Feed and Grain elevator - is tough and strong, but was backed down by the wicked-looking hunting knife Roundtree took from another attacker.

The movie, "Set Apart," is about Randy and Heidi Gunn and how their pistol-packin' preacher ministry and music grew from the cowboy-mounted shooting community into the inner city. Their real life, and movie mission, found a way to teach young people a different life and set of values.

Randy and Heidi play themselves in the film. Their world championship cowboy-mounted shooting competition skills, award-winning musical ministry and position of pastor to the Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association made them interesting.

According to producer Ralph Portillo, their program to introduce inner city kids to the traditional cowboy values made them a "must" for a family-oriented movie.

Portillo said filming at Seven Down Arena and the Lantis ranch near Spearfish fit the movie's needs perfectly, as did the Belle Fourche location.

Portillo said he and his co-producers at Hemisphere Entertainment hope to have the film ready for distribution in early 2008.

The late Will Lantis was fascinated by the sport of mounted shooting, and Seven Down Arena just off the Interstate at U.S. Highway 85 is a major regional venue for the sport.

Lantis' real-life character was strong enough to recreate in the movie and helps to explain how traditional horseback and firearms mastery can have a major role in modern recreation.

Imagine inner-city teens watching a rider with two single-action revolvers loaded with "blanks." The horse speeds through a blocked-off pattern while firing the blanks at balloons.

The old-style revolvers mean the shooter must thumb-cock the hammer of the revolver before it can go "bang." On horseback at speed, that's easier said than done. The rider also has to switch revolvers during the ride.

There's always a romance and mystery to the world of the cowboy, and the sport opens a world unknown to a large percentage of Americans and especially to urban kids.

In real life this year, the mid-June CMSA Will Lantis Memorial Shoot & Seven Down Regional Championship let the cast and crew watch some of the most skilled men and women in the sport.

For movie purposes, Seven Down was an absolute natural. The costs of putting up the crew was reasonable, and, according to production manager Kevin Utsler, "we've had a lot of help from people here and in Spearfish."