Wayne Shipley's curtain rising | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

The 64-year-old retired English department chair and drama coach wanted to pay his respects his two biggest influences - William Shakespeare and filmmaker John Ford - who Mr. Shipley made "arguably the best Westerns."

"I put together a five-act Shakespearean tragedy set in 1880s Missouri," he said.

He will premiere "One-Eyed Horse" on Tuesday at the Diamond Cinemas Westview in Baltimore at 7:30 p.m. to a sold-out, 450-person theatre. There will be two more showings on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

County residents who see the film may recognize quite a few local sites, such as the Cunningham Farm, the Alan Farm and the Shipley Farm. A ballroom scene was shot at Blob's Park.

A couple of scenes were also shot at the Benson-Hammond House, which Mr. Shipley said added a solid sense of the time period.

"Ninety-five percent of it was shot right here in Anne Arundel County," he said.

While he enjoyed shooting the film in the area he grew up in, it didn't come without its problems. Airplanes flying overhead caused cause some scenes to take much longer than necessary to shoot.

"At certain times there would be a plane every two to three minutes so it would take four to five hours to shoot what ends up to be two to three minutes on film," he said.

More than 50 hours of film were shot. The final product is roughly 4 percent of what was filmed.

It was two-year process from beginning to end. The first test footage was shot in October 2006. The crew tested out different shooting techniques to make the movie look like film, rather than digital video. Mr. Shipley wanted the depth of grain of film.

While independent films' biggest limitations are budget and resources, Mr. Shipley said he and his crew had help in overcoming those limitations.

"Since I had so many wonderful people contributing at the time it certainly looks bigger than the budget was," he said. "It was amazing the number of resources that were contributed to the project."

He thinks the film will serve an archival purpose in the future, to show people that even in 2008, there was still some open space in the county.

"Progress is progress and this area is certainly growing faster than most," he said.

Mr. Shipley hopes to have showings in the Eastern Shore, Philadelphia, where one of the lead actors is from, and maybe Virginia.

Diamond View Cinemas is located at 5824 Baltimore National Pike. DVD copies will be available at the showings next week and through Mr. Shipley's Web site at www.one-eyedhorse.com.