After falling in love with Franklin County while filming his 2021 thriller “The Secret of Sinchanee,” Team House Studios’ Steven Grayhm is back to film “Sheepdog,” a drama he feels is his “magnum opus.”

Written, directed and starring Grayhm, who is best known for his roles in “White Chicks” and Netflix’s “Between,” “Sheepdog” tells the story of “a therapy-averse combat veteran (who) is court ordered into treatment after his plan to unite an ex-con and his daughter shows him that he must put himself back together first,” according to the film’s plot synopsis. While shooting began on Tuesday in Turners Falls, the film has truly been 12 years in the making, Grayhm said.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Grayhm, who plays Calvin, the “therapy-averse combat veteran.” “There were a lot of false starts. There were a lot of broken promises. There was a lot of heartache.”

Grayhm’s dozen years of commitment to the film has coincided with just as strong a commitment to the subject matter. In an effort to connect with real-life combat veterans, Grayhm said he helped pioneer the “22 Pushup Challenge” to raise awareness of veteran suicide, role-played with professionals at a Veterans Affairs medical center, and even centered his production company around providing on-camera and off-camera opportunities for veterans.

Perhaps the most resonant and formative learning experience, though, was a three-month cross-country trip that Grayhm took alongside Matt Dallas, a best friend both in real life and on camera as Daryl Sparks. On this journey, Grayhm and Dallas immersed themselves in the perspectives of combat veterans, stopping to speak with “anybody that would talk to (them) from this community,” Dallas said.

“I was one of the young and naïve part of society that is kind of unaware of the struggles and things that veterans deal with when coming home from war,” said Dallas, who is also co-producing “Sheepdog.” “When I started sitting in front of these men and women, it was just a huge eye-opener for me.”

Aside from post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the hardest things veterans go through after their service is “dealing with the loss of brotherhood and camaraderie,” Dallas observed. Across all walks of life, “we’re all seeking someone who understands us,” he said, with veterans being a prime example.

The strong sense of community in Franklin County is what drew Grayhm back to the area, he said. Grayhm fell in love with the area after meeting his wife, an Erving native, in Greenfield, and got to know it better while filming “The Secret of Sinchanee.”

“I made that film on a shoestring budget in my mother and father-in-law’s backyard to be able to prove to investors what I could do with so little,” Grayhm said of “The Secret of Sinchanee.”

Through the process of making “The Secret of Sinchanee,” “Sheepdog” sat in the back of Grayhm’s mind. The deeper his connection to Franklin County grew, the more the film’s then-undecided setting “really started to take form here in western Massachusetts.”

“It was not only destined to come back here, but I felt so much support and love that I felt like it was only possible to make it here,” Grayhm said, dubbing this “hard-working, blue-collar” region “the backbone of America.”

“You don’t get a setting or backdrop as beautiful as this anywhere else,” Dallas added.

“Sheepdog” will be filmed — and take place — entirely in Greenfield, Turners Falls and Millers Falls, Grayhm noted. The first day of shooting, held on Avenue A in Turners Falls on Tuesday, entailed a “light” scene where Calvin carved pumpkins with his daughter at Daryl’s apartment. The second day required the closure of East Main Street in Millers Falls and entailed a scene where an unexpected “tragedy” strikes as Calvin takes his daughter to school.

Taking a lunch break at around 12:30 p.m., Grayhm was visibly and audibly shaken. He explained that the weight of Wednesday’s scene evoked strong emotions.

“Steven is such a compassionate and passionate person in general and he feels other people’s stories so deeply,” Dallas said, having observed Grayhm start his journey as a mere storyteller and “come out of it as a man with a mission.”

“This mirrors our current zeitgeist and I feel like this will be my generation’s ‘The Deer Hunter,’” Grayhm said, drawing a comparison to the Oscar-winning 1978 war drama.

Shooting for “Sheepdog” is set to conclude on March 9, Grayhm said. He projected that the film will be debuted at film festivals this fall.

Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-930-4231 or jmendoza@recorder.com.

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