There really might be something about the bay area that breeds entrepreneurship.

While their counterparts are off starting internet companies or non-profits, three Palo Alto natives — Brad Leong, Tony Vallone, and Daniel Engelhardt— took the startup mentality to a different industry: film.

This summer, the city of Palo Alto served as the stage and playground for their indie film titled “Palo Alto.” The film was based out of a house on Cowper street which they rented for the summer. The project started two years ago when the trio, then freshmen at USC and UCLA, decided to make a feature length film. Armed with only a script and raw energy, they started on the long road of preparing to make a movie. Last week they hit a big milestone — they finally finished principal shooting on the film.

Aptly named, the film takes place entirely in Palo Alto. A coming of age story, the movie follows 4 college freshmen who come back home for thanksgiving break and realize how much they have changed. “This is a group of young people making a story about young people” said Daniel Engelhardt, the producer of the film. “Everyone might not know Palo Alto, but they know what it’s like to grow up in a place like Palo Alto”.

The filmmakers admit the movie might be semi-autobiographical. “We wanted to define our experience and the experiences of people our age” said Engelhardt. The three filmmakers grew up in Palo Alto and Menlo Park and have been collaborating on films since high school. Vallone and Leong first came up with the story for “Palo Alto” during their freshman year at UCLA and USC.

They spent the next 14 months polishing the script. Engelhardt came on board as a producer and was in charge of writing a business plan, courting talent, and securing sponsorships. Engelhardt started by approaching large film equipment corporations asking for sponsorship. Companies like Panavision and Kodak have special film student grants and helped provide equipment for shooting the film.

The next step was raising capital and finding actors. Through friends and family contacts, the filmmakers were able to get the word out about the film and raised money from individual investors.

According to Engelhardt, people got excited about the script and it traveled quickly within film circles. This eventually led to well known actors Ben Savage and Tom Arnold coming on board.

The budget for the film was under $200,000 — which in Hollywood terms is peanuts. The filmmakers quickly learned the essence of bootstrapping; Brad Leong, the director, built a camera crane himself rather than rent a professional one to save cash.

“We were sleeping between 4-5 hours a night. It’s been a mad rush for the past 8 weeks. Even on our off days, we had a ton of stuff to do” said Leong.

Tony Vallone, who wrote the screenplay and associate produced the film, said making the movie was intense. “I served as a bridge between Brad, the director and the creative vision for the project, and Engelhardt, the producer and realistic end”.

“It was a constant fight between the value of the movie and the budget” said Leon, “I learned a whole lot. There’s no better way I could have spent my summer”. “Palo Alto” is a truly independent film because it mixes both homegrown and professional approaches to filmmaking. The film was shot on high-end Panavision cameras and 16mm film, but the average age of the crew was a measly 23.

The actors turned out to be the oldest people on set, which at first intimidated Director Leong. As the shooting started, however, Leong felt more comfortable directing the more experienced actors. “They made it pretty easy. No one had any problems taking directions” said Leong. “The great thing is that it’s a give-and-take. These actors have ideas on how these character should play out, and the perspective they bring to the film is just as important as what I bring”.

Ben Savage, a 2004 Stanford grad, plays one of the four main characters and was drawn to the project because it hit so close to home. “The title definitely peaked my interested. I wish I was still at Stanford; it was the most fun time of my life. Working on this film was really a trip down memory lane for me” said Savage.

“I read the script and thought it was really, really interesting” said Savage. “What appealed to me was that it’s not what you would expect. I thought it was going to be like “Can’t Hardly Wait,” but it’s really more something like “American Graffiti.”

The whole film takes place at night so we could only shoot at night. This means I had the days to myself. I would go to the Treehouse for lunch or hangout in downtown PA” said Savage. “I was at Miyake’s the other day and it made me remember the Sake-bombs from college”.

One of the most professional aspects of the production is the film’s extremely successful marketing campaign. Engelhardt calls the large amount of interest in the film a “real grassroots following of people”.

“When people hear about the project, they realize we are just a group of young people who really love film and they get excited by that and want to get involved” said Engelhardt. In any case, the filmmakers were very adept at capturing this interest. Even though the film is still far from being finished, the project has a polished website kept up to date with daily blog entries and photos from the set. The filmmakers boast that the website has already had 50,000 hits.

The film also has “fan groups” on myspace and facebook.com, the latter of which has over 1,000 members. The filmmakers credit the town of Palo Alto as being extremely supportive of the project and helpful in generating energy around the film. “It is easier to film up here than in LA. In LA, a location says: give us $10,000 and a copy of the script and we’ll think about it” said Engelhardt. “Here everyone is like: Sure you can film here; do you want us to make you some cookies?”

Though the main shooting of the film is finished, there is still a lot of post-production work that needs to happen before the film is released. The filmmakers would like to have a first version of the film done by early January so they can tentatively submit it to the Sundance Film Festival. Getting into film festivals is one of the most effective ways for independent films to get exposure and potentially get a distributor interested in the project — the holy grail of for independently funded films.

There is still a long road ahead for these budding filmmakers and “Palo Alto.” For the moment, however, it seems like they just may be on the right road.