Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Actors portraying British soldiers rehearse a scene during filming of WQED's "The War That Made America," a chronicle of the French and Indian War. Click photo for larger image.

LIGONIER -- W. Stephen Coleman, an associate professor in the theater arts department at the University of Pittsburgh, was preparing to die Wednesday morning.

He's used to it. As an actor who goes by the stage name Alex Coleman, he's faced death before, garrotted in a Valerie Bertinelli TV movie and, most famously, at the hands of Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs."

"I had my face cut off by Anthony Hopkins," Coleman said, remembering his turn as the doomed Sgt. Pembry. "It was glorious."

For his current role, Coleman was attired in full 18th-century regalia for his turn as British Maj. Gen. Braddock in WQED's "The War That Made America," a four-hour historical documentary with dramatizations of key events in the French and Indian War.

Filming on "The War That Made America" began late last month outside Ligonier and continues until the end of June. The program is expected to air nationally on PBS stations in fall 2005.

Coleman's Braddock was scheduled to be shot off his fifth horse, having had four previous steeds shot out from under him. George Washington (Larry Nehring), Braddock's aide-de-camp, would be at his side for much of the battle.

But first, both actors had to get into makeup, wigs and costumes. They weren't alone. Inside a mostly unused AT&T communications bunker on Route 30 at the top of Laurel Mountain, dozens of extras milled about in French and British military uniforms, waiting their turns to get wigs attached. Actors playing Native Americans wore little more than loincloths as they waited to have body paint applied.

Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Actor Thomas Clair has his makeup applied. Historians were consulted about which colors of body paint to use for specific Indian tribes. Click photo for larger image.

A makeup artist checked in with visual historical consultant Scott Stephenson about which colors of paint to use for members of a specific Indian tribe.

"We can't re-create the 18th century, but we can do our best to give it the ring of truth and make sure we don't have anything deliberately wrong or any stupid mistakes," said historical consultant Jay Cassel, a military history professor at the University of Guelph outside Toronto.

Project director Geoff Miller calls this hybrid production a "dramatic documentary" that will feature both archival material -- maps, photos and drawings of the period -- and voice-overs from an on-camera narrator (not yet selected) along with scenes featuring actors. The goal is to have about 25 minutes of re-created dramatic footage in each one-hour episode.

This epic project -- this week the cast and crew numbered approximately 225 -- is filming with two teams working in tandem, using the lodge and maintenance buildings of the Laurel Mountain Ski Area, which has been closed since March 2003 because of financial problems.

Three interior sets have been built inside an empty maintenance shed. Another was constructed inside the ski lodge, across from a sign listing ski school prices.

	Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Gary Sundown, of the Tonawanda Seneca Indian Reservation from New York gets a "distended ear lobe" in makeup. Click photo for larger image.

"The War That Made America," budgeted at $14.7 million -- about $7 million for filming alone, putting the per-hour cost in line with that of a prime-time network drama -- will soon receive a $1 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

To curb costs and give the film a more natural look, "The War That Made America" is being shot on high-definition video, a newer technology that offers more flexibility than film.

Director Ben Loeterman helms the "yellow unit," so named for its yellow script pages. Eric Stange calls the shots for the "white unit," which films scenes for hours one and three of the miniseries.

On Wednesday, Stange and company were staging Braddock's defeat in a forest on private property, a 22-minute drive from the ski lodge. This location stands in for where the events actually occurred, 10 miles south of Fort Duquesne along the Monongahela River in July 1755.

For a scene in which British soldiers are flanked on all sides, a consultant catches a mistake during rehearsal: The actors are wearing side pouches, cartridge boxes that were not worn at the Battle of Monongahela. They're quickly replaced with "belly boxes" to make the scene more authentic.

"We're showing history as it really was, not a Hollywood fiction," Cassel said.

As about a dozen British soldiers take their positions, director Stange says to one, "Hey, I've seen you before. I thought you died the other day."

Then the fog machines belch smoke to add atmosphere and filming begins. The actors fire blanks and simulate being hit by bullets until almost none remains standing.

Filming ends, and the extras resurrect themselves and stand to fight in another scene.