Francesca Gregorini helps film crew and cast coordinate a setup for a shoot in the chapel of the First Universalist Church in Harrisville.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

BURRILLVILLE

In this small and usually quiet town, royalty pays a visit.

Tatiana von Furstenberg and Francesca Gregorini have returned to Rhode Island, accompanied by an entourage of electricians and sound technicians, costumers and make-up artists, and a couple of camera operators recording the occasion for the masses.

You ask for an audience with the women. And it’s as though you’ve entered a Hollywood set.

A black-clad man with a wireless headset repeats your request. Big trucks idle at the curb. And lights illuminate the outside of the First Universalist Church, making a dreary day bright.

You suspect von Furstenberg or Gregorini disagrees with the weather, and this is their doing.

Permission granted, sort of.

The man in black only looks like he’s talking to himself. Minutes later, he introduces you to Julie Snyder of Newport. She’s overseeing von Furstenberg and Gregorini’s entire whirlwind, month-long trip to the state: Burrillville, Providence, Pawtucket, Lincoln and Newport.

“Initially, I was showing them more pristine places,” Snyder says. “But they wanted something that was more worn, but still beautiful.”

You could call Snyder the producer of this whole $3-million production, which she calls Tanner Hall, an independent film. And you could call von Furstenberg and Gregorini the co-writers and co-directors.

But you could also call them Princess and Countess, respectively. That’s what they are.

Von Furstenberg, 36, is the daughter of Prince Egon von Furstenberg and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, and the stepdaughter of billionaire media mogul Barry Diller. Her full name is Tatiana Desiree Prinzessin von Furstenberg.

And Gregorini, 39, is the daughter of Italian industrialist Count Augusto Gregorini and actress Barbara Bach (best known for her role in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me), and is the stepdaughter of Ringo Starr. Her full name is Countess Francesca McKnight Donatella Romana Gregorini di Savignano di Romagna.

Not surprisingly, neither woman much uses her full name.

They met at Brown University; von Furstenberg graduated in 1991, and Gregorini graduated in 1990. Both majored in semiotics. Additionally, von Furstenberg majored in comparative literature, and Gregorini in theater arts.

When Snyder introduces you to them, they are disarmingly friendly. You have many questions about their movie. Yet, inexplicably, what you first hear coming out of your mouth is, “What does it mean to be a countess?”

You’ve always wondered.

This is a question Gregorini answers, with a smile and raised eyebrows.

“It means I have a ring with a crown and nine balls (she shows you, flaunting the pinkie finger of her right hand), but not much really. It can be quite fun if you’re trying to lure someone in. It helps get their attention.”

So a countess can be a conversation piece. But a princess, apparently, is not so lucky.

“I have no ring,” von Furstenberg says. “I have nothing. I rarely think of it. I think it’s something that’s left over from a different era. There is just a small drop of blood in my system that still lingers.”

Von Furstenberg and Gregorini have been very close friends for nearly two decades. Gregorini is the godmother of von Furstenberg’s 7-year-old daughter. The women, who live near each other in L.A. and have gone into business together, including, once, operating a clothing store, banter a bit about being royal.

“It’s something that never occurs to me,” von Furstenberg says.

“Well, it occurs to me constantly,” Gregorini says. “I wake up and the first thing I do is look at myself and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re such a lovely countess.’  ”

Tanner Hall, the story of four girls coming of age at boarding school, is von Furstenberg and Gregorini’s first feature film. But they have made other films, four shorts, between 12 and 28 minutes long. However those movies, Gregorini notes, were not widely seen. In fact, she says, “they were viewed only in our living room. We weren’t terribly ambitious.”

But those short films, which featured “a group of our friends that we turned into actors,” says von Furstenberg, provided the base attraction for financial backers of Tanner Hall, along with its script and previous scripts by von Furstenberg and Gregorini, who are both members of the Writers Guild.

Late last year, the two women proposed Tanner Hall as a TV pilot, which is when Snyder saw a posting for it in a Hollywood trade magazine, and contacted von Furstenberg and Gregorini. By spring, the project had become a feature film. And Snyder convinced the movie’s co-creators to shoot it in Rhode Island, a location that pleasantly surprised the women.

“I think when you go to the Brown, you just stay on the hill,” Gregorini says. “We’ve found this whole other world, and it’s all a short drive.”

State and town officials, von Furstenberg says, have been friendly, supportive and accommodating of their project.

“It makes sense to do it here.”

Pascoag is the movie’s “town.” Lincoln Woods is supposed to be within it. Carey Hall at Salve Regina University in Newport provides the exterior for Tanner Hall. Nathan Bishop Middle School in Providence provides the classrooms. And the To Kalon Club in Pawtucket provides the movie’s dorm room.

“In L.A., no one is that excited you’re doing a film,” Gregorini says. “They think it’s annoying. Here, everyone is excited.”

Filming began in Rhode Island, after just three weeks of pre-production, on Nov. 12, fortuitously catching the end of later-than-usual fall foliage, which metaphorically conveys the transitional theme of the movie: adolescence.

“There is beauty, but it’s not the full luster,” von Furstenberg says. “There is something beautiful about something that is imperfect and fleeting.”

Adolescence for von Furstenberg and Gregorini was similar. Both attended boarding school in England. The four girls in the film are reportedly composites of von Furstenberg and Gregorini and their boarding school friends.

“This is a piece that’s very close to the heart,” von Furstenberg says. “It’s about simplicity and not materialism. Well, it’s not about that, but it should communicate that.”

What it’s really about is personal growth.

“The core is very human,” Gregorini says. “It’s a kind of fairytale, an intimate portrait of these girls.”

The young women playing the four girls are not household names. The closest this movie comes is Chris Kattan, formerly of Saturday Night Live, who plays a teacher going through a mid-life crisis. That character, along with the playful camaraderie of the four girls, makes this movie what von Furstenberg calls “a dramady,” part drama, part comedy.

Shooting is scheduled to end on Dec. 19. And the movie is to be presented in film festivals sometime late next year. That’s where von Furstenberg and Gregorini, who have both mortgaged their homes to help finance this film, hope to find a distributor.

“If you don’t have faith in your project, no one else will,” Gregorini says.

The whole experience of undertaking a first film, suddenly overseeing so many people and taking on so much responsibility, von Furstenberg compares to “going off the diving board for the first time. It’s scary.”

brourke@projo.com