Taking a fresh twist on the familiar “boy meets girl” tale, an Orem screenwriter embarked on a bold journey recently, shooting her feature-length romantic teen comedy at a Provo burger joint.

Karen Peck, mother of three children and the holder of a graduate degree from Utah State University, completed filming on her first movie, "Start with Nothing," at the former Broiler Express on Tuesday.

A self-proclaimed "movie junkie" along with her children, Peck said her 1983 cinema experience seeing "Return of the Jedi" at age 12 was a pivotal moment in her silver screen education.

"I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen," she said.

She started screenwriting 10 years ago while attending local writing and critique workshops in Utah, and, three years ago, began traveling to an annual screenwriters conference in Los Angeles.

It was there she met some owners of a film company who encouraged her to take the plunge with a story she'd been developing over a period of years and make the movie herself.

"This is the first good one," Peck said of her personal screenwriting efforts.

"Start With Nothing," tells the story of the single- afternoon escapades of a teenage boy planning how to ask a pretty drive-in carhop out on a date, while she's serving up shakes and burgers at a local fast-food hangout.

Peck's story uses the premise of "trading up for something better" as a vehicle to show how the industrious lad incrementally exchanges items with restaurant patrons to ultimately obtain an iPod with which to entice the girl -- and ideally win her affections (or a least a date), said Susan M. Phelan, the film's director.

"He's in the right place at the right time," she said.

In the midst of the mayhem, the boy attempts to avoid getting tormented by the high school cheerleaders and football jocks or tossed out by the restaurant's manager for loitering and pestering his employee, Peck said.

"I was a band nerd in high school," she said. "I understand the poor, lonely geek ... and how the jocks and cheerleaders rule the world."

Phelan, a friend of Peck who has an acting background in TV commercials and stage work, said the film was shot in a whirlwind 10-day stretch all at the same location with a crew of six and a main cast of eight. Challenges included overcoming the ambient sound caused by workers sawing bricks in half at a nearby construction site.

"The highs were seeing this work, to see it actually come across in the actors," she said. "I was looking into the monitor and seeing it working and thinking 'We've got something neat here.' "

Peck insists "Start With Nothing," which was shot in RED Camera, a new fully digital HD format, was filmed on the "tiniest" of budgets. She is the movie's producer through a film company she started, called Three Straws Films.

Though Peck's movie isn't specifically told from a Latter-day Saint perspective, Peck, who is LDS, calls it "a squeaky-clean little romantic comedy" audiences will gravitate toward. Phelan said what makes the film work is Peck's crisp and smart dialogue and its humorous, upbeat approach.

"The real message of it is 'Perseverance pays off,' and 'Be true to yourself and you'll win,' " Peck said.

Phelan expects the film to be released sometime next summer.