When the room began to clear, most of those standing in the Affinity Salon were smiling–and those who weren’t were gagging on the slightly stale smoke hanging in the air.

“That’s a lot of smoke,” said one crew member, as he coughed and waved a hand in the air.

In the sealed room, the smoke machine worked well, producing substantially opaque vapors that had nowhere to go to but in the faces of the 30 or so crew members on the set of the movie “Big Helium Dog” — a film written and directed by Middletown Township resident Brian Lynch and produced by Kevin Smith, who has brought semifame to Red Bank and its neighboring towns with the movies “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy”.

Filming the $40,000 budget movie has taken Lynch and a pro bono crew all over the area — from W.H. Potter’s cow parm in Middletown to the Memory Lanes Bowling Alley in Shrewsbury. On Wednesday, they spent several hours at the salon in the Broad Street Mall, owned by Brian Church and donated for the day to the crew.

The scene of the day was one of the few with special effects and involved several takes in the smoky room. Church stood by as the crew prepared for the shot, but was not worried about any damages that may be caused by the work.

“They’ve got good insurance,” Church smiled. “I’m so happy to help them out.”

It’s a movie within a movie that has a narrator, two Generation X friends, a death, a romance, a director (played by Smith), the devil in a shroud of smoke, and some cows.

“It’s like ‘Saturday Night Live’…it’s not an art form. It’s a very mainstream, “Airplane”-type movie,” Lynch, 24, said of the movie he began writing while a student at William Patterson College in Wayne Township. “When I wrote it, I didn’t have any idea what it was about. It was a real basic plot,” he said with a smirk, “but not much of a plot to speak of.”

The Middletown High School South graduate met Smith on the set of another of Smith’s productions, “A Better Place.” Smith said when he read Lynch’s script, he immediately liked it.

“It’s funny. There hasn’t been anything like it,” Smith said. “I think you’ll start seeing a lot of people making sketch comedies. Doing a comedy flick is not expensive. I’m surprised more people haven’t done it.”

Shooting for the movie, which some call a satire, others a parody, will be finished next week. Lynch will spend about three months editing, and after that, it’s time to “shop the festivals,” like Vancouver and Telluride (Colorado), he said.

“I think we have the right amount of celebrity cameos and Kevin’s name carries a lot of weight,” Lynch said. “I’ve heard that the buzz is that this is the movie to have cameos in.”

Some of the celebrities showing their faces include Michael Ian Black of the comedy troupe “The State” and the new “Viva Variety” television show.

Another is Dicky Barrett, the lead singer with the group The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Radio personality Christine Nagy from Z-100 will also make an appearance.

An then there’s Mr. X, perhaps the most well-known of them all. Rich Perello, the movie’s producer, said they would keep his identity a secret until the movie is released.

People who like off-color humor will be happy to see the quasi-radio personality playing a television producer.

That off-color humor is the thing that some on the set fear may keep the movie from winning awards at film festivals. While he does not believe the film will take top prizes, Lynch sees a possible viewer’s choice award in its future.