By LUAINE LEE Scripps Howard News Service April 18, 2001 The cortege eases up the side of the hill, the black hearse parked at an angle in front of the slump stone chapel. Men and women in starchy white naval uniforms cluster around the stained glass windows on the ecomposed granite path as Marines, with buzz haircuts, pass into the church. Suddenly a raspy voice shatters the silence, "Cut! Print the movie!" No, this is not the burial of a head-of-state, but a scene from CBS' prime series, "JAG." And it's not really Arlington Cemetery but the little Church of the Angels on Avenue 64 in Pasadena, Calif. The cast and crew are filming the funeral of Lt. Cmdr. Jordan Parker, one-time flame of the series hero Harmon Rabb Jr., played by David James Elliott. Parker, it seems, was murdered. So this episode - which airs May 1 - involves more than daring fly boys and international intrigue. Elliott towers above his costars as he moves through the crowd to take his place in front of the camera. A makeup woman with red hair powders underneath his chin as he chats with costar Patrick Labyorteaux, who plays Harm's sidekick, Lt. Bud Roberts. Petite brunette Catherine Bell, who portrays Lt. Col. Mac MacKenzie, flanks the two on the right as they wait for the camera to move into position. She's dressed in her trim dress uniform, spiffy down to the pert little hat. But on her feet she wears orange-leather clogs, which will disappear in favor of regulation navy-blue pumps as soon as the camera is ready. Later, during a break, Elliott slumps into the canvas director's chair emblazoned with his name and admits keeping things fresh can be difficult. "After six years I've always dug and dug and kept looking for ways to further explore," he says, pushing his cap back behind his ears. "After six years it was getting tough and I was really feeling the end of the year wasn't coming fast enough. And then, when I directed (an episode) it was the shot in the arm I needed artistically. It was exactly what I needed. It was so exhilarating. I'm happy to have done it and taken that on. It was a lot of work and exhausting. But now I'm happy to just be Harm again. It helps to further expand your horizons and keep you alive." The continuing success of the show and his character has earned Elliott an envious position. "Harm is getting more complicated," says Elliott, "and next year we'll further that complication, I hope. I have a meeting where we're going to discuss possible avenues - their ideas, and they want my input. This is nice, it's a collaborative effort and no one has an ego that is that uptight that they don't listen," he says, grinning. "The thing about (executive producer) Don Bellisario is he's got wonderful ideas, he's an incredibly talented man. If you come up with something, and he likes that, he's the first guy to say, 'Oh, I like that. Yeah, let's go with it.' If he doesn't like it, he says, 'I think it's a stupid idea.' It's nice to feel you can come up with something." Bell, who's been on the show for five years, says she thinks Mac has changed in the same ways that she herself has changed. "She's softened up. She was tougher, she was more aggressive when she first came in. She had to prove she was a strong, intelligent woman not to be messed with, I think. Now she knows the guys, they're all buddies and she can have a sense of humor and still be strong and still be a woman. I've probably changed in the same way," says Bell, waving to one of the crew-members. "I don't have to prove myself anymore. I'm in my fifth season, they're not going to be firing me any time soon. I've brought more of myself to the character. I'm more comfortable being in a series, acting every day." Bell continues to study in a master class to keep her acting muscles supple and, though her character is engaged to an Australian officer, Bell whispers, "I think she should save herself for Harm, but that's my personal opinion." The director, Bradford May, has changed the angle of the camera and both Bell and Elliott return to their positions. Looking on, Labyorteaux - who as a child actor costarred with his brother on "Little House on the Prairie" - thinks his character has changed the most of all those on "JAG." A recent storyline had him and his wife (Karri Turner) lose a baby, an unusually tragic subject for the show. "The weird thing about the show is that everything that happened to Bud happened to me about a year later," says Labyorteaux, "with the exception of this last baby storyline. Bud got married. A year later I married the producer of the show, Tina Albanese. We started dating secretly on the set, no one knew. I asked her to marry me. We got married two years after we met. We had a baby on the show and my wife is now pregnant," he says. "And what was so weird was when we were doing this last storyline about the loss of this baby, we were in our first three months (of pregnancy), and you can't say anything. So it's some of my best work because I had a lot to pull from. It's been wonderful. The show has given me a life and a wife." The director calls for one more shot when retired Marine master sergeant and military advisor Matt Sigloch points out that the ribbons on MacKenzie's chest were out of the shot. "A lot of times they get so close you don't really see (the ribbons)," he explains.    "And that's all part of it, it just makes it look nicer."