Forget sleep-away camp. This summer, these Bay Area teens made a film.

Love what you read? Love that it was free?

Mission Local will never have a paywall. All our articles are free for everyone, always. Help us keep it that way — donate to our end-of-year fundraiser to make Mission Local free for your neighbors.

Donate today!

A line stretched up Jackson Street, all the way to Grant Avenue from the Great Star theater on Monday night for the premiere of “THE JAR,” a film made by 71 local teens in a four-week summer camp for young filmmakers.

“I threatened all of San Francisco,” one parent joked. “You better show up to this.” 

Local filmmaker Joe Talbot, director of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” and a crew of frequent collaborators led the crash course in filmmaking.

The pace of the camp was intense, said Aidan Fong, 17, who worked on “THE JAR” as a cinematographer.

The first four days of the camp were dedicated to writing a feature-length script, which was then split into 12 scenes, with each scene assigned student directors, actors, cinematographers, production designers and producers. Most of the filming was completed in just a week. 

Even with the work divided up, students routinely volunteered to stay late, sometimes until 10 or 11 at night. After a 6-hour shift on one set, Fong said he would often move to another set to help out his peers.

“I had the most fun just being there, even though I wasn’t necessarily on the call sheet,” Fong said.

The result is a bit like “Blade Runner,” with teenagers instead of renegade androids.

“THE JAR” follows a substitute teacher (played by Jimmie Fails, star and co-creator of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”) who is tasked with tracking down runaway students. Chase scenes galore take the audience on a tour of quintessential San Francisco locations like Golden Gate Park, Chinatown and a few of the city’s hilliest streets.

(At a Q&A following the film, one of the students described being sworn at by someone in boxer shorts while trying to film a scene on a busy street).  

“THE JAR” is a movie that could not have been filmed in any other city. The sky? Unapologetically foggy. The set design? Artfully ruffled by perpetual wind. One of the film’s most joyous moments? A Dodgers hat being run over by a car in gratuitous slow motion. 

The camp gave participants a sense of what it’s like to work on a professional film set, with professional equipment and professional instructors. The resulting film looks extremely polished and is shockingly funny.

An abundance of fancy camera effects (masterful dolly shots, green screens and split screen montages appearing at a rapid pace) is a giveaway that the filmmakers in question were very young and very excited. 

They shot the film with a professional ARRI Alexa camera, the “industry standard for Hollywood,” Fong, a cinematographer for the film, gushed.

The goal of the summer camp was not only to teach students filmmaking, Talbot said. He also hoped students would meet future collaborators, something that Talbot describes as key to his own development as a filmmaker.

“When you find your people, you just want to keep making things together and it becomes such an essential part of your creative life,” Talbot told Mission Local when the camp was announced.

So far, it’s working. Maelle Griffin, an 18-year-old headed to the University of California, Los Angeles in the fall, said she already has friends sending her scripts and planning collaborations.

“I’m going to have relationships with these people as long as I can,” said 17 year-old Amiko Muscat, a director in the film. San Francisco isn’t a hub for film like Los Angeles and New York City are, Muscat acknowledged, but she won’t let that stop her. Being in the camp convinced her to keep making films about the city. 

“I get worried sometimes about San Francisco,” said Talbot while introducing the film. But for now, he said, “I’m not worried about it … From the bottom of my heart, to all our campers, thank you guys for that.”