Joe Talbot has but one feature film under his belt, but it was an instant classic: “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.” Upon its 2019 premiere at Sundance, it won the award for best directing, and became a critical darling and favorite of local audiences. Now, Talbot wants San Francisco’s aspiring filmmakers to follow in his footsteps and fall in love with the cinematic city they call home.
So he’s launching a summer camp. Students at the intensive workshop, titled “48 Hills, 24 Frames,” will take place June 16 to July 3, with an optional fourth week of post-production. This lucky cohort of 16- to 19-year-olds will get to work with the accomplished local director as well as an Oscar-nominated composer and the cinematographer of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Together, they will make a feature film about San Francisco, to be screened at the Mission’s Roxie Theater.
The camp was inspired by similar programs in Los Angeles and New York, where far more films and TV series are produced. With “48 Hills, 24 Frames,” Talbot — a high-school dropout turned independent filmmaker — doesn’t simply want the students to get a real credit on IMDb.
“We want them to walk away with two things: next-level technical understanding taught by real wizards, and a renewed infatuation for San Francisco,” he said. “We want kids to walk into that weird store by their house that they’d never wandered into, only suddenly they’re armed with the tools to make a movie with their best friend.”
If that approach sounds familiar, it’s because it’s how Talbot got his big break. The 34-year-old Bernal Heights native collaborated with his best friend, Jimmie Fails, on 2019’s “The Last Black Man,” a story about San Francisco gentrification that’s partly based on Fails’ life.
Initially stymied by the lack of an ecosystem for emerging Bay Area film talent, the pair leveraged their knowledge of San Francisco to make use of shooting locations like the Hunters Point Shipyard and Golden Gate Park’s mural-filled Beach Chalet.
The camp’s purpose is to create a pipeline for young talent, including soft skills that don’t always get taught in film school, such as how to pitch ideas. Talbot hopes it will help students get on the radar of organizations like The Bay List, which helps up-and-coming local screenwriters get projects made.
The 30 to 40 students will be slotted into two tracks. One is for kids who want to make movies but don’t know where to begin; the other is for those who have some experience and are interested in one specific aspect of the craft. Everyone, Talbot says, will wear at least two hats: “Directors will be actors, which makes you more sensitive and empathetic. Cinematographers will also be in the electric department, because lighting is such a useful tool.”
Guest teachers will focus on SF-specific film lessons. Adam Newport-Berra, who worked on Lamar’s Super Bowl performance and partnered with Talbot on “Last Black Man,” will teach a one-day lesson on writing a car chase scene — a staple of classic SF films from “Bullitt” to “Ant-Man and the Wasp.”
Fails will teach a course, as will local historian Gary Kamiya, author of “Cool Gray City of Love,” who will take students on an in-depth walking tour of a significant block of the city. Students will learn production design from Liam Moore, who’s made music videos for Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, and Rihanna, and they’ll work with Oscar-nominated composer Emile Mosseri on the art of scoring films. Stunnaman02 — whose song “Big Steppin” sometimes plays when the 49ers score a touchdown — has offered to act in the film.
Talbot attended Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, and he recruited his beloved film teacher, Scott Eberhardt — who, in a comic turn, played a gentrifier in “The Last Black Man” — to serve as an adviser.
The cost for the camp will be $3,900 — less than a semester at many film schools, to be sure, but more than the $2,950 charged by the prestigious SF Film School for its five-week summer course. Talbot is working on sponsorships to bring down the rate, as well as a parent-funded sponsorship program to defray the cost for less-affluent campers. “We want to keep it open to as many kids as possible,” he said.
There’s another dimension to the camp’s mission of getting kids to love the city: the director’s family. He’s been a caretaker for his father, the writer David Talbot, who suffered a debilitating stroke last year. The past few months have been hard for the family, but it allowed the younger Talbot to reacquaint himself with his beautiful but complicated hometown. “Like a lot of people, I get tired and frustrated with the city,” he said, “but discovering new parts has brought me so much joy — and that’s part of what the camp came out of.”