"The Horse Boy" documented a family's journey to Mongolia to seek help for a severely autistic 4-year-old child.

Todd Tinkham, one of the instructors, noted that the film included more and more closeups of the child as it progressed. The boy also looked directly at the camera, which he hadn't done before.

Mario Daye, who just graduated from Southern High School, observed that every time the parents felt their son was improving, he suffered a setback. That's pattern appears in fiction films too, Tinkham replied.

Daye noted that he'd learned something else from the movie.

"I honestly didn't know reindeers were real," he said.

"I'm not sure they fly, though," another instructor, Nic Beery, replied teasingly.

Jokes aside, what Beery and Tinkham are doing with Daye and five other teenagers is experimental, much like the journey in "The Horse Boy."

Their new program is called Full Frame Documentary Camp. The summer camp, a pilot project of the acclaimed Durham Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, could open many doors for its students.

"These kids, in five weeks' time, could definitely work as production assistants on a professional shoot," Tinkham said. "They won't know everything, but they'll know all the basic equipment and how it fits together."

Beery produces documentaries, corporate films and commercials. Tinkham is working on his first feature-length documentary, "Dispersed," about energy production; he recently completed his first full-length fiction movie, "Southland of the Heart," which he is shopping to film festivals.

Rising senior Mariah Brooks has worked on Southern High School's newspaper, the Spartan Scoop. "I thought it would be different," she said about the summer camp. "Because I usually like taking pictures, but I never thought about filming."

Brooks typically finds documentaries about politics and war "boring." But "The Horse Boy" intrigued her because of its focus on one family. "It's more personal," she said.

Daye, who plans to become a U.S. Air Force reservist this summer, wants to be an actor. He's in the summer camp because he thinks understanding film techniques will help his career.

Despite having little previous interest in documentaries, by mid-day, Daye had become fascinated by the medium's potential.

"The fact that you made something that could probably touch other people's lives, and everybody could view something that you wouldn't think of viewing - that's the best thing about documentaries," Daye said.

He'll soon get to put his newfound knowledge into action. The six students, who were selected to represent a variety of personal backgrounds and academic levels, will produce a short documentary movie by late July. (See box for details.)

Job training

If the Full Frame Documentary Camp is deemed successful, it may spawn regular courses. The camp was created by Deirdre Haj, the executive director of documentary festival. She hopes that this summer program will evolve into a vocational program offered by Durham Public Schools at the Holton Career and Resource Center (see sidebar).

One of Haj's inspirations is a Hollywood, Calif., nonprofit called Streetlights, which trains "economically or socially disadvantaged" minority students to be production assistants.

The makers of the acclaimed 1994 documentary "Hoop Dreams" have praised programs such as Streetlights.

"That's where [they] find the young kid that's willing to work and not make a lot of money who eventually becomes a part of their team," Haj said. "I'd like them to come from Durham."

Another model for Haj is Adobe Youth Voices, a six-year-old initiative sponsored by San Jose software maker Adobe Systems in which teenagers from "underserved communities" are taught to tell true stories using video, pictures, audio and animation. Surveys show that 91 percent of participants in that program want to continue their education after high school, the foundation says.

"That's a great number," Haj said.

Miguel Salinas is the senior manager of Adobe Youth Voices, which has helped train more than 20,000 teenagers in 30 nations.

The program re-engages young people in school "by asking them what they care about and making that learning experience relevant to them," Salinas said. "So they are picking topics that are important to them in their community that they really want to raise awareness about or make change about."

Student projects produced through Adobe Youth Voices have covered bullying, drug use, teen pregnancy and environmental justice.

Salinas hasn't spoken to Haj about her idea. But through a reporter, he encouraged her to pursue it, noting that the Adobe Youth Voices curriculum is available online for free.

"Once you give young people a microphone and the empowerment to express themselves about the things that they care about, amazing things happen," Salinas said.