There were black bears and brown bears, and shiny glass mosaic bears; painted bears and celluloid bears, their images still and moving. There were canned fuzzy bears and bear-logo-ed tee shirts. The Black Bear Film Festival in Milford, PA had them all.

Just as the variety of bears was great, so was the variety of entertainment, from low-tech old-style 16mm film of the aforementioned mammals in the wild, to high-tech, digitally filmed and edited work that used no “film” at all.

There were big-budget films of the “major motion picture” variety, with Oscar-winning stars like Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins, and there was a 10-minute film made entirely by one 16-year-old boy with a mini-DV camcorder and a laptop computer. The boy is my son.

We came to savor the little town of Milford, PA this summer, while he was working as an intern on the movie “Pizza.” In addition to talented screenwriters, directors and producers, the town has a good, independently owned coffee shop, a French bakery and a fair sprinkling of other fine food venues—my criteria for any place worth spending a day away from the valhalla of Narrowsburg.

I had volunteered my son to work for the festival back in September. To fulfill his high school community service credit, he must complete 50 hours of volunteer service for a non-profit group. Conor’s passion is film, so off we went to Milford for a few weekends of preparation. He lugged bears (the painted variety) to various merchant locales to promote the festival and did whatever was asked of him with his usual good nature.

When asked if he wanted to submit a film for the student portion of the program, he demurred, saying he had nothing ready that he felt was up to snuff. But as the festival drew near, his enthusiasm collided with his creativity and sparked an idea. His first publicly viewed film was a horror story based on the legend of “Bloody Mary.”

He commissioned his sister to play the title role. Some friends filled supporting roles and his father played a gritty, oddly considerate New York City detective. I worked wardrobe.

The whole project came together in two weeks. This was not an orderly process. Creativity is my son’s strong point. Organization is not. But his enthusiasm is contagious. Just as friends dropped everything to recite his script for the camera, I spent my days ferrying software and cables and learning the difference between DVD+ and DVD-, not to mention S-VCD.

Conor, too, was learning as he went. Using an inferior software to the favored i-Movie by Apple, he put together an interesting narrative with dramatic punch and impressive transitions.  When he learned he would have to get copyrights to use recorded music, he composed his own score, and performed it.

In the end, his ten-minute “film noir” is a patchwork of minor brilliance. His father proudly advertises that he completed it in a matter of days, forsaking homework.  While I admire his savvy, I worry that this will teach him that even slap-dash efforts yield success. I would rather he learn to invest time and scholarship and risk success or failure in all his undertakings. Because not all genius is spun from faerie dust and magic.

Maybe the bear is a fitting symbol for this lesson. With its bright eyes and sleek coat, the beauty of the black bear belies the everyday struggle it endures to survive in the wild.