Drone footage captures barren, locked down San Francisco

Stills from short film "San Francisco Shut Down: COVID-19 Quarantine" created by Dan Denegre of Space Race Studio Stills from short film "San Francisco Shut Down: COVID-19 Quarantine" created by Dan Denegre of Space Race Studio Photo: Dan Denegre / Space Race Studio / YouTube Photo: Dan Denegre / Space Race Studio / YouTube Image 1 of / 59 Caption Close Drone footage captures barren, locked down San Francisco 1 / 59 Back to Gallery

As the first city in the country to order its residents to shelter in place, San Franciscans are now over a week into the coronavirus lockdown, and the streets are largely unrecognizable.

Filmmaker Dan Denegre of Space Race Studio used his Mavic 3 Pro drone to capture the empty city in a short film shared on YouTube called "San Francisco Shut Down: COVID-19 Quarantine."

"Driving through San Francisco during the pandemic is jaw dropping. Thankfully few people are outside (I wasn't even close to a person), but seeing the shops boarded up is tough to see. I made sure the drone wasn't a nuisance to anyone while shooting this short documentary of this...very weird time in San Francisco," Denegre commented.

With boarded-up stores providing makeshift canvases for spray-painted messages of hope, and birds sweeping around the people-free streets of Downtown, The Haight, Chinatown and North Beach, the footage is more reminiscent of a dystopic sci-fi movie opening than the bustling city we know and love.

Shots include the shuttered front of Laconda restaurant on Valencia Street and the looming mural of environmental activist Greta Thunberg looking over an empty Union Square.

YouTube user Kimberly Andersen commented, "This is amazingly beautiful and haunting. As SF is my new adopted hometown, this makes me cry to see. We will be back."

If you're looking to help with donations or volunteering during the crisis, here's FEMA's guide.

Andrew Chamings is a digital editor at SFGATE. Email: Andrew.Chamings@sfgate.com | Twitter: @AndrewChamings