“My nephew goes to school there, and I’ve been going there my whole life, for different reasons,” Mr. Linklater said. “It’s a fun little college town, and it’s a place where she would get a job: They’re hiring. It’s expanding.”

It is a dynamic locale because, despite its growth, the city, “still has a small town feel,” Mr. Linklater said. “A little girl who talks to Mason Jr., her mom owns a shop on the town square. It’s like a one-high school town.”

BASTROP: “Boyhood” would not be a true depiction of Texas if it did not spend some time at a ranch. As Mason Sr. remarries, new grandparents suddenly enter the family — and they are the sort of folks who live on a ranch in East Texas. Mr. Linklater found a substitute just 45 minutes east of Austin: Lost Pines.

AUSTIN: Much of the film was shot in Austin, but the only substantive scene there comes when Mason Jr. visits his sister. Mason Jr. and his girlfriend, Sheena (Zoe Graham) stay up all night eating queso in 24-hour diners, meeting some of the city’s infamous weirdos, and, of course, seeing live music. The Continental Club owner, Steve Wertheimer “is a friend,” Mr. Linklater said. “We shot there for ‘Slacker’ back in 1989, so he’s like, ‘Well, sure, you can shoot here.’ We go in there early in the day and shoot in the afternoon when there’s no one there, and create the show.”

Mr. Linklater’s memories of the Continental Club predate “Slacker” — and recreating them on film is what “Boyhood” does best. “I had older friends that went to college at U.T., and I remember as a high school kid, I ended up seeing music at the Continental Club. I was like, ‘Wow, I like it here. There’s live music and cool people. I could see myself here.’ I stayed out all night and I walked around.”

Mr. Linklater stayed, in fact, for good: He founded the Austin Film Society in 1985; released “Slacker,” which was his first commercially successful film, in 1991; and opened a 20-acre film studio called Austin Studios in 2000. The 12 years that he spent filming “Boyhood” capture a hectic time in Austin’s history — the city’s population and cost-of-living spiked — but Mr. Linklater does not think Mason Jr.’s first impression of the capital would differ much from his own. “There’s still that same kind of cultural experience to be had. That’s going to happen in Austin for a certain kind of person in the same way it always has,” he said.