Looking Back and Looking Forward with Filmmaker Zack Parker

Zack Parker is an American director and screenwriter known for his low-budget, high-concept films that often explore unsettling themes. The New York Times referred to him as a “one-man Hollywood.” Recently, Parker celebrated the 10th anniversary of his thriller Proxy at the 2024 Nightmares Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio. The screening featured a 16mm print of his latest creation, a short film titled *Barista*. During the event, he spoke with Hope Madden about reflecting on the past in various ways.

Proxy is a chilling American horror film released in 2013, masterfully directed by Zack Parker, who also collaborated with Kevin Donner to craft the gripping screenplay. The film showcases a talented cast, including Alexia Rasmussen, Alexa Havins, Kristina Klebe, and Joe Swanberg, each bringing their characters to life in a hauntingly evocative manner.

Film rights to Proxy were picked up by IFC Midnight shortly after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Looking Back and Looking Forward with Filmmaker Zack Parker

Hope Madden: What it was like watching Proxy with a crowd ten years later? Is the is crowd reaction still the same?

Zack Parker: It’s tough to gauge the audience because there’s not a lot of external reactions, and that’s by design. So, it makes really hard for me to interpret. When you make a comedy, if you stand at the back of the theater, you can tell if it’s working or not. You make a jump scare horror film, you can tell if it’s working or not. But if you make a psychological drama thriller, whether they’re fully engaged or asleep, he back of their heads look the same. All I had was my own turmoil.

Hope Madden: What was it like for you seeing it again this much later?

Zack Parker: It was a little surreal. I haven’t seen it for a while for sure. It opened up a lot of memories that I just haven’t thought of in a while. It’s almost like an old photo album, right?

Hope Madden: I’d forgotten is how beautiful it is, almost dreamlike in the way that it’s shot. Tell me about deciding on the look for it.

Zack Parker: I do like directors that are very specific, photographically. I think you can tell, in terms of the pacing and the tone, I’m very much influenced by films of the 60s and 70s. I like a director to take their time; I like every cut to matter. And every angle has to matter. I really like embracing what I consider to be the vocabulary of cinema, at least my interpretation of it. And I don’t like to use handheld unless it’s in very specific instances. I like to play things out in wide shots as much as I can. That’s a lot of the Stanley Kubrick influence.

You watch films of other filmmakers and you have this strange feeling that we see the world in the same way a little bit, it just feels right. And I can tell that from the first or second shot of a movie. It’s like, okay, I understand how this person sees films, you know? And sees the world. And that’s always kind of exciting.

When I first started off, I did storyboard everything, shot list everything. But growing a bit of confidence in working with actors who are more experienced, I like to keep things a little open. If you’re going to hire talented, creative people, you want to be able to utilize that creativity as much as possible. And so, I would have things shot listed, but really that was just sort of like a safety net, like a backup. So really, once we get in there, it’s kind of building a lot of the shots then and there in the moment and just taking advantage of what we have.

Hope Madden: You also screened your new short film, Barista. How would you describe it?

Zack Parker: Barista is sort of a parody trailer of exploitation cinema of the 70s, and also a bit of Italian giallo as well, though it takes place in a modern-day coffee shop. So, a modern, concept, but inspired execution wise and aesthetically by things of the 70s. I thought that would be an interesting combo.

Hope Madden:: Tell me about making it.

Zack Parker: I just missed using physical film. I went to Ball State University in Muncie for two years, then I transferred to UCLA. I started off by working for Roger Corman on a TV show he was doing called Black Scorpion. They were shooting that on 16. So, I got to work in camera departments and lighting departments of things shot on film, but I never got to shoot any of my own projects on film, which always felt disappointing.

As I transitioned back into filmmaking of late, if I was going to do something on film, I wanted to go all in on it. But how traditional, how analog? Could you keep the process in 2024?

I bought this old 1971 Arriflex 16BL camera, which was like the first camera designed by Arriflex for shooting sound in production. And then I bought a Moviola out of Saint Louis. The guy I bought it from used to work for Paramount, and they gave it to him as a retirement gift. And it turns out that like 70 to 80% of the episodes of Columbo were edited on this machine, which is kind of amazing.

So, I was able to keep the process completely analog, like no computers, by syncing the dailies myself. We transferred all the audio to what’s called 16-millimeter magnetic full coat, which basically looks like 16 millimeter film, but it’s audio. So, every cut you make, you have to make it to both the film itself and to the magnetic to keep the sound in sync.

And then, once I had my workprint cut together and my sound cut together, I found a negative cutter in LA who cut the original camera negative, and then worked with the lab in Maryland called Color Lab. And then we worked on putting together an answer print, and then doing opticals with the title cards, and things like that. They had not done anything like this for a while, so it was kind of a rediscovery for them. Like, how do you do it now? Because the machinery is a bit different. Everybody’s used to going from digital to film, but not keeping film to film as much.

Hope Madden: Yours were literally the only human eyeballs that had ever seen it, right?

Zack Parker: There is no monitor, so the only way you see what’s being shot is through the viewfinder. You can’t do play back, you know? There’s nothing, you’re only seeing what’s going on film when you’re rolling.

One of the gaffers, after we wrapped the shoot, said, ‘How’s it looking?’ And I was like, ‘Well, you know, we won’t know until we get back from the lab, but I think it looks good.’ And he said, ‘You realize you’re the only one who’s seen any of the shots.’ And it hadn’t really occurred to me.

To think that’s the way all of these movies, all of these classics—there was so much trust in the cinematographer! I mean, you would get dailies the next day, but in the moment, you couldn’t do playback. People from production design and makeup, they can’t look at what’s happening. You know, it’s all just a guesstimation. It’s kind of magical. I feel like there’s something that’s gotten lost in that, like the preciousness of it all. So, that was exciting.

Hope Madden: And the short was a way to figure out that process a bit?

Zack Parker: I have a feature that I plan to shoot on 16mm next spring. So, it was sort of an experiment. First of all, does this equipment even work? And then, what is this process? And again, how does it have to be adjusted and manipulated in 2024 to still retain as much of that traditional way of filmmaking as possible? I’m still kind of discovering how it’s going to work.

Hope Madden: So Nightmares is the first time anybody had seen it?

Zack Parker: Nightmares was the first festival where we were able to screen it on 16 millimeter. We’d shown it at two other festivals where we were just getting scans of the negative as we were going. We would create digital scans and then like create a DCP from those. But it was exciting to finally see it actually projected on 16 the way it should be.

Hope Madden: How did you feel watching it?

Zack Parker: Amazing. It was great. You’re always riddled with anxiety, and I was literally splicing some things together on it on Wednesday night before I headed to Columbus. You just never know. And when it goes to that machine, sometimes those projectors just decide to eat it. So, I brought an extra print, and I brought my splicer with me too, in case we were going to have to do some surgery. I think it all turned out okay.