EBHS Grad's Film To Be Shown at Rutgers Film Festival

The filmmaking bug bit Zack Morrison very early in life.

“I started off playing around with my dad's old analog Hi-8,” Morrison said. “He would take it with him on family vacations and I thought it was so cool that the camera had a transition feature.”

Morrison has gotten a little more sophisticated over the years. And this weekend, the 19 year-old graduate of East Brunswick High School, who now attends Rutgers University, will see one of his short films screened as part of a major local film festival. “Live” will screen at the New Jersey Film Festival Friday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. at Voorhees Hall in New Brunswick.

Morrison shot “Live” (rhymes with ‘hive’) as part of the Campus Moviefest (CMF), which bills itself as “the world's largest student film festival and a premier outlet for the next generation of filmmakers.”

And the inspiration for the film comes from a rather unlikely place for a 19-year-old college student.

“ 'Live’ began from a saying that (Morrison’s friend and filmmaking colleague) Chris Pasi taught me early last school year:  ‘Do it Live.’  I guess he got it from a video online of Bill O'Reilly yelling at his director because the teleprompter was broken, screaming he'll ‘do it live.' In my building it kind of became synonymous with Carpe Diem.

“So when we heard about the Campus Moviefest competition we already wanted to make some kind of movie where the main character was doing it live. We wrote the story during a lecture hall class and on the bus ride home. It is about two friends, one who is very outgoing and lives life to the fullest, the doing-it-live character, and his friend who is a shy bookworm. We wanted to tell a story about getting involved at school and trying new things, as well as to show off some of the beautiful campuses at Rutgers.”

Morrison and Pasi worked together on the film, and had to comply with a strict set of rules imposed by CMF: the movie could not run longer than five minutes, and had to be shot and edited in seven days. And from the outset, fate seemed to be against them.

“Day one we hit a problem when I woke up that morning and there was a foot of snow on the ground,” Morrison said. “I thought we were going to have to change the whole story to be inside, but by some miracle, it reached 70 degrees that day and night, so the snow was all but gone by the following morning. Each day we shot for about four to five hours. I took the week off from classes and ended up failing an exam. My parents weren't too happy about that one.

“On top of all the craziness, I was sick with a bad sinus infection which made shooting out in the cold miserable. We finished shooting on the sixth day, and that night we edited for 18 hours straight.”

The results were worth it.

“ 'Live’ won Campus Best Drama when CMF stopped at Rutgers back in March, which earned us a bid to their International Grand Finale event in Hollywood,” Morrison said. It was one of the films he was involved in to screen at the event; the other was shot in 3D and was titled ‘The Bizarre Occurrences of a Peculiar Day’,” Morrison said. “After ‘Live’ won, I was invited to join their Distinguished Filmmakers Network, which presents additional filmmaking opportunities for members. One event was a 3D competition that would screen at the International Grand Finale festival. I pitched an idea about a bum named Chet from Boston who was convinced he was a superhero. I thought it was a dumb idea but the guys at CMF liked it and mailed me a 3D camera.

“Once I found out it was on the way I ran to Chris and told him and we instantly came up with a better idea. ‘Bizarre Occurrences’ came from the idea of having a clown with a chainsaw and turned into a wacky adventure about friends who get chased by a gang of clown thugs angered over their mysterious missing Box, while two inept detectives follow.”

Like any good filmmaker, Morrison is not resting on any laurels. He and his team are already working on a script for the upcoming Campus Moviefest. “We've started writing the first draft of the script with plans to have it complete around winter break,” he said. “Since the actual competition is in the spring, I am taking three film courses this semester which should keep me occupied.

“I have all the tools I need to make movies, I just need to keep doing it, keep getting better and better, and the goal is a return trip to Hollywood for this summer.”

To view some of Morrison’s work, visit http://vimeo.com/zackmorrison and www.facebook.com/zamproductions.