Indy Film Fest -- Interview: Zac Cooper

The Indianapolis filmmaker reflects on making "It Happened One Weekend," an eclectic black-and-white story about two friends contemplating a romance.

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Film Yap: IHOW is not your typical indie “festival film.” It feels at once very old and quite modern in its outlook. What brought you to this story about two people navigating a friendship into a possible romance?

Zac Cooper: This probably won’t come as a surprise, the story came to me through life experiences. But not just my own. I stole from my friends as well. It feels like everyone has caught romantic feelings for a friend at some point. When this happens, we often keep it a secret. We maybe tell one close friend. That’s it. It’s too embarrassing. It feels too cliché and dramatic. But I figured if this is something we all go through, we should talk about it! That being said, I’m very aware of the fact that this storyline has been explored plenty of times in film and television. My goal for the film was to take an honest approach to the subject matter. So even if the plot is all too familiar, hopefully the point-of-view is fresh.

Film Yap: Tell us a little about yourself and your background as a filmmaker.

Zac Cooper: “It Happened One Weekend” is my first feature film. When I graduated college in 2015, I decided I wanted to focus on my own films, instead of moving to a bigger city and working on productions. Life happened to bring me to Indianapolis in 2016. Thankfully I had college friends in the area who are also filmmakers. So I spent the next 5 years cutting my teeth on short films, until we shot “It Happened One Weekend” in 2021. To support my filmmaking addiction, I work as a director in video production for an agency in Indy called TrendyMinds.

Film Yap: How did you find your cast, and what were you pushing for their performances as a director?

Zac Cooper: I’ve known Merry for 10 years. We met in college and have worked on a number of projects together. I like acting but don’t consider myself an actor. I cast myself mostly for budgetary reasons. I also knew we had the chemistry needed to make the two main characters believable. The rest of the cast is made up of performers either I had worked with before, or my producers had.

Film Yap: I think the first thing people will notice about the film is the amazing B&W photography — again, not the sort of thing you usually see for this kind of film. Talk about the production process, the cinematography choices of you and your crew and the overall aesthetic of the movie.

Zac Cooper: We shot the film in 14 days, which isn’t a lot of time for a feature film (shout out to the indie filmmakers who have made films with even less time). My cinematographer, Taylor Dekker, and I worked hard to make every shot as intentional as possible. We pushed ourselves to play with blocking and longer takes. Taylor and I have nothing against handheld camera work. There’s a bit of it in the movie. But it can be kind of a crutch when you are a low budget film. We challenged ourselves to keep the camera work interesting while using mostly sticks, dollies and zooms. I’m unironically a huge fan of zooms.

Film Yap: Were you thinking about any particular films as influences for yours? Two that I found it evocative of were Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” and “My Dinner with Andre.”

Zac Cooper: “Manhattan” was definitely an aesthetic influence. So was Noah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha” and Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment.” There was also plenty of influences from the French New Wave: Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard. Plus this Italian filmmaker who worked in the ‘50s and ‘60s named Antonio Pietrangeli. I can’t necessarily point to moments in our film and explain how everyone of these filmmakers influenced it. But these are the filmmakers that were on my mind while developing and shooting our film.

Film Yap: I’ve rarely seen Indianapolis look not just so gorgeous, but positively iconic in a feature film before. Did you set out to make Indy look good, or was it just how the backdrops presented themselves?

Zac Cooper: I wanted to do for Indianapolis what countless filmmakers have done for LA or NYC. I wanted to show it off. I wanted the film to be unapologetically Indianapolis. Honestly, we didn’t really do anything special. I just think we aren’t used to seeing Indianapolis in movies and on the big screen.

Film Yap: What’s next for you?

Zac Cooper: We just completed post-production on the film at the beginning of June. We’re starting our festival run this week by playing at the Indy Film Fest. We’re in the process of submitting to other festivals. Now it’s just a waiting game. Outside of this film, I’m slowly working on a script for another feature, and I have some short films that I’m developing and hoping to shoot later this year.