Zak Marx Provides a Shotgun Point-Of-View of Lovers on the Run in Oscar Scheller’s Runaway’

After seducing us with his 16mm moto-racing rivalry promo Adventure earlier this year, Los Angeles based Director Zak Marx gets behind the wheel for a shotgun point-of-view tale of lovers on run in Oscar Scheller music video Runaway. An interesting perspective on a classic cinema trope, Marx explains why being fixed to a four wheeled set allowed the production to fly under the radar in the San Fernando Valley “without permits or hassle of any kind”.

I was introduced to the wonderful Oscar Scheller by our DP Layton Cole Tedrick about a year ago. Oscar’s based in the UK but was gracious enough to let us run wild out here in Los Angeles while we made the video. He had specific ideas as to what type of feeling he wanted to achieve but other than that he was totally open to letting us experiment.

To me, there’s nothing more intimidating than a blank canvas or rather ‘free rein’ to concept whatever you’d like. I quite enjoy assignment based work so we thought why not do that to ourselves and establish a rule. The rule here obviously being that the camera cannot leave its fixed position on the car. Once that was established it allowed us to have fun with the story and more or less make this beautiful ol’ LeBaron the main character of the film.

To me, there’s nothing more intimidating than a blank canvas or rather ‘free rein’ to concept whatever you’d like.

And by embracing that restraint it created a very small production footprint that allowed us to experiment in areas and locations we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to film. We were able to shoot for two full days in and around the San Fernando Valley without permits or hassle of any kind. The car became the set.

Actors Rasina Pavlova and Braden Overwater were totally onboard for the adventure and with lead actor Nick Hargous being a great friend of mine, and dedicated filmmaker himself, the entire shoot became a two-day filmic joyride. It called back to the days of running around as a kid, stealing locations, goofing off with a camera and your friends – the sort of the thing that got you into filmmaking in the first place.