Zack Larez

Zachary "Zack" Larez was born on an Army base in Fort Hood, Texas. With a disciplinarian Army sergeant for a father and a doting and supportive secretary for a mother, Zack grew up all over America and in Europe, specifically Wiesbaden, Germany. His mental and artistic abilities manifested hand-in-hand as he finished his daily schoolwork with enough time left over to completely fill the margins of his papers with increasingly elaborate drawings before turning them in. This placed him in the Gifted Program at Dozier Middle School in Newport News, Virginia and then in Safety Harbor Middle School in Safety Harbor, Florida. Conversely, Zack needed speech therapy as a preschooler and suffered severe bouts of depression in high school, which he missed a significant amount of. Somehow graduating high school on time despite earning the nickname "Ferris Bueller" with the amount of school he'd missed, Zack's college hopes were dampened nonetheless and he attended Valencia City College in Orlando Florida where he began studying computer animation. On a day that he was early for art class at Valencia, Zack decided to audition to act in student films. He was cast as the lead in "Click Fix" (available online) and this changed his life and career trajectory. Pursuing acting from then on, Zack appeared in minuscule roles in minuscule films in Florida before relocating to Los Angeles, California. With no savings and no car, he had to first move back in with his parents in northern Arizona, where he waited tables, saved and took acting classes at the now defunct Zaki Gordon Film institute under Sagan Lewis (General Hospital) in Sedona. It was in Arizona that Zack made his stage debut with "Beau Jest" as the male lead "Bob Schroeder", an Italian-American actor-escort passing himself off as a Jewish man to a client's family. Finally arriving in Los Angeles, Zack continued to wait tables and audition, never making any significant money or landing any significant roles. He'd acquired both an agent and manager and lost or fired them both. He met and trained under script supervisor Michael Coulombe as a way to earn money while rethinking his acting career. Crewing on films quickly became Zack's main source of income and his career focus. As a script supervisor, he was constantly interacting with every other department on films sets, engaging with art, props, hair, camera, sound and writers, actors, directors and producers alike. Zack already had his animation and acting experience to draw on- but now he had learned the nuts and bolts of filmmaking as well. Notable films he'd script supervised are Feed (2017) where he met Tom Felton and A Dark Foe (2020) where he met repeat-collaborator Maria Cardenas. All of this experience combined to reveal a new career path: storyboarding. Drawing on his network of directors, producers and crew members in all departments, Zack quickly gained steady work as a storyboard artist, where he put his art and animation skills to use along with his now thorough knowledge of narrative filmmaking. For a short period, Zack both storyboarded and script supervised on films before transitioning fully to storyboarding. Even before "going union", Zack has already storyboarded for top recording artists, top brands and major sporting events. Musical clients include John Legend, Faouzia, Lil Uzi Vert, Madison Beer, Livvia, Illenium and Don Omar. Commercial brands include Microsoft, Google and Adidas. In sporting events, Zack has been hired to help visualize and create hype for two of the greatest events: the Superbowl Halftime Show with The Weeknd and League of Legends Worlds. In gaming, he's utilized repeatedly by Riot Games. What sets Zack apart from other storyboard artists is his intimate knowledge of the reality of filmmaking that he gained as a script supervisor and his sense of subtext, emotion and timing that he gained from study as an actor. A "dungeon master" of Dungeons & Dragons and a player of Magic the Gathering as well as countless video games, Zack continues to live his life engaged with fantasy, imagination and strategic gaming on a daily basis. His attention turns increasingly toward publishing his own comicbooks, breaking into directing and employing the myriad of talented individuals he's met over his wide and varied career to create the best and most inspired entertainment of tomorrow. In the meantime, he happily helps others materialize their visions, lending his vast narrative filmmaking experience and acting as a cross-pollinator of ideas and techniques among the top and fastest-rising filmmakers of today.