Meet Local Filmmaker Dan Parsons

ZANESVILLE – Dan Parsons is a cinematographer by trade and he’s done just about everything there is to think of in the world of filmmaking and being behind the camera. Parsons is from Zanesville and he recently worked on a film entitled “the Reliant” that screened in over 700 American theaters in October of 2019. That film featured Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo. Parsons new project Adeline has just finished production.

“So I just wrapped a feature called Adeline. It was shot here in Ohio and is based off a true story that is a healing horse and a medicine horse and it saved thirteen people in a rare November tornado that happened in Marysville and I think it was back in 2002 and we got to tell the story of Adeline. It was pretty exciting,” Parson said.

When filming, Parsons commonly uses what he calls a hoverboard. You heard that correctly. The board does not levitate off of the ground, but, it also doesn’t requires Parsons to take any steps.

“I was thinking, you know, I love to move the camera around when I shoot and I’d love to find a way to take any footsteps out of the shots and so when I discovered hoverboards I thought (that) I need to get one of those. It’s really funny because it’s really become a trademark whether I’m shooting handheld shots or on a stabilizer, very often I’ll just get the hoverboard and probably at least once or twice with every film I’m getting shots with that,” Parsons said.

Parsons had an interest in the arts from a very young age. He attended college to be a music teacher and taught music at Crooksville High School in the 1990s. However, it wasn’t until 1998 when he created the score for a feature film when he developed interest in a different form of storytelling.

“I love music. I love movies. I love music and movies but the process of writing music for a movie didn’t really appeal to me but in the process of doing that, I got bit by the camera bug and started, for the first time, seeing and experiencing cinematography and what happened for me was a childhood growing up on radio dramas where I saw the pictures in my head… cinematography became for me how I could actualize those pictures on the screen so that’s how I began doing that,” Parsons said.

Although Parsons is from the Y-City, he moved around for over a ten year period and lived in places like Austin, TX and Los Angeles. He is much more than a successful career man now married with four children. Parsons is here to stay in Zanesville.

“I can’t imagine raising them anywhere else. There’s something really nice about being in a small town. I don’t feel limited in any way. I mean, I’ve got big cities and I can get to, but, being in the middle of America, makes it easy to get wherever I need to film but the reality for me is my filmmaking, my storytelling, my cinematography, will never be superseded by what it means to be a husband, to be a father, to be a son, to be a brother, to be a friend,” Parsons said.

Parsons hopes the audience will be able to see the new film Adeline sometime in the year 2021. Thanks to Dan for sharing his story and much of the video as well.