Meet Zack Kampf of Los Angeles / OC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zack Kampf.

Hi Zack, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in Houston, Texas with a dream of getting into movies. It was less about the pursuit of acting and more about how much fun it looked to goof around on camera with your friends. In 8th grade I wrote a feature film on loose leaf paper, playing a bunch of comedic roles on a zero dollar budget like the Temu Nutty Professor. We filmed every weekend between the ages of 13 and 16, but shot out of order, which meant my characters would go in and out of puberty at random intervals. This method was so successful that I decided never to act again. I graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in 2011, and the New York Film Academy in 2014, making my move to Los Angeles where I directed dozens of short films which can be found on my YouTube channel “Zack Makes Movies” and wrote an average of 4 feature screenplays per year to hone my craft. After about ten years of that I decided it would be interesting if I started writing GOOD scripts instead of bad ones and that seemed to do the trick. I wrote and directed a found footage feature called “Questions” which should be out by the end of 2026, and have a few other scripts in development now with director Conor Soucy. We just completed our festival run for a horror short titled “The Conduit” and a folk horror feature we shot in Kentucky in February. I’ve also published two novels, “Monsters with Middle Names” (2022) & “Blood Orange” (2025) which can both be found on Amazon!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road has been about as smooth as a cactus. I struggled from 2014-2019 to get my first real feature film off the ground and finally received funding in January of 2020. You can probably guess what happened next. After getting shut down by Covid, I decided to try to make a multi-genre anthology film that could be shot as a series of shorts. In 2022 we made a 15 minute horror western which I released on YouTube as “Crow’s Creek” (available on the Zack Makes Movies channel) and in 2023 shot a 20 minute comedic section which takes place in a haunted house on Christmas (also available on the channel). The feature fell through once the budget ballooned and I decided to settle on releasing these two shorts as proof of concept for the larger project down the road, however, in shooting this second section, I realized one of the actors was perfect for the solo lead role in what was coincidentally the cheapest script I ever wrote. We dropped everything, moved the funding over to this smaller project, and shot a found footage horror mystery called “Questions” which follows a hiker who disappeared in the Nevada desert. Over the years I’ve worked many jobs outside of the industry to pay my bills while trying to break into Hollywood, but ultimately have found that it’s a necessary part of the process.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a screenwriter primarily. I’d already written 5 full length films by the time I got out of high school and am up to about 60 now. All genres, but I’ve begun to specialize in horror over the last few years both because they tend to sell more easily than other genres, and because I have a lot of fun writing them. I find that the main thing that sets me apart from other writers, other than the ability to talk to women, is a sense of humor. Give me a sentence and I can make it funnier. I’m available for script punch ups.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Patience, persistence, networking. That’s the key.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zack2thafuture/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@zack2thafuture
• Other: https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Middle-Names-Zack-Kampf-ebook/dp/B0BPTNWB3W/