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Local entrepreneur part of documentary

Marshall County native brings technological skills to cinema.

Dannen

Not all contributors in cinema are shown on screen, in fact, many are behind the scenes that the audience never sees. Marshall County native Zach Dannen is one of those people, either behind a camera, editing a video clip or getting footage with his drone.

A national documentary, “Project XQ,” was recently made featuring high school students across the country. It was formed to find ways in which high schools could innovate themselves by preparing students more for college and the real world.

When Moxie Films, the production company of the documentary, was in the state of Iowa, they reached out to Dannen to assist with various tasks.

“I was contacted through my network,” Dannen said. “I was a camera operator and was named a production assistant.”

While he didn’t travel the country with Moxie, Dannen was hired as a free-lancer to travel around the state. He brought with him a knowledge of drone piloting — a big contribution to the film, after only receiving his official drone license five or six months ago.

Dannen devotes some of his time doing free-lance projects, but none have compared to working with Moxie Films and alongside the project’s documentary director, Lee Hirsch.

“They can both be big future clients and help my networking,” Dannen said. “Nonetheless it shows I posses the experience needed to fly drones professionally.

“It’ll open doors for me.”

Much of Dannen’s time is spent working on projects for his own company, Central Media Designs. Shortly after receiving a college cinema degree, Dannen and a friend partnered to form the company.

He and his friends began to make short films in high school, reinforcing his choice to pursue a media-related occupation. After graduating, Dannen established he wanted to work for himself, while freelancing on the side.

Like any new company to a big industry, networking was a way to get themselves known. They turned to charity work to give back and meet potential future clients. A small client list began and the more they sought out work, the larger their network became.

“Currently we’re working a fairly large project for the National Disability Institute,” Dannen said. “We’ve been traveling the country making the documentary and will be in Washington, D.C. next month.”

Some other projects include a shorter video for Walk MS Des Moines, working with the National MS Society for the past three years.

Dannen is hoping that the next five to 10 years will bring expansion and full feature documentaries to his company. Production value plays a big part in gaining more clients, along with extensive networking.

“Usually I’m operating two camera’s, lights and audio all at once,” Dannen said. “I can also edit and add animation.”

Central Media Designs could be found on the app market soon, with the team reaching out to a larger audience. Their work can be found at http://www.centralmediadesigns.com/#/home.

Dannen showcases some of his personal work at http://www.zachdannen.com/ including Dannen Drone Services.

“We want to be able to tackle anything and everything media,” Dannen said.

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Contact Mike Burvee at (641)753-6611 or mburvee@timesrepublican.com

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