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Posted October 9, 2007


St. Norbert students' film spoofing Facebook to premiere tonight By Thomas Rozwadowski
trozwado@greenbaypressgazette.com

If you’re not on the roll call for Zach Parmeter’s movie, “Zach Wars: The Facebook Pokes,” well, you must not be in the know at St. Norbert College.

More than 70 students on the De Pere campus appear in Parmeter’s 50-minute amateur film, a “Star Wars meets Rocky meets Zoolander” spoof about the drama Facebook causes. Oh, and if you need to have Facebook explained to you, we hope that cave you’ve been living in these past few years is comfy.

“I kept thinking of a movie in my head and came up with a script and a plot, so I thought I should actually be ambitious about it,” said Parmeter, 20, a business major. “I thought it would be even better to incorporate the whole St. Norbert community, so everything was shot here. And for casting, I took kids from different social groups, so a lot of people actually didn’t know each other before shooting.”

Parmeter and Peter Romenesko, 20, also a business major, did the heavy lifting on “Zach Wars,” which they created in their spare time during the last nine months. Emily Schwanke, 19, of Appleton, also stars.

The drama caused by deleting someone on Facebook, a popular social networking site, “catalyzes the whole movie, but it isn’t about Facebook. It’s about a Facebook event which creates other events,” Parmeter said.

First-time filmmaking also taught the Wisconsin Rapids native about “handling other people, managing time and working towards a common goal.” Though it wasn’t his intention at the start, he now has designs on submitting the film to festivals and finding a way to give it bigger play.

“If someone watches this, they’ll probably think we’re all film majors and into acting,” Parmeter said. “But that wasn’t actually the case.”

The movie premieres tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the St. Norbert Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public.

More information

For more information, visit www.zachwars.com.