Park City High School graduate Derrick Dymalski has been busy composing a musical resume that includes writing scores for short films and commercials.
His latest entry is his first feature film, “The Hitchhiker Effect,” which premiered Oct. 28 on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Google TV.
The award-winning film, written and directed by former Deseret News reporter Zack Van Eyck, is a dramedy that follows a conspiracy theorist, played by Michael Beardsley, whose life is invaded by paranormal activity after he visits a site known for otherworldly events.
“Michael, who plays the lead role of UFO researcher Alan Thomas, is a beleaguered conspiracy theorist who struggles to understand the reality of paranormal events that begin when his eccentric neighbors drop by and refuse to leave,” Van Eyck said. “The film is a wonderful mystery.”
Dymaski joined the crew in 2023 when Van Eyck began filming.
“Reading the script, I had a certain interpretation of the film,” Dymalski said. “At first I didn’t understand the comedy element. I thought it was a drama, but seeing the actors on screen in a rough cut, it looked more like a suspenseful, sci-fi film with comedy. So, I figured out how to keep the sci-fi suspense while adding humor elements.”
“The Hitchhiker Effect” had gone through many adjustments throughout production, according to Van Eyck.
“We wrote this originally as a comedy for a contest, We Make Movies, which is a collective in Hollywood where we would bring in our own scripts and read them,” Van Eyck said. “We were rejected.”
Van Eyck and Beardsley decided to make the film anyway and tapped into the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ Microbudget program.
“If you can shoot a film for under $20,000, you can use union actors and pay under scale,” Van Eyck said. “We made the film for $19,555, just under the limit.”
The script was originally 79 pages long, and Van Eyck decided to shoot it in six 12-hour days.
“Sara Bravo, who is my cinematographer, said that was crazy, so I had to cut 10 pages,” he said. “When I did that, Michael and I no longer felt it was a comedy. So we called it a drama.”
But they changed their minds after its premiere screening.
“When Michael and I saw it as the premiere, everyone laughed, and Michael said,’We have to call it a comedy so people will know it’s OK to laugh,’” Van Eyck said.
UFOs and paranormal activity is a passion for Van Eyck, who covered such phenomena while working at a couple of newspapers, including the Deseret News, in the 1990s.
“I had some experience writing about cattle mutilations and UFO sightings for a newspaper in Santa Fe, New Mexico,” he said. “There was a whole slab of time there between 1993 and 1994 where ranchers were losing cattle and seeing lights come down from the sky, just awful stuff.”
Van Eyck mentioned that coverage during a job interview with the Deseret News in 1994.
“I told them if they needed anyone to cover UFOs, I’m sure there is stuff that’s happening in Utah,” he said. “Two years later after they hired me, the film ‘Independence Day’ came out, and they asked for a UFO story.”
Van Eyck had heard about Skinwalker Ranch, which is located in the basin southeast of Ballard, Utah, which has a reputation of being the site of a string of paranormal activities, including UFO sightings.
“I befriended a woman named Mildred Beasley, and she was a great source and told me about ‘The Utah UFO Display: A Scientist’s Report’ book by Frank B. Salisbury and Joseph Junior Hicks, which came out in 1975,” he said. “There were 400 sightings in the book, and seven of them involved people who had seen a being on the ground or in the window of a craft.”
Hicks connected Van Eyck with the ranch.
“Junior got me in contact with a lot of people who had experienced paranormal stuff, but a lot of the information I got was old,” he said. “So, I asked him if there was anything current, and that’s when he referred me to the owners of the ranch.”
Van Eyck began screenwriting in 1998 while sitting at a kitchen table in Murray.
“At that time, the newspaper I worked at stopped paying overtime, and I needed to make more money,” he said.
Dymalski, who graduated Park City High School in 2013 and went on to earn a degree in studio music and jazz from the University of Miami, had known Van Eyck for years, before he was asked to score “The Hitchhiker Effect.”
Van Eyck had worked with Dymalski’s mother, Stacy, an author and filmmaker who is now a stand-up comic in Los Angeles, in his 2005 film, “Jupiter Landing,” which featured a score composed by another Park City-based resident, Mary Beth Maziarz.
“Stacy co-wrote the script and directed the film and edited it,” Van Eyck said.
Another family member, Dymalski’s father, George, also helped edit the film.
“My dad had known Zack because they played together in a Ramones cover band,” Dymaski said.
“Jupiter Landing” made its world premiere in Park City in January 2006 at the now-defunct Park City Music Film Festival and won an award for music, according to Van Eyck.
“So, when I thought about the music for ‘The Hitchhiker Effect,’ I thought of the Dymaskis,” he said. “And Derrick did a great job.”
Van Eyck gave Dymalski a list of time codes and places where he wanted music but gave the composer free reign.
“I followed Zack’s direction, and he made it easy to write the music,” Dymalski said. “I got into a flow, which was nice because, for longform film, there was a lot more creation that needed to happen. I think I took about two months to finish the soundtrack.”
Dymalski produced a lot of music, Van Eyck said.
“Ben Weingartner, who was our boom operator, did all of our post-production work with sound, so we gave him everything Derrick produced, and he figured out where to put it,” he said.
During the filmmaking process Dymalski and Van Eyck discussed the possibility of releasing the soundtrack.
“I’ve been telling Derrick since we shot the film in 2023 that it would be great if he released a soundtrack after we released the film, because we didn’t pay him very much,” Van Eyck said with a laugh. “So, anything he would make from the soundtrack would be all his.”
Dymaski plans to release the soundtrack in mid- to late November.
“It will be on all major streaming platforms,” he said.
Van Eyck is proud of the “The Hitchhiker Effect,” which won Best Dramedy Feature at the 2025 Bare Bones International Film and Music Festival.
“If this is the only film I ever make, I will be very happy because it turned out very well,” he said.