Image Commercially Licensed From: Unsplash
If Beef History is a success that can be attributed to the wide range of topics it covers, the immense popularity Chosen has produced comes from the incredible depth in which it digs into the Cleveland Cavaliers team. The three-episode documentary launched by Secret Base examines the team’s 52-year journey till the 2016 championship. The visual design and editing techniques demonstrated by Jiazhen Zhang, the Senior Video Editor at SB Nation, impressed countless fans and gained millions of views on the Internet, bringing Zhang tremendous success in his own career path.
After the trailer of Chosen was released prior to the premiere of the actual episodes, the fans were already more than thrilled and could not wait to view the story.
“Chosen is a 2-hour long documentary presented in three episodes that chronicles the detailed history of Cleveland Cavaliers’ rise and fall from the mid-50s till their 2016 championship against the mighty Golden State Warriors,” Zhang shares, “We were trying to bridge the gap and fill in the holes for the fans who were unsure what the team went through to get to this point and what it meant for the city of Cleveland. And I think the millions of views it generated was a testament to our quality of visual storytelling.”
This was not Zhang’s first time introducing fabulous stories to the subscribers. The way he is dedicated to his career has driven Zhang to strictly follow his video production schedule with great responsibility and pleasure. Knowing how important this is to the fans, Zhang puts in an exorbitant amount of effort in post-production to ensure that the videos he publishes are top-notch.The hard work Zhang continuously put in in his video-editing and production career eventually paid off by not only achieving millions of views and subscribers, but also by winning lots of influential awards. For example, the new series Prism that discusses the life of Kevin Barnett before his legendary performance in NBA, has won NYX Marcom Award Grand Winner in both Editing and Sports Categories.
“Prism is a series that aims to change the stereotypical public perception of iconic athletes and sports personalities, in an effort to better understand the person, where that perception came from, and the aspects of their history people tend to overlook,” Zhang added, “Before Kevin Garnett became a Hall of Famer, he had a very difficult journey to superstardom, which was often forgotten. After Prism, people get to really comprehend his journey and have more respect for his bravery, resilience as well as his toughness. That is the KG I wanted to portray.”\Additionally, Zhang takes great pride in being selected as one of the members on the judging panel of the 2022 Sports Emmys Awards. As part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry, the Sports Emmys recognizes and highlights the excellence in American sports television programming, including sports-related series, live coverage of sporting events, and best sports announcers. This is one of the five awards Zhang earned in judging. And each experience has made Zhang more grateful.
“Judging others’ works has truly been a humbling experience as I draw a lot of my inspirations from the outstanding works of others,” Zhang shares, “I also learned a lot from my fellow judges, as each of them brought a lot of unique ideas that I had never thought about to the table. They were all very fascinating and I’m eternally thankful for all the lessons they taught me as well as the ideas they inspired me with and the passion they blessed me with.”
