Clark Zhu is an award-winning movie trailer editor who all the big networks and studios go to for their movie trailer editing needs!
Here in New York, HBO and Peacock specifically have used Clark’s skills to bring to life their motion pictures and shows to entice audiences to watch over and over again. From hits like Black Widow, Venom, West Side Story and Free Guy, you have 100% seen Clark’s work.
We caught up with him to learn more about his love of editing, trade secrets and working with clients here in New York.
- Please describe what trailer editing is exactly and your job?
Trailer editing is about taking a movie or a show, and selecting the best parts, particularly the part where the audience will be excited about, and tease them within a very short amount of time, between 3 minutes to 15 seconds.
- What type of clients do you work with here in New York?
I work with almost all major studios and streaming companies across the US, such as Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, Netflix, etc. The New York clients I work with specifically are HBO and Peacock.
- What motivated you to want to get into trailer editing?
Trailer editing has always been a dream of mine ever since I was a kid. When I saw the teaser for Marvel Studios’ The Avengers back in 2012, I always remembered that spectacular experience, even though it was less than two minutes. That teaser really understood what tease meant and left me wanting so much more after watching. Ever since I fell in love with the art form of trailers and wanted to edit them for a living in the future.
- What main advice would you give to others who want to get into editing trailers?
Watch as many trailers as you can and always keep practicing editing, never give up. The task of crafting a trailer may seem daunting at first but you get better the more you cut.
- What trends in your industry do you see happening in the near future?
I think how a theatrical movie campaign will be advertised in the future will be very different. Traditionally, a blockbuster campaign would have a handful of trailers and a massive amount of TV Spots. In the future, I think the campaign will rely heavily on more digital work, for instance the spots that go live on social media, instead of TV. As technology advances, more and more audience’s attention is spent on social media instead of traditional television programming. Therefore I think digital spots will be the future trend of my industry.
- Tell us a behind the scenes secret of trailer editing?
For traditional feature editing, an editor’s process would be cutting the picture together, then adding in the music and sound effects. But for trailers, it’s the complete opposite. Trailer editors tend to build out the musical structure, and the story structure (dialogue, so mostly audio as well) of a cut first to figure out the pacing, and then add in the sound effects, and picture editing will be the last step and most of the time – the quickest step in the entire process.
