Time Magazine spotlights student mashup

Seldom does a high school student pursue a passion to the best of their ability and garner a national spotlight. Clark Zhu, ’17, video journalist on The Feather shows passion in his work at school and in his extracurricular activities.

For the past five months, he devoted his time to creating a mashup of over 260 movie trailers. Some editing sessions lasted him over 20 hours on the weekends. His 2016 video gave tribute to multiple genres, including action, comedy, and horror movies that premiered throughout the entirety of the year.

Over the last few years, his movie pictures mashup videos have attracted the attention of major entertainment outlets, including Time Magazine.

“It is an honor to be listed in Time Magazine because Time is a respected news magazine,” Zhu said. “I am really surprised the editors decided to put my work on their site. I feel that the internet is so powerful and inclusive today that even high school students like me can get their work recognized.”

His 2016 movie trailer mashup is over seven minutes long but that did not seem to stop major news entertainment outlets from publishing his video. Over 210K views (Dec. 15, 2016) have been logged on  Zhu’s Vimeo feed alone and over 2 million views on other internet sites worldwide.

“This video (Moving Pictures 2016) is definitely my proudest work so far,” Zhu said. “It will be my biggest viewed work soon and I personally think it is my most well-crafted work as well. I think my time as a video editor over the year and on The Feather helped me to improve my skills.”  

In his first year of The Feather, Zhu joined the video jounalism team. He was given the job to create the entirety of the campus junior high and high school announcements, titled FC Underground, for each week. He also helps with anything his fellow video journalists need a hand on, whether it be editing or brainstorming ideas. Zhu believes that his work on The Feather has improved him as a video producer.

Editing trailers has become a tradition for him, and he has been making end-of-the year movie trailer mashups since 2012. His Moving Pictures 2015 – Movie Trailers Mashup from last year is still available to watch. In comparison, Zhu’s 2015 mashup only received nearly 3,000 views on his Vimeo feed.

After posting this year’s tribute to many great movies, Zhu received the attention of multiple film websites, including a feature in Time Magazine’s online entertainment section, Entertainment Weekly, and Movies.com. Before this, he was featured for one of his older videos.

“I am also proud of the retrospective video I cut for Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 2. At this moment, it is my biggest viewed work and it was praised and reposted by Stan Lee, the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics, also the creator of Spiderman, Iron Man and thousands of iconic comic figures.”  

When he is not spending time editing or at school, Zhu spends time with his aunt and uncle, who both live in America, while his parents and younger brother live in his hometown of Xi’an, China. After attending a school similar to Clovis North, Zhu finds many things about Fresno Christian that he enjoys.

“I have met some really wonderful people here,” Zhu said. “It is also a small school so I feel like everyone can get to know each other (unlike my old school, which has almost a thousand students in one class.) I also like the schedule that FC has, because it offers me a great deal of free time that I can use for my own things like editing, watching movies and such.”

Previous video productions teacher Evan Christensen, has worked alongside Clark and respects his driven personality to the art of video. Over the years, he has seen growth in Clark and his video career aspirations.

“Clark’s passion for cinema is really evident if you spend even a few minutes with him,” Christensen said. “He has a broad interest in all kinds of movies from art house to mainstream, and from all parts of the globe. He is very thoughtful and observant about what he watches, and he has a strong innate sensibility about works and what doesn’t work.

“The level of effort he applies to his work demonstrates his passion and maturity,” Christensen continued. “He spends a lot of time and effort on pre-production and preparation for his projects, which enables him to move more efficiently through the production or editing process. The biggest way I’ve seen him grow in the last year is that he’s starting to find his own voice as a creator. It’s very cool to see him dream up a story and follow through to it’s realization.”

Other websites Zhu has been featured on include Yahoo, First Showing, Film School Rejects, Neatorama, and UPROXX.

To read another article check out, Second chance at community.

This author can be reached on Twitter: @julz_lozano