In this day and age, we all need a bit of magic. Forward-thinking Zach King (@zachking) started his YouTube channel 12 years ago, Vine 7 years ago, and today is the 3 most followed TikToker. 

With humble beginnings, Zach started by offering tutorials using Final Cut Pro, a means to help put himself through college. The Zack we have all come to know and love obviously made use of these amazing talents. 

By combining his love of cinematography, editing, and illusion, he’s created some of the coolest videos we’ve ever seen. More amazingly, they all run a spellbinding SIX SECONDS long!

Nine years ago, the @FinalCutKing YouTube Channel hit a breakthrough with Jedi Kittens, a viral video whose name says it all. The video has been viewed over 20 MILLION times today and prompted several spinoffs. 

AbracaTikTok!

TikTok allowed Zach to raise his game even more. With the post of his first TikTok video, @zachking quickly became the third most followed creator on the platform. And last December, he won the distinction of having the most viewed TikTok video with 2.1 billion views. Ironically, his magic went magical in this viral piece of Zach riding a broomstick!

Trade Secrets

While a magician never reveals all his secrets, Zach definitely shares enough to entrance us. His love of magic and filmmaking seeks to encourage his followers to replicate and form original content of their own and share it with the world.

@FinalCutKing hosts monthly Magic of the Month videos, (watch his latest here). This monthly contest awards its participants and winners with some great sponsored prizes and celebrates his followers’ accomplishments. His followers that participate here often do some of the same tricks Zach does and some create their own tricks. In either case, Zach happily critiques and admires all the effort they put into their work.

Technically Speaking…

There are of course the technical aspects of Zach’s work that help him create the enticing magic shorts that we all crave. Since he went to school for this type of work and therefore runs some pretty intricate and expensive software, it’s expected that the post-production on his videos would be more than the average Joe could do. 

Yet, many people replicate his brand of magic in really cool ways, so how do they do it? They use techniques that are fairly simple to learn through software such as Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. Through the use of creative cuts, great timing, and a lot of patience, even you can create magic like @FinalCutKing.

Smoke and Mirrors

Like any good magician, a staple of their work comes in the form of mirror tricks. In one of his most recent tricks, Zach creates an entire room that mirrors each other – one in colour, and one in black and white. With the use of a mirror between the two “rooms,” he can create the illusion of a room changing from colour to black and white. This cool video can be found here.

If You Build It…

            Teamwork makes the magic work, Zach may say. As such, he has a great team to help produce these micro-videos, most of which take hours to days to actually produce. In a great deal of his most recent and more technically advanced work, as seen above, his team will create whole rooms and sets to manufacture the magic.

The King of Digital Sleight of Hand

            Zach has dubbed what he does as “digital sleight of hand.” Since magic isn’t his original forte, his filmmaking skills were marketed in a very unique way with the common use of what’s known as jump-cuts in movie making. Luckily, Zach has always had a love of magic, so he was able to mix his two passions in his digital cauldron and create the magic we are all fascinated by.

           A little shake of the camera also helps hide some of the jump-cuts. It gives the look and feel of his videos authenticity and reality. He also helps his videos achieve a great finished look with some cool animation effects in post-production. 

But Wait! There’s More!

There are many non-technical ways that he has been able to share his magic throughout social media. Zach started off trying to put himself through college by creating some tutorials on how to use the software that today’s filmmakers can use in the comfort of their own homes. He knew he needed a niche though, something that would set him apart.

Enter his love of magic. To properly tell, he had to introduce show – and a pretty effective method was to perform his “digital sleight of hand” to teach his viewers how the post-production process works with this software.

Knowledge is Power

            Knowing what is trending in today’s world of social media is what will set any creator apart, and Zach has his finger on that pulse for sure. Star Wars has always been popular, regardless of being a sci-fi nerd or not. Zach knew this and capitalised on it with his Jedi Kitten video series.

           Zach also knows that today’s culture is all about knowing the man behind the magic, too. He is graciously transparent about his love of his family, even creating the magic with the help of his wife and kids for us all to oooooh and aaaaaah at.

Location, Location, Location!

            We all know that background matters. We want to see things that please the eye when we are perusing our TikTok FYPs. So does Zach – he picks locations and creates sets that are appealing and relatable. He follows that same recipe for the content he creates as well. 

           He often incorporates into his tricks the people and places in the background. This helps create a distraction from the illusion he is laying out in front of our very eyes. In one of his most recent clips, look at how he uses the manhole in the background for his trick!

The magic that is @zachking makes him mesmerizing for us to watch!