Zach King: Bringing Magic to Life and Keeping Up With the Trends
We got the chance to have a little chat with Zach King about his show at the On Off Festival and how to stay relevant in the industry.
Words by Ghina Sabrina
A filmmaker, YouTube personality and a Vine star, Zach King became known for his “magic vines” where he digitally edited videos to look as if he’s doing magic tricks in different situations. Before consistently producing videos he called as “digital sleight of hand”, he was known as FinalCutKing where he offered training and tips about using Final Cut Pro as well as producing tutorial videos on YouTube and his own website. Being one of the earliest creator with a creative yet particular type of content, which he fused with the ever-evolving features of social media and technology, King has become a creator whose style of filmmaking has been well-regarded in the content creator industry.
It seems that now a lot of other creators has similar styles in terms of content. How do you evolve from your earlier styles in order to stay fresh?
There is this kind of trend that everyone does on the internet, but I think you also have to find your own voice and stay true to your own stories that you’re telling, not necessarily blend in, otherwise you’re going to get lost in going of the content trend.
Since what you’re doing involves social media and technology and it’s always evolving. How do you always keep up?
When a new platform comes out, I usually jumped on it and tried it out for 30 days. If it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be something that I’m going to enjoy, or doesn’t have an audience behind it then I’m going to drop it and continue what I’ve been doing. But I’ve always been looking for new platforms to see what’s out there. I think it’s really interesting to see when at large, millions of people start using a new platform like musical.ly, I think even though it’s not the type of content I like making, it’s interesting to watch why it’s happening.
Moving on to your current successes, you recently came out with a children’s book. What opted you want to come out with a children’s book?
In the book, it’s about Zach, he’s in middle school and he’s part of a magic family although he can’t figure out his magical powers yet. For me, the usage of augmented reality was a way to actually bring the magic to life that I had known for, so people would scan it with the app and they’ll be like “wow!” and have that kind of reaction that you have when you see a magician.
What can we expect for your appearance at the first On/Off Festival, are you doing something special?
We’re going to do a little trick with the audience, and show them behind the scenes of our magic and how we create what I do.
So magic, film and children’s books. What’s next for Zach King?
I’ve always wanted to tell longer stories, I came from the grow old wanting to do feature films so eventually I wanted to get down to that. Or maybe TV Shows. Just longer form content is my goal. I would love to see also if I could help other creators grow with their passion as well.