Zhe Song’s Visionary Color Work on Eyes in the Trees Sets Him Apart in Hollywood’s Post-Production Elite

Written by Tom White

Within the crowded landscape of Hollywood post-production, one recent credit has turned heads: Eyes in the Trees, a sci-fi thriller starring Anthony Hopkins. As the film’s on-set DIT and dailies colorist, Zhe Song delivered a game-changing solution. The director needed editors to seamlessly toggle between ungraded log footage and color-corrected dailies, across any editing platform. Traditional workflows couldn’t offer that level of flexibility, so Zhe built a custom proxy system that enables one-click switching, regardless of the software.

Drawing on his engineering background, Zhe built a custom dual-proxy system that baked in the creative color decisions while still allowing the team to switch between raw and graded footage with a single click. This elegant workaround (essentially two versions of every clip, one “flat” and one color-corrected) gave the post team unprecedented flexibility.

Colleagues on Eyes in the Trees immediately recognized it as a breakthrough, a testament to Zhe’s technical skill and creative insight. (Indeed, the Hollywood trade press notes Anthony Hopkins has signed on to the film.) Zhe’s ability to solve such a knotty problem on a high-profile set underscored why he is emerging as a go-to colorist among top filmmakers.

Zhe’s resume extends far beyond this one film. A Chapman University graduate in film editing, he’s equally at home with cameras and code. He has cut and graded projects for streaming platforms big and small: features and series distributed on Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Redbox, and Tubi. Major brands have also sought his expertise.

Zhe served as DIT and dailies colorist for a Gin & Juice commercial featuring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, applying his technical expertise to elevate the campaign’s bold visual aesthetic for a global audience. He also played a pivotal role as colorist on a Shiseido commercial starring renowned Chinese actress Tian Jing (Kong: Skull Island, Pacific Rim: Uprising), enhancing her on-screen presence while aligning with the brand’s luxury image. Zhe worked as editor and colorist on a series of commercials and online videos with internationally acclaimed actress Maggie Q, shaping narrative flow and delivering a polished, cohesive final look.

He’s also lent his craft to digital-native content: for instance, he colored short vertical series for ReelShort and PocketFM that together have amassed hundreds of millions of views. In every job, Zhe’s reputation for reliability and creativity has led clients, from indie filmmakers to studio producers, to return to him again and again.

Alongside these commercial credits, Zhe’s own short films have racked up critical acclaim. His edits and color grades have been showcased on festival screens around the world, earning numerous awards. Notably, he won the Best Editing award at the LA Shorts Awards and Best Editing at the Global Film Festival Awards in 2018.

Other festival juries have honored his work on short films like Mix It Proper, Qafas, Tinhead, and Victoria, including prizes at the Los Angeles Film Awards and the New York Film Awards (for which he won editing honors in 2021). To date, his projects have screened at more than a hundred festivals worldwide, a testament to their broad appeal and quality.

Zhe’s industry standing is further evidenced by the fact that festival organizers have invited him to serve as a screener and advisor. For example, he has helped judge submissions at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and the Burbank International Film Festival. In short, colleagues and critics alike recognize Zhe as a distinguished craftsman: a filmmaker whose visual storytelling and technical artistry consistently rise to award-winning levels.

What sets Zhe Song apart even more is his knack for innovation behind the scenes. Early in his career, he saw that post-production teams waste hours on tedious tasks, so he began building tools and workflows to streamline the work. One of his colleagues’ staples is a naming convention and proxy-management system he devised, a simple yet powerful scheme that slashes relinking errors and dramatically speeds up the conform process in editorial.

Similarly, when Apple introduced a new cinematic color space for iPhone video, Zhe anticipated the challenge and created a custom “startpoint” color profile for iPhone-shot footage. This profile (essentially a LUT template) jump‑starts the grade for log‑encoded mobile footage, and it has been adopted by multiple post houses in China as a standard practice. These behind-the-scenes contributions may not make headlines, but they demonstrate why directors and editors trust Zhe: he doesn’t just execute assignments, he improves the entire pipeline.

Zhe even translates this know‑how for general audiences; one of his popular Chinese-language tech articles explained how to choose a digital theater for optimal viewing, and it attracted tens of thousands of readers. In all this work, his engineering roots shine through; he studied electronics and image processing in college, giving him unusually deep technical fluency. As Zhe himself observes, that background lets him solve problems (like complex color grading workflows) with more precision than many of his peers.

Another frontier where Zhe is proving visionary is AI filmmaking. He recently worked on Dear "Stranger", a fully AI-assisted short film created by Junie Lau using Google’s new “Flow” video-generation tool. Zhe served as colorist on the project, which premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. Being involved in such a cutting‑edge experiment, and seeing it showcased by Google at I/O and Tribeca, signals that Zhe is both curious about and capable of adapting to the latest cinematic technology.

Zhe’s influence extends beyond individual projects. In 2022, Zhe founded Mars Light Studio, a Los Angeles–area boutique post-production collective. The studio provides creative and technical support to indie filmmakers, reflecting Zhe’s vision of post houses as creative partners. As he puts it, Mars Light isn’t merely a one‑stop shop for editing or color correction; it aims to “make the film great and powerful” by adding experienced creative input, especially in areas like color and storytelling.

Under Zhe’s leadership, Mars Light oversees the full spectrum of image workflow, from on-set DIT and live color grading to post-production creative pipelines and final finishing, ensuring every stage preserves the director’s artistic intent. Colleagues say that having Zhe at the helm adds a unique value: his engineering know‑how means the studio can build custom software tools or workflows when needed, but his film sensibility means those tools always serve the story and the characters.

Taken together, Zhe Song’s achievements paint the picture of an extraordinary talent. He is a rare hybrid: a technical innovator and a visual storyteller. From large-scale Hollywood productions to intimate indie films, his editorial and color work has earned international acclaim. Notably, The Bright Fire, a short film he edited and color-graded, was selected by approximately 20 film festivals worldwide. Whether he’s refining the color of a pivotal scene, streamlining post-production pipelines, or mentoring young directors through Mars Light Studio, Zhe Song’s impact resonates across the global filmmaking community.

Within industry circles, he is increasingly mentioned alongside top colorists and editors, and his unique vision has earned him features on creative media outlets. It’s this combination of innovation, originality, and recognition,  solving complex production puzzles and consistently delivering beautiful imagery, that puts Zhe firmly in the top percentile of his field. For producers and studio executives who rely on the highest professional standards, Zhe Song has already proven himself as an indispensable post-production leader.

Photo Credit:  Zhe Song