Zack Arnold

Zack Arnold (ACE) is an award-winning film & television editor, documentary director, father of 2, as well as the creator of the 'Optimize Yourself' program (optimizeyourself.me) where he helps ambitious creative professionals learn how to more effectively manage their time, energy, and attention so they can maximize their focus and creative and minimize depression and burnout. Zack's professional background includes editing feature films, scripted dramatic television, as well as directing, producing, and editing documentaries. Zack originally grew up in a dairy farming community of 290 people in northern Wisconsin. It is there he learned the value of an honest day's work. He graduated valedictorian from his high school class and went to college at the University of Michigan where he studied film theory & production. He graduated with high honors. He landed his first job interview the night before his graduation ceremony. Two days later he flew to Los Angeles for the interview, got the job, and traveled across the country by car in 2 1/2 days, never looking back. After spending a mere five months as an assistant editor for an award-winning trailer company, he was promoted to editor. The first trailer he edited (Northfork) won a Golden Trailer Award in the Golden Fleece Category - "Best Trailer for the Worst Movie." Shortly after he worked on the theatrical marketing campaigns for such films as The Passion of the Christ, Monster, The Machinist, The Woodsman, Whale Rider, Stander, and many others. After cutting trailers for several years, Zack realized his real passion was for scripted features and dramatic television so he quit his (paying) job, and started cutting independent feature films (for free). His first editing credit (Phat Girlz) was acquired by Fox Searchlight for $4.75 million dollars. He then cut several other independent films while simultaneously working for several different marketing companies where he had the opportunity to work on such projects as The Departed, Live Free or Die Hard, Dreamgirls, Entourage, Run Lola Run, Flyboys, and many others. Zack's big break came shortly after winning several awards for editing the high-octane action web series "The Bannen Way" for Sony Pictures. He was hired onto the hit USA Network series "Burn Notice" where he went from being a "fill in" editor for one episode to being a staff editor for the last four seasons. From there he went on to edit such shows as Glee and Black Box which led him to being an editor on the first two seasons of the show Empire. He recently completed editing season 2 of the hit USA show 'Shooter' and is editing season 1 of the True Crime drama 'Unsolved' for which he also edited the pilot.