In various embodiments, a clip application computes a set of appearance values for an appearance metric based on shot sequences associated with a media content item. Each appearance value in the set of appearance values indicates a prevalence of a first character in a different shot sequence associated with the media content item. The clip application then performs one or more clustering operations on the shot sequences based on the set of appearance values to generate a first shot cluster. Subsequently, the clip application generates a clip for the media content item based on the first shot cluster. The clip application transmits the clip to an endpoint device for display. Advantageously, relative to primarily manual approaches, the clip application can more efficiently and reliably generate clips for media content items.