Tag: film major

Hwasa’s “Maria” – A Brief Intensive on Shot Composition

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With quarantine going on and not a lot for me to do but do commissions and watch K-Pop videos on repeat, I’ve had time to reconnect K-Pop as a whole. Three recent releases in particular connected with me more than others. One was Hwasa’s “Maria”, another was Sunmi’s “pporappippam”, and the last one was Dreamcatcher’s “R.o.S.E. Blue”. This isn’t a slight at other K-Pop releases that have come out recently, these were just the ones that clicked with something in me personally. Other songs will click with other people on the same level. But this is my blog, so I want to take some time to talk about these in full.

I’ve been a big fan of MAMAMOO’s since 2016, so you can bet I’ve been playing Hwasa’s “Maria” nonstop virtually since it came out. Judging from the fact that the video got 12 million views in less than three weeks, I’m not the only one. The song is an absolute bop, with powerful lyrics and a great melody. Hwasa’s voice and the Latin beat add a dimension of acoustic authenticity to the synthetic sounds within the song. I will jam out to it when I’m doing literally anything. It’s that good.

But as good as the song is, the video itself hearkens to something deep within me. The lyrics of the song are exemplified by visual cues and dynamic scenes. The colors strike a balance between green and red, warm and cold, vibrant and muted. It’s an elegant affair, yet it has elements of grit. There’s florescents and fire for lighting, flickering, even palpating. And, of course, the iconography – the dinner scene, the funeral, the crown, the asylum, the scissors. It’s truly a masterwork.

However, there’s one specific thing about the video I want to review for how brilliant it is, and it’s the shot composition. The framing of the shots themselves is part of why the video works so well. I will break it down into three categories: Dynamic Shots, Negative Space, and Set Design.

DYNAMIC SHOTS

This is an easy one to discuss: there is not a single moment in the video with static framing. The camera is never set on a tripod, shots that would normally be still are done via handheld. The movement may be slow, but it is always – always – moving. This injects energy into every scene, because you always feel like you’re moving alongside Hwasa. Whether or not the camera is pointed at her, you experience everything with her.

In a music video, this is especially important, because the idol is in fact the star of the whole thing. We have to feel engaged with her personally, or else we lose interest once the song is over. But keeping the camera alongside an interesting subject keeps the viewer on their toes and eager to continue watching.

NEGATIVE SPACE

According to Lights Film School, negative space controls the color palette of a shot, simplifies the shot, adds depth, and isolates the audience’s attention. The negative space in “Maria” accomplishes exactly that. Looking at the iconic lighter shot, the background is shrouded in darkness, minus a soft light on Hwasa’s face. Then, hands carrying lighters enter the shot, giving color and illumination via the power of editing.

What makes the shot work is the negative space in the background. You could divide the shot in half – the top half is mostly negative space while the bottom is filled. Hwasa’s face is framed by negative space on either side. The hands all point upwards towards her face, driving the focus towards her. Her hair, eye makeup, and lips are red, while the rest of the shot is gold and black, making sure she’s the focus of your attention.

Negative space isn’t always an expanse, though. It’s emptiness, and that can be on a stage as well. And the sets are sparsely populated. Hwasa is often isolated in a frame, with nothing behind her. The asylum set is particularly empty most of the time, and the white, glossy tiles give a feeling of sterility. When offset by naturalistic imagery like rose petals and flames, it establishes a range of emotions that Hwasa is trying to get you to experience.

However, there is also a lack of negative space in many scenes. A lot of shots have monitors or other actors, filling the space. Other shots are extremely close to Hwasa, putting her in claustrophobic framing. This parallels the lyrics about dealing with adversity and loneliness, even in (and especially in) her position as an idol.

SET DESIGN

By far, the most important part of the shot composition is the set design. The set design is what drives the attention towards Hwasa – no matter the scenario, it can’t overwhelm her. In this music video, however, the set design accomplishes the tremendous feat of highlighting Hwasa while still being unique on its own.

While I could go on and on about the asylum and all its monitors, or the beautiful funeral scene with flowers and chairs surrounding Hwasa, or the dinner scene with inedible objects as food, let’s take a different approach. I want to talk geometry. I can hear you scream at me from beyond the screen, “But math isn’t art!” And I am here to tell you no: math and science make up the building blocks of art and life. From Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” explaining the proportions of the human body in geometric terms, to Fibonacci’s “Golden spiral” representing the logarithmic spirals we find in the natural world, to even the patterns you might find in feathers on a wing or leaves on a tree.

The sets in Hwasa’s video are emblematic of various geometric design principles. According to Debbie O’Connor of White River Design in Australia, squares, triangles, and circles give off very specific emotions. To paraphrase, squares represent stability, triangles represent aggression and metaphysical direction, and circles represent unity and harmony. Any of these qualities can be framed in a positive or negative light (stability/monotony, aggression/power, unity/homogeneity) but the point is they can accomplish powerful things as principles of design.

One thing I noticed about Hwasa’s video is that most of the sets, save one, are not shaped as a typical rectangle. Instead, they are shaped as either a very sharp triangle or a circle/oval. There are two prominently featured sets an asylum set and a triangular bathroom. The circle loops all attention towards Hwasa via the curves in the walls and her placement on screen. The triangle creates leading lines that directly point towards Hwasa, making her the center of attention always. Even the hallway subset is mismatched and angular – in spite of the rectangular doorways, the shape of the hallways resembles an abstract polygon as opposed to a simple rectangle.

Keep the mission of the video in mind – it’s meant to communicate how Hwasa deals with adversity and loneliness. In nearly every shot, Hwasa is either center stage or completely alone and isolated. Circles, while generally associated with positive qualities, can be put in a negative context. In Westworld, (Season 2, Episode 4) director Lisa Joy put a character in a circular room filled with spherical objects to show the central character’s monotonous life and spiral into insanity.

In “Maria”, the same effect is achieved. The circle room is an asylum setting – sterile and pure. By contrast, the set with the Mediterranean archways is palatial, with a chandelier. We are meant to view the set as regal, just as we are meant to view idols as royalty (note the crown of nails that appears in the video.) It also has a cathedral-like quality (again, note the crown of nails, which might as well be a crown of thorns.)

The triangular bathroom, meanwhile, is also palatial; however, because of the sharp angles, it’s not serene, it’s unnerving. Hwasa’s hair is matted from the bathtub – which is an unnatural shade of white – and her makeup is smudged. She’s wearing plastic gloves in a bathtub, or more specifically, an area you’d assume she’d be more vulnerable in. The tile is dirty, and the painted paneling mixed with the wallpaper is borderline chaotic. She’s surrounded by velvet rope, like a movie theater, almost like this private place is only here for her to be put on display.

The combination of these elements perfectly showcases the mission of the video. Hwasa lays her psyche bare for us. She wants us to feel the intense emotions that come with her fame: the chaos, the loneliness, the beauty, the pain.

That is, until the end.

There is only one shot in the entire music video that has a rectangular composition. Only one shot where the set pieces form a rectangular frame. Only one shot where the composition is meant to indicate stability, strength, and comfort.

It’s the shot where her bandmates from MAMAMOO come to comfort her.

While “Maria” deals with heavy concepts, it doesn’t end in sadness or misery, but in joy. It ends in a serene composition, where her friends are framed visually by a brightly lit environment. It communicates to us that in spite of the trials that Hwasa faces, she’s surrounded by people who love her. It doesn’t erase the burdens, but it provides reprieve.

When making a movie or analyzing a movie, you have to keep in mind how pieces play into a greater whole. If there is a theme central to a story, every shot should enhance that theme, whether to exemplify or subvert it. “Maria” accomplishes this in every possible way. The whole of Hwasa’s work is, needless to say, positively breathtaking. The rawness, the vulnerability, and the creativity – these are the pieces that make up the future of K-Pop.

The Neverland Project – Episode 5 “Delirium” Breakdown

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Trigger warning: this episode talks about heavy themes, including suicide and abuse. If you are in need of immediate help, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

The fifth episode of my fan series Neverland is finally done. I wanted to get into some of the side plots at this stage, plots I’d hinted about for a while but hadn’t actually covered in detail. In this case, it was Jungkook and Suga’s story – it’s one of the few stories that we actually get detailed scenes of, and can form a narrative around.

It’s pretty straightforward what happens between the two of them as far as the videos are concerned; however, there are so many scenes that are scattered around that refer to the plot, it was hard to make decisions about them. I ended up having to cut a shot I desperately wanted to keep, one that was at the end of the Run MV. But that’s what editing is about, trying to decide what best suits your story.

The title of the episode, “Delirium”, comes from a dystopian book series of the same name. The series, written by Lauren Oliver, was about a world in the not too distant future where love is deemed dangerous and illegal. To prevent people from falling in love, or even experience parental or friendly love, a procedure is done to get rid of the capacity for those emotions. It’s all about the beauty and danger of love, and it’s an excellent read if you have a chance. Back to Neverland, love is the primary theme of the episode – specifically, the risk of pushing people away.

The episode starts with one of the hyper-saturated sequences (so presumably a dream or other version of reality) where Jungkook is on a train. He flashes back to a memory of himself sitting on the floor, seeing the other members partying around him, but when the camera pulls back, no one is there, and the colors are sapped from the world. You may notice, as per usual, Jin is glitching black-and-white, but someone else also seems to be suffering the same affliction…

We then get flashback glimpses of a scene between Jungkook and Suga (indicated by subtle changes in the color grading, as well as Jungkook’s hair because I am unfortunately limited in my editing prowess) where we see just what kind of a relationship they have.

It’s not 100% clear what kind of love Jungkook and Suga have, be it agape or philia or pragma or what have you. Nevertheless, it’s clear that there is love between the two in this story, so when editing I tried to capture that as much as possible. The scene in question is when Suga has been drinking and starts destroying everything in the little apartment they’re in. Jungkook physically tries to hold him back, but Suga pushes him away and into the ground.

Interspersed between these clips is Jungkook walking alone outside, when he accidentally runs into someone. The guy picks a fight wit him, pushing Jungkook around in a very similar fashion to Suga. I want to compliment Jungkook for his acting in the original music video because wow the pain in his face feels so genuine! I was genuinely impressed seeing this in the original “I Need U” music video and I’m impressed to this day.

Anyway, Jungkook eventually collapses on the ground. In the saturated dream sequences, we see him running through a darkened train, which opens out in front of a motel with the name Omelas. (Please see my article on Episode 1 for an explanation of the reference; the short version is that Omelas is a sort of paradise.) As soon as Jungkook runs towards it, we catch a glimpse at reality, where he finds himself looking straight into an oncoming car.

Suga’s story, meanwhile, is very solitary and lonely. He breaks into a music store and plays on a piano, but falters partway. Then he hears a whistle – the same whistle repeatedly associated with Jungkook. He goes to follow it, and sees a coming, so he jumps out of the way. Based on the context clues, this is the same car that Jungkook saw. He runs towards the crash, blood staining the ground, and the music store has been destroyed. He still hears the whistle, but it’s far away and hollow. The flames that engulf the piano turn black and white, while the rest of the world is still in color.

In the final scene, Suga is in bed, playing with his lighter. Eventually he pours gasoline around himself and lights the room on fire, bearing one last pained expression. Meanwhile, Jungkook, in his black-and-white world, puts together a letter and looks ahead, wings spreading in his shadows, and his world starts to turn color again.

In this story, Jungkook and Suga are meant to symbolize innocence and experience, or rather innocence and self-destruction. Jungkook tries to be there for Suga while he becomes violent and self-destructive, and stays that way until the end. He takes beatings, he barely fights back, because he wants to see good in Suga. Suga is on the opposite end – he symbolizes self destruction. Even with Jungkook around, he’s a tornado of conflict, causing havoc wherever he can. The moment Jungkook is gone, he spirals out of control, and can’t handle it. He makes active choices, but they end up causing pain for others and himself.

The relationship between these two characters, from the glimpses we get in the music videos, is like a Shakespearean tragedy. They love each other, but it ends up being painful. One constantly shows his love, but he never gets through to the other, who shows his love too late. The essence of Neverland is meant to be bittersweet, and in this episode, we get the bitter.

K-Drama Special – Blood

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When I was growing up, I watched telenovelas with my mom. It started because my grandmother (her mom) came over when I was fourteen. She doesn’t speak English very well, so we spent our days watching Univision soap operas instead of CBS cop shows for late night entertainment. Our house became quickly addicted, and we spent our days binging Un Refugio para El Amor and Por Ella, Soy Eva.

While I do not aspire to make soap operas, I respect them for their compelling characters and storylines. This is where Korean dramas come in. I started watching Korean dramas around the age of fifteen, when I was getting into K-Pop for the first time. There was this intensity to the experience and while some plot points didn’t make sense to me I still was drawn into this world that had been created for me, the viewer. The heightened emotions of the characters helped with that, because I could see everything they were feeling, and if they were feeling complex emotions, I could see those complex emotions. Say someone was feeling happy and sad at the same time, or happy and angry – I could see that, in full, and understand that character in a different way. This speaks nothing of the production value, which was above and beyond American serial dramas I was watching at the time.

Which brings us to Blood, the 2015 vampire doctor crime romance. I was following the show while it was coming out, and was absolutely engrossed in it. I am a sucker for vampire shows and movies – I admit, without shame, that I was a part of the Twilight craze. So watching Blood and seeing this K-Drama spin on vampires was perfect for me. But as I got older, I realized, for a soap opera, it was surprisingly well written…and I am here to explain why.

Goo Hye-Sun as Rita, a human, and Ahn Jae-Hyun as Ji-Sang, a vampire.

Blood follows the story of Park Ji-Sang, a young man who was born infected with a virus that makes him a vampire. Originally born in America, Ji-Sang was brought as a child to live on Jeju Island, the island just to the southwest of mainland Korea. He lives in complete isolation with his mother, struggling with his abilities and thirst for blood, when he meets Yoo Chae-Eun, a girl on vacation with her family who is mysteriously attacked by wolves. He saves her and decides to dedicate his life to saving others.

Ji-Sang’s mother is mysteriously killed, setting Ji-Sang on a dangerous course. He becomes a surgeon who saves lives in war-torn countries with very little self-preservation and only one friend, Hyun-Woo, who acts like an in house nurse (and comic relief.) He gets a lead about the origins of the vampire virus – and potentially how to cure it – so he begins to work at a cancer hospital. His new subordinate is one Yoo Rita, an outspoken, abrasive surgeon with a lot of baggage about a boy who supposedly saved her as a child…

In a twist absolutely no one saw coming, Rita and Chae-Eun are the same person. What starts out as hatred between Rita and Ji-Sang turns into friendship and then love. However, the main conflict of the show revolves around the supposed cure for vampirism, and the people who want to use the vampire virus to create a cure for all diseases – whatever it takes to get to that point.

From left: Goo Hye-Sun, Ahn Jae-Hyun, and Ji Jin-Hee. I still don’t fully know why there are two of Jae-Hyun.

Blood is, at its core, about ethics. Vampires, much like zombies, are used to show an underlying problem. In this case, the problem is “What matters more, steps taken to solve a problem, or the end result?” There are two factions at play in Blood, those who want a cure for vampires (Ji-Sang and his parents) and those who want to use the virus as a cure (the villain, Lee Jae-Wook, and his host of subordinates.)

Ji-Sang runs lots of tests on himself to minimize outside impact, but in doing so self-isolates from the rest of the world. He takes suppressants for his thirst so that he is not motivated to drink blood, but then when he’s off the medication, his desire comes in full force. He tries to keep his emotions out of his work, but in doing so hurts the feelings of terminally ill patients and their families needlessly. In the end, he does win in finding a cure, but this journey takes away many of the people he loves. Was it worth it to go on this journey if he lost the people who made him happiest?

Jae-Wook, meanwhile, uses unwitting victims, often the poor and terminally ill. His justification for this is that these people will die anyway, why not have the chance at improving their lives? There are a number of reveals about Jae-Wook’s character, particularly that he got into this line of work because he became close to a foster child with cancer, and that child’s foster family rejected her when the treatment became too expensive. The child then threw herself off the hospital rooftop. While Jae-Wook’s actions are beyond reprehensible, we can empathize with him – he simply doesn’t want people to suffer.

These factions consist of vampires, but the human characters all exist in gray areas. Rita is career oriented but also highly emotional, which means she makes may decisions based on her personal biases as opposed to the hard facts. Hyun-Woo is also incredibly emotional (he invents a robot named L.U.U.V.Y. to “give love to people”) and dedicated to Ji-Sang, to the point where he doesn’t have a reason for existing outside of his friend. Rita’s uncle, the chairman of the hospital, has made a number of shady decisions, but he opens a free ward for people who can’t afford insurance. Furthermore, his actions are motivated by self preservation, as he has a life threatening disease.

Ji Jin-hee as Lee Jae-Wook, the villain of the show.

Perhaps the only character who you could argue is purely ethically sound is Jung Ji-Tae, a doctor who works in pathology and becomes an ally to Ji-Sang. Ji-Tae is human and on the sidelines for the first half of the story, simply hanging along the sidelines. The second half of the story he becomes an incredibly important character in the plot, helping Ji-Sang make a number of hard decisions.

However, Ji-Tae is the most important character. He is the grounding character, the one closest to the viewer. Morally, he’s comparatively good, with proper decorum but boundaries that he will not cross emotionally. He is a mentor to Rita’s best friend Soo-Eun, but also learns from Ji-Sang and is willing to admit what he doesn’t know. He is the character who is along for the ride – just as we are along for the ride.

With the exception of Ji-Tae, the characters all put themselves in morally difficult situations. While Ji-Sang and Jae-Wook are obvious, Rita is interesting in this regard – largely because it’s much more subtle. Rita, as I said before, makes many decisions based on personal feelings, be it love or spite. In this way, she’s very similar to Jae-Wook, who makes decisions based on his own personal beliefs. She and Ji-Sang frequently butt heads over how Ji-Sang outright refuses to comfort people, even children. However, her version of comfort could be construed as lying, as she tends to skirt around the truth to minimize the damage. Similarly, Jae-Wook treats information as strictly need-to-know, to make sure he appears as the best possible version of himself to everyone. Rita does much the same – except rather than trying to seem agreeable, she tries to seem strong and unaffected.

Building on that, Rita and Ji-Sang both try to seem unaffected. Both pretend like their trauma doesn’t exist, to the point where it comes out in intense outbursts. They do such a good job of suppressing their feelings that they can’t acknowledge them anymore. In knowing each other, however, they are able to actually recognize their own pain and deal with it appropriately. Without spoiling anything, in the final few episodes of the show, we actually see two characters who have grown considerably in being able to acknowledge their pain. Rita asks Ji-Sang to list things he wants to do before he dies, a symbol of complete trust and honesty. Rita also uses Ji-Sang as emotional support when dirt about her family is revealed.

The show is not just about vampires falling in love with humans, it’s about how far we go for the people we care most about. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? And does “the few” include or exclude us?

Ji-Sang holding Rita in one of the most pivotal scenes of the film.

Melodrama – the essence of the soap opera – is the conduit to a theme in its rawest form. Everything is over the top, but because the world within the story is over the top. And often, the over-the-top reveals complex and powerful emotions. Melodrama does not mean bad, it means heightened.

There’s a lot that can be learned from melodrama, particularly because it cuts to the chase emotionally with its characters. Shying away from melodrama is like shying away from superheroes. There are perfectly justifiable reasons as to why you wouldn’t want to go there, but it’s also just fashionable in the film community to aim for realism/naturalism instead of melodrama or superheroes.

Melodrama does not equal poorly written. Melodrama is a style in of itself. It is very much a difficult balance to master – too much means your characters come across as fake, too little means that your characters come across as flat. But the right amount creates a heightened experience where there is just enough distance from reality that you don’t get torn down by the bitterness of reality, but close enough to reality that you feel immersed in the world they’ve created.

One of my film school professors had us watch The Miracle Worker. The Miracle Worker is a movie about the deaf/blind Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, that was made in 1962. It’s based off a play and uses many of the same actors, which means the reality of the film is incredibly theatrical. In fact, the very first scene quickly devolves into panicked, ear splitting screaming, as Helen’s parents realize that she can’t see or hear.

However, this insane display of emotion creates the universe that we will be taking part in, and for the rest of the film, the acting doesn’t bother us. Because the heightened standard of emotion is set, we actually get to experience the whole movie on its terms. And it makes the ending hit that much harder – starting at such an intense low for Helen’s parents means that the high, the elation of the finale is so much more hard hitting. This put The Miracle Worker on the list of my favorite movies of all time.

From left: Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller

Blood, in turn, follows a similar pattern. The first episode starts with a high stakes surgery in a war zone, and is quickly followed by an action sequence, and then some intense exposition on the part of Ji-Sang. This tells us everything we will need to know for the rest of the show through what this character goes through on his worst days. Furthermore, the exposition ends with Ji-Sang stating that he isn’t human, which establishes his ultimate goal – to become human.

There are a lot of scenes in this that break the illusion of reality – at least, our reality. The world of Blood works because it has clear rules and establishes that everyone feels emotions at 1000%, all the time. And that’s okay! It’s not only part of the charm of the show – it’s what makes the show work. You can’t have a serious version of this show where everyone takes everything with a straight face, or the occasional brooding stare. This isn’t Twilight.

Blood is riveting in how deeply emotional it is, even with vampire rivalry. Its intensity is part of what makes it so lovable, but also so proficient in its ability to tackle different things. It’s not a perfect show, and it’s not for everyone, but if you’re like me and run headfirst into melodrama, then this show will be perfect for you. Don’t just take the melodrama at face value – try to think about what the melodrama accomplishes. With any drama like this, if it resonates in spite of the heightened emotions, try to see if the heightened emotions are why it works. And to the filmmakers and writers out there, never shy away from writing melodrama – it can pay off in the long run!

Goo Hye-Sun as Rita and Ahn Jae-Hyun as Ji-Sang.

Taemin’s “Move” – How to Build a Music Video Around an Artist

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Taemin. The man. The myth. The legend.

Taemin’s one of those idols that’s just mesmerizing. His voice is very smooth, his dancing is very elegant. He constantly is pushing the envelope, trying new things and making his mark on the K-Pop industry forever. He is objectively an excellent performer in pretty much every way.

I love Taemin’s videos because they always go all out. The visuals are always very precise, very meticulous. Whoever directs his videos puts a lot of thought in to them, and it shows. However, there is a consistent overuse fo VFX in the videos, as opposed to practical effects. And while in many cases the videos are excellent with the extra animations, I find them overwhelming on occasion. There’s nothing wrong with a video using special effects to that degree, but it can distract from the performance. Today, I want to talk about one of Taemin’s music videos which has comparatively few special effects – most of the editing being in color grading, filters, and cuts.

I am talking about “Move”, one of Taemin’s releases way back in 2017. The video has no real story, it’s pure aesthetics. The lyrics don’t help shed light on any story either, they’re mostly about a girl who dances seductively. But that’s okay – it’s meant to showcase who Taemin is as a performer. The result is what’s mostly a performance video filmed in Hong Kong, with symbolic elements and a gentle dance beat.

There are three primary sets throughout the video – a street, a bridge at night, and a studio, which has three setups but none so elaborate that I could call them “sets”. The personality of the video comes primarily from the gritty street scenes, where there is trash, posters, and neon lights. The coloration of the street scenes is largely blue tinted, with Taemin’s lips tinted red and his skin tinted gold. Your eyes automatically gravitate towards him in any shot because of this. The bridge scene is largely tinted gold, while the studio scenes use lights to tint the environment the three primary colors to distinguish them from everything else.

This grittiness comes in direct contrast to the clothing Taemin and his backup dancers are wearing. It’s clearly designer clothes, too expensive to be “street”, but it’s trying to emulate a particular casual style. It actually reminds me of G-Dragon’s “Crooked” video, where G-Dragon sports similar sleeveless tops. However, I’d argue that Taemin’s style is more refined – not in terms of quality of clothing, but in how it’s put together.

Nevertheless, Taemin’s clothes separate him from the background. If the environment is dominated by light colors, he’s wearing black, and vice versa. His backup dancers usually wear solid black, with occasional designs. However, if they are wearing designs on their clothes, he is not. They also are all wearing jewelry, and lots of it, while Taemin usually only has a bracelet on. There is of course the scene where they’re in the studio and Taemin has a glittery mask on…I still don’t really know why he has it but I think it’s meant to just showcase his coolness.

In terms of practical effects – which I would argue are the best kind of effects – there is only one major effect. That would be rain. Rain is used throughout the video, and with good reason, too – it makes everything seem more spontaneous. Adding the extra layer of movement adds depth to the world. Suddenly, you can feel the rain on your own skin and hair. Filming in rain is really challenging so I imagine they used a rain machine, but I could be wrong. My classmates have filmed in the rain, and I’ve been on sets in the sleet. (Word of advice: don’t shoot in sleet. Everyone’s miserable.)

Shooting in the rain is not something everyone does because it’s cumbersome. It requires a lot of patience and dedication, as well as a lack of self preservation because shooting in rain can get cold and uncomfortable. The point is it’s very impressive that they shot a good chunk of the video in this setting. The video would not be complete without this touch.

Now for the fun part. The use of VFX is much lighter in Move than it is in other videos, but that’s not to say it’s completely absent. For one thing, the colors are much more intense than they would be naturally – even the outdoor shots come across as theatrical. Then much of the video has a soft, vaporwave style filter over it, while another good chunk of it has full-on TV style glitches. In those situations it feels intense.

The thing is, the video is not reliant on these effects. These are purely done for aesthetic purposes, to give a feeling of a world. They’re not necessary. One only needs to look at the solo version of the video, which features Taemin dancing with his backup dancers but cuts out all the ancillary inserts. In fact, the most important editing in the video is done through strategic cuts or transitions. On occasion, the frame will move slightly within the shot, but always on the beat. The cuts, in turn, are built around the beats and Taemin’s dance. Taemin is always the centerpiece.

There are three moments where there are lots of VFX – however, these three moments are isolated. You have the rain moving backwards, which is just an act of rewinding the video. You have the faces being blotted out, which is mostly just masking the video and putting some cool stuff underneath, and making the mask glitch out. Lastly, there’s the sequence at the end where Taemin’s body seems to fade in and out. I don’t entirely know how they did this but my guess is they keyed out one color, or a range of colors, slowed down the footage below, and added some effects to it. It seems pretty simple, but it’s a hard balance to strike.

As filmmakers, it’s our job to find the emotional core of something, and for “Move”, the core is Taemin himself. Any visual effects are just accessories so that the true gem can shine. This whole video is designed to showcase Taemin as a performer. It’s kept very simple, the camera rarely leaves him. There’s no story, because the video relies on Taemin himself to carry the mood. And that’s a good thing. When you have raw talent like that, you just have to let them do what they do best. Sometime the best directing is no directing at all. Just let the person exist, in their space, as they are.

K-Pop and Sci-Fi – A Complete Deconstruction

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TRIGGER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES THEMES OF DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE.

Science fiction and K-Pop have a long and storied history. From the likes of Lee Jung Hyun’s “Wa” to the stylings of bands like BIGBANG in the early 2010s, science fiction has been used as both a stylistic and a symbolic element in many music videos. This stems from a number of cultural and social contexts that, while prevalent in other countries, are particularly prominent in South Korea. But, what’s fascinating about K-Pop is how varied the aesthetics of the sci-fi are, while still retaining many of the same themes.

For cultural context, it’s pretty easy to see the correlation between dystopian sci-fi and South Korea’s relationship with it’s northern neighbor. Dystopian themes in fiction often are reactionary towards events that are occurring in a certain time period. And South Korea’s been in a dire political situation for over 60 years. Even before that, Korea hasn’t known peace, having to deal with Japanese imperialism long before the conflict with the North. It’s no wonder that there’s always been a large amount of K-Pop videos that deal with dystopia – while I don’t read everything as explicit political commentary about the relationship between the North and South, I do think that it’s stemming from a very real place in the cultural psyche.

Now is when I state the obligatory: this is not a political essay. I have no intent of telling you what you should and shouldn’t believe. Capitalism versus socialism versus libertarianism, that’s not the issue I am putting at stake here. What I am trying to say is that there are certain aspects of the world that contribute to why K-Pop is the way it is, and what its music videos communicate in context. I know many film critics like to bring anything and everything back to politics, but as an artist that has never been my angle. I do think, however, science fiction has inherently political connotations, and therefore I desire to put it in context.

However, there are more layers to K-Pop’s use of sci fi. One is the cultural context of suicide and depression in the country – Korea has the 10th highest overall suicide rate in the world, according to the World Health Organization. Depression is not well treated, and age discrimination as well as socio-economic discrimination largely contribute to this. As a result, you get visual representations of this stress in media. In K-Pop, what we see is a lot of normal people placed into highly emotional and stressful situations, and often times succumbing to whatever situation they’re in. Science fiction, much like horror, takes that to a natural extreme, wherein the circumstance often leads to demise of some sort.

Lastly, there is a particular irony that arises from science fiction used in an idol setting. I have found in my six years of listening to K-Pop that the genre is incredibly self-aware, in spite of its treatment towards idols. The institution knows that it puts these people – often young kids, through horrible processes in order to create an easily accessible product. However, it does so by intimately incorporating us, the fans, into their lives – something which other sects of the music industry haven’t figured out yet. While this does give idols a connection with their fans, which I view as inherently positive, it does put the idols in a perilous position of feeling like their own actions aren’t really their own.

Art imitates life at the best of times. K-Pop, especially in the last ten years, has given us a lens into the lives of idols, both in a positive and negative way. Sci-fi in K-Pop largely orients us in the negative aspects of their lives, but at its best, it orients us in both, and shows us the discrepancy between the two. We get both the elation of glamour and the fear of failure, all in one. When most of the world separates the two, showing elegance as a byproduct of capitalist oppression, K-Pop uses it to communicate something else – the issue of fame.

While K-Pop’s use of sci-fi tends to blend these elements in certain ways, it’s not necessary for videos to use all three at any given time. Let’s look at an example: Brown Eyed Girls’ “Sixth Sense”. This is one of my favorite K-Pop videos, in part because of nostalgia. This was one of the first K-Pop videos I ever saw, when I was fifteen. Brown Eyed Girls was one of the first groups I ever “stanned”. While I do not consider myself a true stan of any group anymore, I have a special place in my heart for Brown Eyed Girls. If I ever met Ga-In in person, I would probably die on the spot from a heart attack, my life’s purpose complete.

Anywho, “Sixth Sense” combines the elements of politics and the idol industry without including the themes of depression and anxiety, at least not overtly. The video mainly revolves around a protest, where an authoritarian regime is gearing up to attack unarmed protesters. These unarmed protesters, in true K-Pop fashion, protest through dance. Peppered through the video are vignettes with each of the four members. Ga-In is sitting in a chair, wearing a military jacket and having her wrists bound. Narsha is in a pen of some sort, surrounded by cameras and lights, walking around on all fours. Jea Kim is lying in a pool, being rained on, also with tied wrists. And Miryo is chained in front of some microphones.

Immediately we get a sense of some sort of mythos that we don’t know the details of. Judging from the visual context, all four of them are prisoners of this regime, and judging from the fact that the military force is entirely male and Narsha is sexualized as a pet, there are themes of exploitation of women. However, the mass synchronicity of this military is very visually reminiscent of videos of North Korean soldiers. The clothing is also fairly contemporary; the only thing that seems particularly futuristic is Miryo’s red coat and thats only because it’s leather.

Let’s go back to the idol elements though. The sexual exploitation of women in entertainment as a whole appears to be what’s on blast here, judging from how all the women are imprisoned. Narsha’s character is interesting because she’s hyper-sexualized, but seems to be torn between enjoying the attention, from how she doesn’t ever reject the cameras and lights, and being autonomous, from joining the protest ultimately.

There’s also Miryo’s role as being the spokesperson and rapper. Rap is often where the anger and resentment in a song comes out, but also is one of the most easily accessible modes of musical storytelling. As the rap speeds up, so too does her discontent increase, until she rips out of her chains. I parallel this imagery to idol culture because she is literally forced to be a spokesperson in this scene. She’s forced to speak for this regime presumably – she isn’t speaking for the revolution, that’s for the dance part. She’s speaking for the people who oppress her. That’s not unlike an idol who is being put onstage by a record company that doesn’t care about them. I am not making any accusations towards any company in particular, I am dressing a systematic issue.

“Sixth Sense” is an excellent video for its use of politics and its commentary on idol culture. But let’s go in the opposite direction – something with very few political connotations, but one that covers anxiety, depression, and tragedy.

VIXX’s “Error”, when it came out, got me so hyped I started pacing around the room to calm down. But I couldn’t help it. My teenage heart was freaking out. The visuals were so powerful, the story was so communicative, and the music – my god, the music. VIXX never fails to deliver on the vocals.

The story is Frankenstein meets Romeo and Juliet. Hongbin, the visual of the band – and one of several members who are professional actors – is some sort of robot tech. He has a girlfriend (played by Heo Youngji from girl group Kara) who dies from some untreatable illness. In his grief, he…well, it’s unclear. I think he turned himself into a robot and removed his heart so that he could cope. The bit that’s not clear to me is if he was a robot in the first place, I have always assumed not.

Anyway, after surgically removing his grief, Hongbin decides to rebuild his girlfriend as a robot, since that’s clearly his area of expertise. He creates the body but there’s malfunction, so he fixes her dispassionately. His expressions fascinate me in these scenes because there’s clear internal struggle, but his reactions are incredibly subdued. When he looks at Youngji, he doesn’t look at her with desire or sadness, simply determination and wonder. It isn’t until he gives Youngji her memories back he actually emotes, and even then it’s subdued.

Eventually, some suited authorities find Hongbin and Youngji and see that Youngji was an illegally created robot, so they plan to take her away, presumably to either reprogram or decommission her. Hongbin pushes the suits away and runs to the building chamber, where he and Youngji share a look of resignation. He kisses her on the forehead, and they walk towards the operating table, to which my teenaged brain practically screamed “OH MY GOD THEY’RE GOING TO DIE.”

And they do. The machine above them dismantles them as Hongbin cries silently. Youngji closes her eyes right as the machine goes to deliver the final blow, but Hongbin just sits and watches. All that’s left is a heart, which sputters and dies. I don’t really know whose heart it is, but I don’t think it matters.

Grief plays a huge role in the video, particularly the stage of Bargaining, whereby the person grieving decides “maybe if I do XYZ I’ll be happy and the pain will go away.” I have found, at least in my personal journey with mental illness, that Bargaining has played a huge role, because I and people I know have avoided getting help because they think it’s a sign of weakness. While making a robot of your dead girlfriend and giving it her memories isn’t exactly orthodox, I do think that the sentiment holds. There is no magic to make depression or grief go away, only ways to cope with it.

Obviously, Hongbin’s character does not cope with this loss, and ends up dying with Youngji. But there is a note of happiness in his resignation, because he got to spend a few more minutes with Youngji and come to terms with her death. He had to realize that she was not really alive, and that they both had to stop this charade. But the tragedy is: in accepting Youngji’s death, he dies too. It’s easy to experience a loss and think that the world will end because of this loss. He doesn’t even give himself a chance to start over. That’s heartbreaking.

This story couldn’t really work in fantasy. Yes you could have an Orpheus and Eurydice style resurrection, where one mistake sends the loved one back into the abyss. You could also have something like the Resurrection Stone in Harry Potter, where even though you bring back the dead, they don’t really belong in our world anymore. However, both of these have external consequences, wherein the universe is somehow thrown out of balance for your actions.

The reason “Error” is powerful is because you have a completely internalized struggle externalized through science fiction. Yes, the authorities do get involved. However, the authorities are not the ones who see the emotional core of his actions, nor do they necessarily hold him accountable. They just want the body back. In this way, the authorities are not the governing body of justice, it’s only Hongbin who experiences the consequences of his own actions. He’s the one who gives up his humanity. He’s the one who creates the metal body. And he’s the one who ultimately suffers. The only person thrown out of balance is himself.

Science fiction and horror allow for the externalization of the internal, something most genres don’t get to depict in the same way. Science fiction works best when it’s the creations of humans that turn against them, whether systematic like in “Sixth Sense” or literal like in “Error”. This is humans creating a situation because of some sort of need, that they then must experience the consequences of. Horror too works best when it’s based on internal struggles. Look no further than the works of Junji Ito for that – while the manga artist creates fantastical situations, the more terrifying elements are what occur when humans get involved in such circumstances. It’s the humans that tend to be more terrifying.

I’d like to look at one more example for thematic understanding of sci-fi in K-Pop: BIGBANG’s “Monster”. As I’ve said before, I generally avoid talking about BIGBANG on my blog because of Burning Sun. However, there’s no way I can’t talk about this video in this context.

BIGBANG’s “Monster”, like “Sixth Sense”, doesn’t have an explicit story – it’s mostly just the five members of BIGBANG trying to escape a science facility. They are, evidently, the world’s most glamorous experiments. They are adorned with bizarre costumes that look almost humorous in how extra they are, however when shadows creep into the frame, we see their eyes and faces morph. Sometimes their eyes glow. Sometimes they have cuts across them. Sometimes they have black tattoos. At one point, Daesung’s eyes are glowing gold, but his reflection has the black markings appearing all over. They transform in a number of overt and subtle ways.

What makes the video so poignant, however, is the ending. When G-Dragon finally escapes, there’s nothing outside. Just ash. A city is on the horizon, but with the ash falling like snow, how can we even be sure there are people there? Visually this, to me, is indicative of a sensitivity in South Korea to aerial warfare and its consequences – the idea that everything you know and love can be wiped out in a second.

In terms of where the themes of depression come up, “Monster” is lyrically a song about someone who undergoes a transformation that makes them seemingly unrecognizable to their loved ones. When applied to this setting it means that they have undergone so many experiments that their loved ones don’t see them in the same way. This is hits me hard because mental illness causes such a transformation, one that can be seen but not easily quantified. During that time where it’s not articulated by the person who is struggling, when they can’t put their finger on what’s wrong – that’s when the most damage is done.

Simply replace experiments with training, and you get an extremely dark self portrait. And yes, I say self – G-Dragon was one of the writers of the song. It also explains the elaborate outfits and “hidden self” imagery – we view idols in a public forum and put pressure on them to reach a personality ideal they can never reach.

I go into more detail in my article on Twice’s “Likey”, but my personal belief is that we need to stop treating idols as objects and more as people. “Monster” is a video that visualizes the struggle these idols go through in a very interesting way, by depicting the singers as prisoners. It’s a great storytelling technique, but it could easily fall under the radar under the VFX and fun costumes.

That’s the risk K-Pop idols run when they make a science fiction themed video. It’s easy to get caught up in how glamorous something is and how beautiful it is, and miss the emotion behind it. And the emotion is very, very real. It is possible to watch these videos and enjoy them on that surface level. I certainly do enjoy that. But when you put a video in context, it makes me appreciate it that much more. And that’s what I’m here to do, help you appreciate K-Pop for what it is: a beautiful yet terrifying niche genre of filmmaking.