While watching Kim Seunghun’s acting through the monitor.
Jinsu hyung beside me said,
“Feels like something changed Seunghun …?”
This scene was the one where, before crash landing on Planet Selene, it starts from a close up of Kim Seunghun’s face, then gradually loosens the close up, showing the overall spaceship to the audience.
The acting I had imagined from Kim Seunghun was simply acting with his eyes closed.
But Kim Seunghun did not do that.
Rather, cold sweat and a small tremble, like having a nightmare.
When that atmosphere was captured fully on camera, I asked Andrew, who was watching with a satisfied look beside me.
“What in the world…?”
“What?”
“What did you do?”
“Me?”
Andrew shrugged and answered.
“I didn’t do anything. Just threw him a few words. The one who cleanly hooked what I threw, that’s Kim Seunghun’s ability.”
It was definitely different.
A subtle difference. It was a difference so small it would not show unless you looked closely, but he brought it to life perfectly, and Kim Seunghun’s anxiety was captured fully on camera.
The first line began with Kor 2138’s alert.
“Ryu Seongmin biorhythm. Abnormal. Confirm.”
At the robot’s alert, Kim Seunghun snapped his eyes open.
Then, with a deep sigh, he lit the cigarette beside him.
“Was it that nightmare again? Smoking right after waking is not good.”
“Stop minding me. Where are we now?”
As if a nightmare he had just had was something he was used to, Kim Seunghun rubbed his eyes and naturally continued the lines.
“It is confirmed it will take about 34 days.”
“Damn, there’s a lot left.”
Not the art team staff member’s voice who was handling Kor 2138, but a voice actor’s voice recorded in advance echoed through the set.
And the bright smiling emoticon that appeared on Kor 2138’s screen. Looking at it, Kim Seunghun frowned.
“It’s not even something good, and you’re smiling? Did you break or something?”
“I learned that you do not smile because you are happy, but you become happy because you smile.”
At KOR 2138’s words, Kim Seunghun shook his head left and right, then looked out the spaceship window.
It was chroma key because it would be where space would be composited, but even so, Kim Seunghun’s eyes were full of melancholy.
“Ha, that guy. He’s doing it now.”
It was Andrew’s admiration.
It was acting I could not help but nod at too.
Acting so perfect it did not even need separate directing.
It could look like easy acting, but it was not.
It was good acting that let you know clearly that Kim Seunghun’s acting had changed.
“Cut! Okay! That was good! Seunghun hyung!”
Kim Seunghun came over with a bright smile.
“Was it okay?”
“Starting is half, and the start is so good.”
Kim Seunghun looked at his appearance he had confirmed through the monitor as if looking at a stranger.
That it looked unfamiliar meant that much, that he had immersed into Ryu Seongmin.
At his own appearance that really looked like Ryu Seongmin, even Kim Seunghun seemed amazed and stared at the monitor.
“Hyung Seunghun’s image completely disappeared. I’m saying you really look like Ryu Seongmin?”
Andrew asked Kim Seunghun, who was staring at the monitor.
“How is it?”
“I think it’s good. How is it for you, Andrew?”
“Well, there are things that are lacking, but… it’s not bad.”
Andrew spoke to Kim Seunghun with a shameless lie, as if he had forgotten his admiration until just now.
But Kim Seunghun answered with a bright smile.
“If that level of praise… well. Looks like you worked hard.”
At Kim Seunghun’s words, Andrew snorted and said,
“What praise. Tsk. You just did the basic. That much is at the level where you could bring any stage actor and they could all do it.”
“Yes, yes. I understand. Haha. Chanhyeon, then do we go right to the next scene?”
“Yes. This scene is perfect. Let’s hurry and finish it off.”
A few days later.
Filming excluding motion capture, especially the scenes where Kim Seunghun appears in the spaceship, were resolved quickly.
The hardest part of this movie was, in the end, CG.
So I had to move back and forth between the set and MILM.
“You’re here?”
When I opened MILM’s door and went in, one staff member greeted me.
Everyone, in a state of being completely drained, stared at their computers with dull eyes. A few looked like they were sleeping deeply.
“Everyone is working hard.”
“Haha, working hard. It’s working like a dog.”
At one staff member’s words, a few around snorted and kept pounding their keyboards.
Then I saw Taylor, in slippers and shorts, with hair clumped and greasy, blankly staring at photos of space.
“Taylor?”
At my words, she flinched and said,
“Ah, just a moment.”
After speaking with widened eyes, she ran to the bathroom. And only after the sound of rinsing her mouth was heard did she come back with a bright smile and greet me in Korean.
“Hello.”
“Wow, your pronunciation is really good?”
“I practiced only this really hard. The staff say my greeting is now almost like a Korean person. Hehe.”
With a bright smile, she guided me to her desk.
On her desk, it was full of the storyboard I drew and all kinds of things.
“It’s kind of messy, right? Haha. Just a moment.”
“Ah, yes. You can take your time.”
She quickly cleared off the desk, then opened one folder among the cluttered desktop and said,
“The beginning part, from Ryu Seongmin’s Eagles operating in space to Ryu Seongmin crash landing on Planet Selene, I completed it. The rotoscoping work for Ryu Seongmin’s Eagles ended so cleanly, it looks really natural.”
When she played the footage she worked on, a clip about 20 seconds long came out.
A sigh of admiration came out at the appearance of the Eagles drifting in space.
It was quality to a degree that could not be believed as a work coming out of Korea in 2004.
The vast space. The planets. And the Eagles moving between them.
With no sense of mismatch, the visual was so perfect that admiration came out on its own.
“Ohh…”
“Is it okay?”
“Yes. Completely.”
As someone who is crazy about space.
When dealing with space, there was belief on a different level.
From the fine light processing to the detailed color.
Admiration came out on its own at her ability, which accepted my demands perfectly.
“Then I’ll move on to the next one. It’s the scene where Ryu Seongmin crash lands on Planet Selene.”
Taylor pressed another clip beside it.
Then a 30 second clip came out where the Eagles lands on Planet Selene with natural movement.
To the point that admiration would come out, at CG movement that could not be compared to any film I had seen in this world.
“Is it okay?”
Taylor asked, eyes sparkling as if full of expectation, waiting for my answer.
“Yes. It can’t be expressed as just okay. It’s perfect.”
“Hoo… what a relief. Haha…”
Taylor let out a sigh of relief and spoke with a bright smile.
According to her, the time that went into rotoscoping was not small.
The work of cutting out, so to speak.
Cutting out the miniature Eagles and compositing it onto the Celine miniature was much harder than expected.
Even though on video it is only about one second, it had to be composited by tracing the outlines of 24 images one by one.
“Thank you for believing me.”
Taylor said in a voice that sounded like she was almost sniffling.
“Y-you’re crying?”
“That… really… I worried a lot.”
Her eyes reddened.
I was briefly flustered at her sudden reaction.
“Ah… don’t cry…”
The best words to make someone who is about to cry actually cry are “don’t cry.”
At the words that almost came out automatically, I closed my mouth, and only looked at her and smiled brightly as I said,
“You worked hard.”
“Huk…”
Seeing my smile, as if she had suffered a lot in her heart, tears finally flowed.
“Thank you. Director Gyeong. Really, thank you so much.”
“I’m more thankful. Making something like this isn’t easy.”
“Sniff… This experience is completely my first. I don’t have to worry about all kinds of things, and I can just work. My mind is much more comfortable than when I worked in America.”
Just doing work is not easy…
But thinking about Taylor’s MILM back in America, I could roughly understand what she meant.
A company in a building that was almost collapsing, with no work.
It could not have been only one or two things to worry about besides work.
“The road ahead is long. During that time, I ask for your care.”
“Yes! Definitely! Sniff… Keeping this quality continuously… I’ll make it so our MILM looks perfect no matter what! Sniff…”
When Taylor shouted that in a voice mixed with tears, a suddenly bustling sound came from around.
“Huh? Are you making our Taylor-ssi cry right now?”
“Director Gyeong made our Taylor-ssi cry!”
“Is what we made not good?”
The staff suddenly crowded in and asked Taylor, and Taylor said in a voice still mixed with tears,
“Director Gyeong says it’s so good! Hng…”
At Taylor’s words, the staff looked at me with faces that seemed flustered, and spoke. And their expressions soon filled with mischief.
Their expressions, as if they looked happy because something exciting finally happened at MILM, became so bright you would not think they were the zombie like people from a few minutes ago.
“Wow! Director Gyeong made Taylor ssi cry!”
“Bad man! Take responsibility!”
“Wow! Today we can’t work! Because Taylor ssi cried, and Taylor ssi is in charge of the MILM mood!”
Taylor frowned playfully at the staff and said,
“Can’t work today. What? There’s a mountain of work. Hurry and work!”
At those words, the staff looked at me with pleading eyes as if regretful.
“Let’s eat something delicious for lunch today. I’ll buy.”
Before my words even finished, the dead atmosphere revived.
“As expected, Director Gyeong’s manners are insane.”
“If it’s something delicious, you can make Taylor cry two more times.”
“Sushi? Meat? Buffet? What, what do we eat?!”
“Taylor has to choose. They say you give one more rice cake to a friend who cries! Taylor, what should we eat!?”
They looked at Taylor with expecting eyes, and Taylor looked like she was thinking for a moment.
“No way you say you’ll buy something delicious, and it’s chicken mayo again, right?”
“Get a hold of yourself. No matter how much Taylor likes chicken mayo, would she eat chicken mayo on a day like today?”
At the staff’s words, Taylor coughed a few times as if flustered, then said,
“Uh… today, let’s eat meat. Haha. Everyone worked hard.”
“Yes. Then let’s leave right now. It’s exactly lunch time.”
Then the staff, as if they were not the people who had been drooping just a moment ago, immediately got dressed and finished preparing to go out, and seeing that, Taylor smiled brightly and said to me,
“They’re really good people.”
“That’s right. You chose people well.”
At my words, Taylor nodded.
“With this amount of people, in America, this volume, could never have been made.”
“Huh?”
“They work well together. The mood is good too. To the point that I want this team to stay like this all the way.”
With a satisfied smile, she looked at the team members.
“If this movie does well, feels like contacts will pour in from CG companies in America?”
“Haha. Will they? Over there, the rumor is that I’m a weirdo, so I don’t know if there will be anywhere that would call me… The film VFX world is very narrow. Haha…”
At my words, she snorted a laugh and looked at me.
“This place is more fun. The only person to watch mood for is Director Gyeong.”
“You were watching my mood?”
“You’re the person who pays my salary. Where is there an employee who doesn’t watch the boss’s mood?”
“In practice, Taylor ssi is the representative here. Me, I’m just a figurehead boss.”
When I said it with a shrug, Taylor chuckled and nodded.
“Really, thank you. Even though the road ahead is long.”
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