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Oct
12
2008

Moon Geun-Young Injured, 바람의 화원 (Painter of the Wind) Shoot Halted

Posted by X at 8:05am.

Posted in TV , Asia.

It must have been quite exciting, Korean Tv in the 1970s. Although you had landmark exceptions like 수사반장 (Inspector Chief), most TV dramas were shot on a sound stage, and broadcast live, as if we were dealing with a play. That might be one of the reasons why so many veteran TV actors are so good when it comes to reaction acting, after all those years of training on the spot. But the TV landscape of the 1970s is peculiarly resembling today’s TV circus in Korea, the “생방 (live broadcast)” shoot syndrome one of its most sinister symptoms.

Although the situation varies from country to country, you usually see a TV production secure funding and go through casting (or viceversa), complete its shoot or at least the vast majority of it, and then broadcast. But in Korea, where a drama can go belly up just because it fails to enter a broadcaster’s lineup, timing is everything. Projects might take even a couple of months to get the green light, but always wait in standby, until the timeslot has been secured, after which shooting starts. This means most miniseries only shoot between 4 and 8 episodes before broadcast starts, and that’s where problems begin. Shooting fast and editing even quicker is not really the problem (Koreans doing rather well by now): the issue is the script. With so much attention paid to ratings, the idea of starting with a completed script (or something to that extent) is only something the greats can do, think a Jung Ha-Yeon or Noh Hee-Kyung. The rest, even the talented ones, end up facing the nightmare of 쪽대본 (paper scripts) sooner or later. That is, scripts written on the fly, sent to the shooting location via fax or e-mail, trying to stick to the original synopsis yes, but often adapted to various production issues, such as the need to bloat every episode up to a ridiculous 70 to 80 minutes (the current trend, but some are even touching the 90 minutes), just to take full advantage of ad revenue. Which, in turns, hurts both the acting and the drama itself.

Sometimes you have third-party production companies interfering with last-minute casting decisions, even if they could end up killing narrative flow. That is what writer Yoo Dong-Yoon of 왕과 나 (The King & I) had to endure, after SBS and Olive9 used the sageuk as their personal rating toy, adding useless characters and making a very promising drama turn into a fat, slow and plodding dinosaur, which barely saved itself at the last minute. Sometimes it’s a problem of planning itself, like what the producers of 스포트라이트 (Spotlight) ended up doing, forcing someone like Lee Gi-Won (who writes well, but slowly) to adapt to these insane production speeds, and some say even asking him to rethink narrative directions because of low ratings, the reason why he resigned mid-flight and left the project to his assistant writers for the second half. What this craze generally does is only ruining dramas, but sometimes there’s something a little more dangerous at stake. A few years ago, 늑대 (Wolf) halted production after Eric Moon and Han Ji-Min went through an injury during a shoot, and this nightmare risked a nefarious deja-vu when Chae Si-Ra, star of the upcoming sageuk 천추태후 (Empress Cheonchu), fell off her horse during training. The situation was managed rather well, extending 대왕세종 (Sejong the Great) by five episodes, taking advantage of the various preemptions during the Olympics and whatnot, and finally getting to a point (now) where normality has been re-established and shooting is back to on course. Sadly, that doesn’t always work.

I spared no praise for SBS’ new fusion sageuk 바람의 화원 (Painter of the Wind), and there is a good reason for that. It’s full of wonderful, well researched details; it has an irresistible elegance and great music, top of the line CG and the kind of cinematography and narrative flow that at times turn this show into visual poetry. Moon Geun-Young is doing a superb job, the veterans are predictably great, and Park Shin-Yang is showing a kind of eclectic charm despite this not exactly being the right delivery for the genre; but also lesser actors like the inexperienced Moon Chae-Won and Park Jin-Woo somehow seem to make it. The praise should go to newcomer writer Lee Eun-Young, who’s adapting the novel wonderfully despite slightly deviating from it, and particularly PD Jang Tae-Yoo, who allegedly threw two months of shoot in the trash just because young Moon had completely immersed herself in the role after a while, so he decided to reshoot the earlier, a tad more “rustic” parts. There’s even a touch of history beyond details, which looks to grow even stronger in the coming months, as the mystery of Yoon-Bok’s father and his death get tied to the Prince Sado affair. Problem now is that Moon Geun-Young was injured during the shoot.

It’s nothing really serious, just a broken nose which will take about 10 days of rest, and will bring her back in front of the camera in two weeks. But of course this spells trouble for the production, which decided not to broadcast episode 7 and 8 next week, replaced by a few specials (which will apparently feature some new scenes), and it’s likely the week after might be at risk as well. Some “journalists” are speculating about paper scripts being the major culprit, but with a very solid synopsis already covering 15 episodes, and the foundation the novel gives you, I’d be very surprised if this was the problem. Biggest issue might be PD Jang himself, way too much of a perfectionist to let a rushed production interfere with his work. But of course the most important issue is macroscopic, concerning the need to establish a new structure, allowing those who want to enough time to complete their shoot before broadcast. With the current system, it’s certainly not possible. Halting the shoot is certainly inevitable, and might even help the drama in ways that nothing else would: the show is currently lagging behind the annoying misfire 베토벤 바이러스 (Beethoven Virus) and the sageuk 바람의 나라 (Kingdom of the Wind). This latest happening might bring back some attention to the show, and increase the chances it might do better ratings in the future. Also, despite this impasse, it doesn’t look like it will harm the quality of the show in any way.

What the broadcasters need to realize before it’s too late, though, is that quality takes time, that ratings are a very elusive chimera—unless you submit to lowest-common-denominator sensibilities like 조강지처클럽 (The First Wives’ Club), that is—and that the safety of the performers comes first. The TV industry in Korea actually resembles a lot what is happening in Wall Street, with the only exception that the powers that be aren’t trying to find a solution to the problem together (or at least pretending to), they’re just taking out the swords and trying to slay each other for whatever is left of the pie. And you know what happens when two enemies start blowing up things on the same boat. They both drown....

Still, we wish a speedy recover to Moon Geun-Young, who’s doing a truly marvelous job, and hope Painter of the Wind continues to impress until the end.

[Daum] [Daum]

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Reader Comments

  1. pochiW 10/12/2008 @ 11:32am

    uh oh. didn’t they shoot everything before airdate (like ahn jae-wook’s I Love You?)

    while i count myself among the guilty masses who throw away their lives on Beethoven, it’s clear even to this brethren “Painter” is the keeper this season.
    Was highly impressed by the little, nonverbal touches like camera contemplating the full moon in the sky (on the eve of Moon’s “execution"), & park shin-yang (or somebody else) seeing a graphic match of an ivory spoon as a woman’s figure. something tells me these aren’t typical saeguk practice?

  2. Cfensi 10/12/2008 @ 11:40am

    Not to be mean, but why all the Korean TV news? It may be interesting, good, whatever, but I thought this site was mainly about movies? TV can never quite reach the level of movies, no matter how interesting or whatever it is.

  3. X 10/12/2008 @ 11:41am

    The idea is they shot two months’ worth of material, then PD Jang noticed Moon was getting into the role more and more, so they just about reshot the whole thing from scratch. There’s bits and pieces ready until Ep. 10, but they clearly needed to shoot something for 7/8 yet, otherwise they wouldn’t stop this. Going to be better for editing, and the writer will have some time.

    There’s this great scene with Yoon-Bok and Hong-Do looking at a crowd sitting outside an house, using a frame made of wood to imagine how it would look in a painting, and the image slowly turns into one of Kim Hong-Do’s famous paintings. Just… wow. I’ve seen sageuk with this kind of exquisite detail before, but taking it to such a visual level, that’s a first.

  4. X 10/12/2008 @ 11:42am

    “TV can never quite reach the level of movies, no matter how interesting or whatever it is.”

    Not to be mean, but that’s just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve read all year.

  5. pochiW 10/12/2008 @ 12:43pm

    that’s amazingly generous of MBC (scrap & reshoot.) then again they’re dealing with a powerful combo here, & turning point of sorts in people’s careers.
    i’ll keep an eye out for that that wooden frame scene. makes for nice comparison with Portrait of Beauty teaser animating Kim Hong-do’s familiar images (unless they’re by another different painter raspberry)
    Is Conspiracy in Court even gonna be on DVD? right now i got your word on it & the presence of ahn nae-sang.

    Cfensi, i find lots of crossover in actors & treatment of subjects in K-movie & TV. right now the films are often more misses than hits, so i look to the series...plus X has a huge backlog of interesting history/context if you ever find time to compare what you watch & behind-scenes trends. (but a huge immersion curve if you don’t speak the language & are outsider to the culture...which i still am.)
    i’m sure something can be said of how TV influences the average audience’s choice in movies, since it’s readily downloadable, screencapped for endless discussion - a huge factor in securing audience for star names that move between TV & movie. there are different strengths in both tho - like mural vs. single-frame painting.

  6. X 10/12/2008 @ 12:59pm

    Already out on subbed Director’s Cut DVD. If you can’t find it at YesAsia it should be around somewhere else. Best buy of 2007.

  7. MavisFan 10/12/2008 @ 2:30pm

    Are you kidding me!!! I thank the likes of SBS and MBC for bringing me back to the tube.  TV would be dead without Korean dramas.

    Moon, here’s hoping a very, very speedy recovery to you!!

  8. Cfensi 10/12/2008 @ 2:47pm

    It’s just a fact that TV is a lower form of media than movies. Ask any of the Twitch’s main posters and they’ll tell you.

    I’m sure Painter in the Wind is very nice, but it’s not better than other really good Chinese or Japanese serious dramas, and they’re all not as good as the movies of China, Korea or Japan Thailand or anywhere and I don’t think TV news really should be part of twitch.

  9. X 10/12/2008 @ 2:53pm

    Only a simpleton with no knowledge of the medium would say that. The only difference between TV and Film is the venue where you watch the content, and in certain cases the things you can do in terms of violence and sex. Just like people like Von Trier and Bergman didn’t snub TV, there’s plenty of directors who work or have worked on Korean TV (same with Japan and particularly China), and super talented TV producers who would make it huge, if they moved to the big screen. Of course if all you take as your comparison point is mainstream crap, then any point you make will be moot.

    High end Chinese historical dramas smoke to the ground anything that’s been done on the big screen within the same genre by people like Zhang Yimou or even Red Cliff, and some of the best stuff on Japanese TV beats by miles what’s on the big screen in Japan. Same for Korea. Hell, I don’t see anything in Hollywood topping the writing of The Sopranos or The Wire either. It’s simply a matter of finding the good things among the crap, just like with films. Quality is quality, regardless of the medium.

    But saying a priori film is intrinsically superior to TV, that puts your credibility somewhere in between Paris Hilton and the Palinator. If you don’t think TV should be a part of Twitch, there’s other people who think otherwise, and that’s where it ends. It’s a free world, if you don’t care, don’t read.

  10. Cfensi 10/12/2008 @ 3:13pm

    Ouch. You don’t have to compare me to Palin.

    Ok, let me put it this way.

    Hollywood box office starlets won’t do tv unless their career goes. Natalie Portman said the one advice she got from someone once was “never do television”.

    It’s a little less of a rule with Asian cinema, since their series have a beginning and end, but the same applies.

    Son Yejin, my favorite Korean actress (at least of the pretty variety) hardly does dramas, because she has achieved that high of a level of success. You see people wanting to work up to movies, but never the other way around.

    I’ve seen Chinese historical dramas, and yes they do lavish lots of money on their period pieces but they can’t compare in quality, as an art product to Curse of the Golden Flower or Assembly. Liu Ye, one of the most esteemed young actors in China, who does a variety of roles but he has never done television. Zhang Ziyi simply does not do movies, and I think Zhou Xun would not either.

    TV can boost the popularity of someone, but it’s not a showcase for their acting talents. Directors of TV will never be put on the same pedastal as those of movies for good reason.

    Anyway, like I said ask around about this. Or I could post a post in the forums. I’m simply giving you some input and it’s sound input, so instead of name calling, just think about it.

  11. X 10/12/2008 @ 3:23pm

    Again, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

    Son Ye-Jin started with dramas, and is still shooting dramas in between films, same goes for all the biggest stars in the business save a very rare few. Moon So-Ri? She’s shooting dramas. Jeon Do-Yeon, Bae Doo-Na, Jang Jin-Young, Shin Eun-Kyung and so on? Shooting dramas. The trend in Korea right now is… wow… guess what, big screen stars coming back to Dramas. Take high end product from film and TV from Korea, China, and Japan and compare it with film, and the quality is incredibly similar. Saying “directors of TV will never be put on the same pedestal” is only indication of acclaim, not of intrinsic quality. Kwak Jung-Hwan and Kim Jin-Min, for instance, have just as much talent as a Bong Joon-Ho or Park Chan-Wook, but the venue is different, so you don’t realize it. And I haven’t seen anything in Japan (big screen) even comparable to Pandora (small screen) this year.

    If you’ve seen Chinese historical dramas and still say that, I wonder what you’ve seen. Have you seen anything from Hu Mei, Zhang Li or Chen Jialin? Curse of the Golden Flower is just pretty, but Han Wu the Great is pretty, historically accurate, and has the kind of artistic panache Zhang Yimou could dream at night.

    Two of the biggest actors in China, Chen Baoguo and Chen Daoming are huge TV stars and have starred in some incredible stuff; some of the top stars in Japan do TV almost exclusively, and so on. There’s interchange, and only people who don’t understand the medium draw a line.

    Sound input? Just sounds like superficial platitudes to me. You’re the one who needs to think. You see a “TV” category up there, so that’s your answer.

  12. Cfensi 10/12/2008 @ 3:47pm

    Son Yejin started out with dramas, but as of late, she’s been doing movies. The only drama she did in recent memory was the one about the divorce and whatnot.

    China does have a lot of money to spend on its series, but even the $7 million (and that’s USD) 50-episode Bruce Lee biopic that was just announced didn’t get me interested. If it had been a movie, then that would have caught my attention because I think TV is still TV.

    Most of the TV entries are yours btw in that category. And the rest usually have to do with people who have to do with movies (like Simon Pegg) or those with some sort of cult fanbase, not everything that comes out of Korea. Imagine if you had started posting about Chinese or Japanese dramas. This site would be flooded.

  13. X 10/12/2008 @ 3:54pm

    Son Ye-Jin ended shooting Spotlight on MBC a few months ago, and she was cast again in another drama for early 2009, before the role went to Kim Tae-Hee. So your point, exactly?

    Your “lack of interest” in looking out for good things on TV because of preconceptions you have doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, really. If TV is only TV for you, perfectly fine. But don’t try to project it on other people with ridiculous platitudes like “TV is inferior.” Because it’s not, period. Never been, never will be.

  14. xuandy 10/12/2008 @ 7:27pm

    Cfensi, PLEASE. STOP. COMMENTING.

    With every new comment you make, the more you sound like a fool.
    You don’t like reading articles about TV dramas? THEN DON’T READ THEM.

    You obviously rely on X’s articles on Korean movies, so why can’t you just be grateful for them and stop badgering him.

    Unlike you, there are many of us who do enjoy reading his articles on Korean movies AND dramas. So quit your complaining, because most of us actually appreciate what X writes.

  15. Cfensi 10/12/2008 @ 8:15pm

    If you hadn’t noticed, I did stop commenting. I decided it was just difference of opinion and just left it at that.

    But now I’m going to again and fully explain why I commented, kid gloves off. I was trying to explain it from a general point of view, but obviously that’s not working. I read this site, but to be honest I never felt a need to comment, until I saw another one of these articles on Korean TV and then I felt compelled. Just because you like all of it doesn’t mean everyone does. And I never complained, but I just got completely irritated when I saw the subject of this post.

    Moon Geun-Young is injured so the tv series is stopped? Wow, this space could be used for something much better. Good lord, if he knows the ins and outs of this genre then good for him, but I don’t need to know that some tv series is put on hold just because she’s injured. I love her as an actress, she seems less plastic than the others, and she’ll be back. This bit of change adds nothing to the world of entertainment. It’s almost gossip. Kdrama is okay, but it’s not the experience he’s making it out to be. It’s just okay.  There are always parts where it lags like all dramas. I’m going to repeat, there are better MOVIES out there.

    Most people, even those who love cinema, don’t have the time to watch all of these 20-episode dramas. You are the anomaly, not the rule.

    And no, I don’t “obviously” rely on his posts for news on Korean cinema, just like I don’t rely on him for news of Chinese drama or movies.

    And xuandy, go to soompi if you want the details of kdramas.

  16. X 10/12/2008 @ 8:30pm

    Should I take the kid gloves off as well? Then it could get really ugly really quickly.

    Someone who utters such lamebrained, ill-informed, superficial generalizations about an entire industry he doesn’t understand and “has no time to watch” defeats the purpose of what he’s saying in the first place. I’m not talking about some silly, mediocre trendy drama with romantic shenanigans and putrid acting, I’d deserve all the bitching in the world if such were the case.  I repeat, watch the quality stuff (which is all I talk about, and certainly not what would be popular over at Soompi) without just foolishly discriminating it “because it’s TV,” and then you’ll rethink your silly generalizations pretty quickly. Or if you don’t, well. Tough shit. Those who have no eyes to see shall see nothing at all. Or like the Koreans say, it takes a Buddha to see a Buddha, although I’ll leave out the final bit, since we’re all gentlemen here.

    Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass if that makes it not the rule but the anomaly or it irritates you, it’s worth reporting just as much as “jeee! Zhang Ziyi is starring in the next useless Hollywood action film” is. If you have a problem with it, the problem remains yours.

    And, oh… I like “all of it?” I’d roll on the floor laughing If I could be arsed to.

  17. Cfensi 10/12/2008 @ 8:49pm

    You generalize way too much.

    I’m a girl.

  18. X 10/12/2008 @ 8:51pm

    That’s your good old “white flag” in debate lingo.

    Have a nice day as well.

  19. Ard Vijn 10/13/2008 @ 1:55am

    OK, this was fun.

    Cfensi, you’re entitled to your own opinion of course, and a few years back I might have totally supported your viewpoint about television being a “lesser” medium compared to movies.
    After all, television was something you could always turn on or off whenever you liked, while going to the movies took effort. Thankfully, most of the time that effort was rewarded with vastly improved visuals on a large screen, vastly improved sound (compared to my tv at home), and an appreciative audience. These things can add to the experience in a BIG way. And indeed, looking at the dollar-spend per minute, the movies I went to were so much more expensive than anything shown on television.

    And yet… and yet…

    Suddenly a series like Shogun appears. Something that EVERYONE watched, EVERYONE talked about the next day at school or at work, something that you literally stayed home for (if only because we didn’t even have a VHS yet...).
    How was that less valuable an experience than going to the cinema? It was different, but certainly not lesser.

    Or a few decades later, catching something like Paranoia Agent and see someone take full advantage of the one thing television can provide more easily than movies: vast running times. 

    In short: a good television series can, if plotted correctly, make you care about a story and its main characters in a way that theatrically displayed movies just don’t have the time for.

    It’s hard enough comparing two types of media with each other, even when their industries are as linked as with television and movies, so to say that one is flat-out lesser than the other is cutting corners a wee bit too much. It’s one thing to say a lot of people would see it like that, it’s quite another thing to throw it around as a fact. It implies Twitch would be a better website if we didn’t cover television, just movies, and that X’s television-based articles actually drag the site down. Eh?

    I don’t understand that line of reasoning, and this is why:

    At Twitch, the writers each pick their own subject of choice. Todd has made it clear to us that the quality of our writing is obviously a lot better when we write about something we care for. Thus, we have no forced subjects and we are all basically just covering our hobbies here. There is no minimum or maximum amount of articles we need to deliver.
    So all the articles here are labors of love, so to speak. It’s a rotten job, but someone has to do it!
    wink

    The site navigation square in the top right shows the different categories, and TV is one of them. Has been for years.

    It’s not that X’s choice of subject prevents him from writing anything else. His TV-articles are an addition on top of the movie articles he writes, and vice versa. We are not a newspaper who have to decide how to fill acertain number of square inches, instead we have a practically unlimited amount of publishing space. So saying “this space could have been used better” implies that the article is SO BAD that it generates negative value. Come on, that’s neither nice nor true!

    Concluding, there is no way we have “Too Much TV Coverage” lately, it’s just that we find ourselves with an extra writer who likes these things! Judging by his articles, X apparently cares a lot for Korean TV-dramas and in my opinion the site is all the more richer for it.

  20. panik 10/13/2008 @ 6:23am

    “Just because you like all of it doesn’t mean everyone does”

    And just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean everyone does.

    Scroll down...its that simple if you don’t want to read it.

  21. Cfensi 10/23/2008 @ 6:54pm

    Can I have my comments deleted?

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