Chapter 114
“This is your first time visiting since we moved offices, right?”
Baek Seonghan placed a cup of coffee he had personally made in front of Cinematographer Kim Chulhyun and sat down.
Kim Chulhyun looked around the first-floor lounge and meeting area with admiration.
“Yeah. If I’d known it looked like this, I would’ve brought a plant or something. Hahaha.”
“A plant?”
Baek Seonghan shook his head and pointed around the lounge.
“Look at those. We can barely handle the ones we already have.”
Plants and congratulatory flower arrangements were placed everywhere.
Kim Chulhyun chuckled.
“Anyway. I heard the general situation over the phone yesterday.”
He turned toward me.
“A drama for a general programming channel?”
“Yes.”
I answered quickly.
“They’re launch dramas for YTBS. One is sixteen episodes, and the other is twenty-four.”
“I heard a lot of film workers are sitting around without projects these days, but when we contacted people, they all refused.”
Kim Chulhyun laughed.
“From what PD Baek told me, you only called people who were always going to refuse.”
“Huh?”
I looked at him in confusion.
“Jongtaek hyung too.”
Kim Chulhyun smiled.
“Those guys aren’t struggling to survive.”
“Actually, forget just making a living.”
He laughed.
“They’re masters that even famous directors have to beg several times before they’ll agree to work on a project.”
“Ah... I see.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
Kim Chulhyun laughed at my awkward expression.
“How about I just quit this movie and join your drama instead?”
“What?”
I stared at him.
I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
Kim Chulhyun burst into laughter.
“Hahaha. I’m kidding.”
Then he became practical immediately.
“So each drama needs an A team and a B team?”
“That means four camera crews and four lighting crews...”
While talking, he was already exchanging text messages with someone.
“What’s your email address, Team Leader Min?”
“My email?”
I quickly gave it to him.
“It’s min*****.”
“All right.”
He continued texting.
“I told applicants to send their resumes to you before the end of today.”
“Check them and see who you like.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you very much.”
“I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
Kim Chulhyun smiled.
“Lately, all I hear are younger guys complaining they don’t have work.”
“They’re all skilled, so don’t worry.”
“Yes.”
“Well, since I’m already here, I need to talk to PD Baek separately before I leave.”
Baek Seonghan immediately looked cautious, as if he already knew what was coming.
“What are you going to complain about this time...? Ahem.”
“PD Baek, I wasn’t going to say anything because it feels petty, but why are you giving us so little money for fuel?”
I left the two of them arguing behind me.
The next morning, I opened my email as soon as I arrived at work.
As expected, profiles from cinematographers had already arrived.
I carefully reviewed them one by one.
None of them had worked on enormous blockbuster hits.
But they had all participated in movies most people would recognize.
Many had debuted as cinematographers around 2005 or 2006, during what people called the bubble period of the Korean film market.
And after their debuts, most of them had not been able to secure another major project.
While reviewing the profiles, one name caught my eye.
“Cinematographer Na Hyekyung...”
Na Hyekyung was one of the rare women who had successfully established herself as a cinematographer in the male-dominated Korean film industry.
There was even a famous story about her.
She had once carried a Steadicam weighing more than twenty kilograms and filmed continuously for three hours without taking a break.
Yet she never once complained about being tired.
That story was well known among film workers.
And if my memories before regression were correct, Na Hyekyung would continue working steadily in both films and OTT productions in the future.
She would eventually become something of a mentor and role model for many women in the film industry.
Right.
Na Hyekyung debuted around 2006.
That means she isn’t very well known yet.
If I can secure her now...!
My eyes widened.
The hairs all over my body seemed to stand up, as if every instinct was telling me to recruit her.
Meeting Na Hyekyung at this exact point in time almost felt like fate.
But first, I should ask the directors what they think.
I knew her future.
But Director Kang Daesun and Director Jeon Jihyuk didn’t.
I had no idea how they would react to Na Hyekyung.
There was always the possibility that they might feel uncomfortable working with a female cinematographer.
So before trying to recruit her, I decided to ask both directors for their opinions.
“Oh, I know that cinematographer.”
Director Kang Daesun suddenly clapped his hands.
“You know Cinematographer Na Hyekyung?”
I was genuinely surprised.
Even among film workers, many people didn’t know much about Na Hyekyung yet.
So the fact that Kang Daesun, who worked mainly in dramas, knew her surprised me.
“Well, when I say I know her...”
He explained that he had once read an article about her in a film magazine.
“The article said that out of every hundred cinematographers in Korea, only about four are women.”
“And it mentioned Na Hyekyung.”
“Ah. I see.”
Kang Daesun said he had even watched the movie she debuted with.
He praised her highly.
“I finally understood what people mean when they say an image can be clean and simple without unnecessary decoration.”
He continued.
“Writer Seo Kyunghee’s project already has a large cast, and the emotional lines between the characters are complicated.”
He looked thoughtful.
“With cinematography like hers, I think the audience could focus even more strongly on the characters’ emotions.”
Kang Daesun said that just by watching the footage, he could tell how much effort Na Hyekyung had put into capturing those emotions.
His response relieved me.
Then...
“Team Leader Min.”
Kang Daesun looked serious.
“I want to work with Cinematographer Na Hyekyung.”
There was clear determination in his eyes.
“Come on.”
Director Jeon Jihyuk, who had been sitting beside us, pouted.
“If you decide that immediately, I don’t even get a chance.”
Only then did Kang Daesun remember that Jeon Jihyuk might want her too.
“Ah, right. I suppose Director Jeon would also want someone like her.”
Jeon Jihyuk laughed.
“Hahaha. It’s fine.”
“I’ll let you have her this time.”
Then he added,
“I actually had someone else in mind.”
And just like that, once the cinematographers were selected, the rest moved quickly.
Lighting directors, production sound teams, art directors...
One by one, the key staff positions were filled.
Time passed quickly again.
By mid-June, Director Jung Sunyoung’s romantic comedy film Oh, My Mona Lisa, which Big Picture’s film team had been preparing, finally began shooting.
Oh, My Mona Lisa was a romantic comedy about a male lead who had been born without eyebrows and was nicknamed Mona Lisa.
He later meets a female lead who works as an eyebrow tattoo artist.
Chaos and romance follow.
Two weeks later, in early July, YTBS’s launch Monday-Tuesday drama Yangsoon’s Flower Shop began filming.
One week after that, Remember Me also began production.
Finally, Director Choi Kyungmin and Writer Mabongchun’s MBS drama started filming in early September.
With one film and three dramas being produced at the same time, Big Picture practically ran like a factory.
At the beginning of filming, just as we had worried, the film crews struggled to adapt to drama production.
There were occasional clashes with the assistant directors.
The directing department wanted to split scenes into more cuts so they could shoot quickly.
The cinematographers wanted longer takes with carefully planned movement to preserve visual quality.
There were also lighting crews that spent half a day just setting up the light.
The directors and assistant directors could only sigh internally.
The production sound team had its own conflicts too.
The directing department would say a boom microphone was enough and urge everyone to shoot quickly.
The sound team insisted on using lavalier microphones at the same time to make the sound fuller.
With things going like this, even actors began quietly wondering,
“Are we really going to finish this in time for broadcast?”
During the first week, there were several days when we failed to shoot even half the scenes planned for that day.
For a while, the planning team practically lived on the sets of the dramas they were responsible for.
We needed to watch for conflicts and monitor progress.
Fortunately, things began changing before long.
At some point, the crews started finishing full daily shooting schedules.
Their methods were not simply slow perfectionism.
They were finding ways to increase the quality of the images without sacrificing speed.
Time passed again.
Before we knew it, only one month remained until the general programming channels officially launched.
The channels began intense promotional battles, aggressively advertising their flagship dramas and entertainment shows.
“What do you mean we shouldn’t promote the dramas through the newspaper?”
YTBS Division Director Jung Wonki questioned me sharply.
The other people in the meeting room also looked confused and began murmuring among themselves.
“I mean exactly what I said.”
“What?”
Jung Wonki raised his voice.
“Why? We should be promoting as aggressively as possible from now on!”
I understood why he reacted like this.
The other general programming channels were currently using their parent newspapers to place launch drama advertisements and promotional articles on the front pages again and again.
And in that situation, I was telling YTBS not to use its newspaper.
He probably thought I was talking nonsense.
But from my memories before regression, I knew what had happened when those channels originally launched.
If there were problems we could avoid, we should avoid them.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t promote.”
I spoke calmly.
“Aggressive promotion is absolutely necessary.”
“But I think using Joongwang Daily, our parent company, too heavily could make people see it as us praising our own family.”
“Praising our own family?”
Back then, every general programming channel had used its parent newspaper to heavily promote its own dramas.
However, after the first broadcasts, viewers disappointed by the quality flooded the internet with comments like,
[I got fooled by the articles.]
[They’re busy praising their own people.]
I continued.
“And young people barely read newspapers these days.”
“I don’t think there’s any reason for us to waste too much effort on newspaper advertising.”
Before my regression, the general programming channels that relied too heavily on newspaper ads from their parent companies had completely failed to reach younger viewers.
Jung Wonki thought for a long time.
Then he asked,
“Then how do you plan to promote them?”
His expression suddenly brightened.
“Oh, wait.”
“At the production presentation for The Woman’s Garden, the live broadcast on Twister became a huge topic, right?”
“That was your idea too, wasn’t it?”
He smiled.
“Then how about we do another live Twister broadcast at our production presentation?”
I answered without hesitation.
“I’m not planning to hold a production presentation.”
The meeting room immediately fell silent.
