| Episode 59. Filming the Corporate Promotional Video (2)
“Wouldn’t No. 21 be too dark for Iwol?”
“If we use something bright, all his features will get washed out, so no.”
“Hmm… Should we do his makeup differently for each set?”
The three professionals surrounded me and carried on a heated debate.
I still hadn’t gotten used to the experience of having cosmetics I’d only ever heard of applied to my face. For a twenty-nine-year-old office worker, this level of attention was far too much.
On top of that, all three of them looked quite serious, as if there were some problem with my skin tone.
To my eyes, shades 17 through 23 all looked the same, but the staff members’ brows showed no sign of smoothing out. How was I supposed not to feel self-conscious in this environment?
“If he were just pale, that’d be one thing, but Iwol has a slightly wan look too… Iwol, you’re not sick or anything, are you?”
“No, I’m perfectly fine.”
At my answer, the staff member smiled brightly and said that was a relief.
Then she began patting my face furiously with something like a sponge.
This feeling—I’d experienced it once before during the profile shoot, but I still couldn’t get used to it.
How many more makeup sessions would be waiting for me before debut? My heart pounded for all sorts of reasons.
The power of a complete transformation was tremendous in many ways.
First, Choi Jeho.
This guy had the role of someone “rough but with a fairly cute side,” so he was assigned the flashiest, most delinquent-like style among us.
As if it weren’t enough that he looked like he’d sold off his tie somewhere and left not one but two buttons undone for reasons unknown, his hair was also extravagantly styled with wax. It had even been dyed dark gray.
Do high schoolers use wax these days? I went through all three years with plain hair, so I wouldn’t know.
Compared to him, Jeong Seongbin had the neat class-president feel.
Unlike the other five, whom you wouldn’t want to run into in the hallway, Jeong Seongbin had at least a bit of gentleness in his face, so his hair was dyed dark brown.
If it were light brown, it might have been too soft for the concept of a high schooler who was “cold on the outside but lukewarm on the inside,” so they’d gone with a darker tone, and it wasn’t a bad choice.
Park Juu was specially bestowed with a sky-blue knit vest.
Because that color was Park Juu’s birthstone. Fans never missed even these tiny details.
Park Juu in a knit vest looked good even to my eyes, which usually felt nothing no matter what Spark wore.
If I had to guess, once the music video was released, rough reviews like “Park Juu looks fucking good in that knit” would start appearing.
They even blasted his hair with a dryer to create a tousled look, and the final result was pretty decent. Anyone could see he looked like a kid who’d been caught sleeping and chased to the back of the classroom.
Lee Cheonghyeon looked normal at first glance, but he presented a look that was slightly unusual in places.
For example, though he was a student, the end of his tie was tucked into his pocket, or he was wearing socks with vivid paint-splatter patterns under a dark school uniform. In the drama scenes, we were planning to put ink stains on his sleeves too.
This guy had even dyed his hair purple altogether. Because of his role in the music video, we created a scientist look that wasn’t just unusual, but downright absurd.
If you looked closely, unlike Lee Cheonghyeon, who seemed free-spirited, Kang Giyeon was dressed so neatly it was almost suffocating.
With his shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck and his tie pulled tight, the look contrasted with his sharp face and gave a strong impression. We even put a black turtleneck underneath.
Since Choi Jeho already had the delinquent-like face and outfit, we’d tried going in a different direction, and as expected, it was excellent.
As a bonus, for Lee Cheonghyeon and Kang Giyeon, we added one friendship item each, which Lee Cheonghyeon loved so much.
As I had discussed with the planning team beforehand, I attached straps of the same shape to Lee Cheonghyeon’s belt hole and Kang Giyeon’s bracelet. In the shape of cute dolls.
After I summarized all this and handed it over to the planning team, the leech-like “three pieces of advice to improve stage quality” were all fulfilled.
Once all six of us had finished makeup and changed into grayish school uniforms arranged to suit each of our personalities, the real shoot began.
As for the choreography, we had matched it in the practice room until the soles of our shoes wore down.
And thanks to my having suffered all night tearing my hair out over the filming location, I’d chosen a perfect place, enough for the system to grant me experience without a word of complaint.
So, like the recording not long ago, this music video shoot would also proceed smoothly.
…Naively, that was what I thought. It was a complacent judgment.
“Stop filming for a moment.”
At the filming director’s words, the music video set fell silent in an instant.
I was out of breath after dancing three times in a row, but I couldn’t even let my breathing be heard.
Because everyone, from the filming staff to our manager, had gathered in front of the monitor and begun watching the footage with serious expressions.
What’s the problem?
Did we not practice the stage-center positioning enough, so the axis tilted to one side?
Or is there still a member with a dark expression?
If not that…
‘As expected, is the picture weird now in a different way because I’m included?’
While all sorts of thoughts were running through my head, our manager’s gaze turned toward us.
“Guys, come here for a moment.”
At our manager’s call, we carefully headed over to the monitor.
Then the director played the footage we had just shot.
My embarrassingly unfamiliar face kept appearing and disappearing… No, that wasn’t the issue.
“…None of our mouth shapes match.”
“You can tell too, right, Iwol?”
That was right.
The result of every member of Spark, who had never once practiced lip-syncing in their lives, focusing on the director’s instruction to “dance while being conscious of your positions!”
They had ended up merely opening and closing their mouths, and as a result, there were guys whose mouths had long since shut even though the lyrics were still going.
The track was clearly playing the chorus that we all sang together, but everyone’s mouth shape was different.
In a world where music videos were captured frame by frame at 0.1-second intervals and even made into slow-motion gifs to be shared, if these free-spirited mouths were revealed?
≫ What has one body but six mouths?
└ Spark
└ Correct. As a prize, I shall give you the lip-sync gif of the year
└ Is that really a prize?
I could see it without even watching. We’d end up with a humiliating nickname like “synchronized-dance idols (except for their mouths).”
This was all my fault for forgetting that Spark’s debut music video in the past had been an emotional ballad.
Back then, everyone had just sat there and mouthed along, so it probably hadn’t gotten this bad.
Since we couldn’t suddenly learn lip-syncing we were bad at on set, in the end, we had to film the music video along with a vivid live performance, veins standing out in our necks.
I could only hope the video team captured this well.
* * *
After the music video shoot, which felt like it had abused our throats even more than recording, UA began planning the album.
Of course, planning the album wasn’t easy either.
Because Yu Hansu had returned full of venom.
“So… you’re saying we should release the debut album in three versions?”
“Yes. Through the three concepts of before school, during class, and after school, we show the flow of a day.”
This time, he seemed to have come having familiarized himself with the concept of youthful school life, but not a chance.
Who releases three versions of an album the moment they debut? From a shitty small agency, at that.
If it were you, would you want to start by buying three albums for kids whose faces and names you hadn’t even memorized yet?
Meanwhile, the sight of him feeling proud because he’d brought in three whole ideas was a spectacle.
Apparently, Yu Hansu didn’t know the common sense that the more incompetent someone was at work, the more helpful it was to others if they didn’t touch the work at all.
It was a moment that proved my thought that we had to drive that man out wasn’t wrong.
Even while I was seriously contemplating how to make Yu Hansu fall away, his mouth did not stop.
I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t listening closely to Yu Hansu.
The planning team, who had to work directly with Yu Hansu, already had no light in their eyes.
From what I’d heard, the planning team seemed to be fighting their own desperate battle with Yu Hansu.
‘The planning team leader and Producer Yu had an argument?’
‘Apparently. Maybe because both of them have been in the field for a long time, their difference in opinion doesn’t seem easy to narrow.’
What the manager swallowed after that was obvious without hearing it.
It was probably something like, “Rather than a difference in opinion, it’s more like one side is blocking the other side’s unilateral stubbornness…”
What would that man know about actual work?
The reason I was able to push a proposal at the planning team and get through it without much issue was, first, that the company didn’t have a proper plan at the time.
Second, my age range and my position as a trainee packaged my actions as “the spirit of a young trainee.”
But imagine a third party who hadn’t even properly grasped the history barging in while a project was already clearly underway and telling people to do this and that.
That sort of thing looked reckless, beyond simply being proactive.
So from the perspective of the planning team, who had been working on this all along, Yu Hansu had no choice but to look annoying.
Compared to the planning team, I was actually on the side of listening carefully to Yu Hansu’s remarks. Be grateful, human.
In the bleak atmosphere, only the PPT I’d had to stay up all night organizing at Yu Hansu’s instruction passed by helplessly without receiving anyone’s attention. My heart ached.
Perhaps noticing everyone’s soulless attitude, Yu Hansu stopped his presentation and said,
“Everyone, you are actually listening to me properly, aren’t you?”
It was a tone so rude that even if he went up against Choi Jeho, he wouldn’t lose.
Still, I’ll praise him for the one thing he did well: he was absolutely terrible at his job, yet he never let go of the right to speak. Not just anyone could have that level of shamelessness.
“Producer Yu, what exactly was your intention in saying that just now?”
The planning team leader asked without hiding her displeasure. Yu Hansu answered without backing down.
“No, it’s just that everyone is listening so openly without motivation. If it’s like this, do you think the person presenting in front of you will feel like doing it?”
Between Yu Hansu and the planning team leader, a battle of nerves unfolded, three seconds away from a dogfight.
I hurriedly lowered my gaze to the keyboard that had been flipping through the PPT.
Soon after, the planning team’s voice, dripping with sarcasm, and Yu Hansu’s abusive remarks in response filled the meeting room.
That was when it happened. The system appeared above the keyboard.