Filming the Self-Introduction Video (3)
Neoul knitted his brows and stared hard at the contents.
"I can't make out a single word."
He really did need to learn to read, sooner rather than later.
He folded the note again, put it back in the box, and set it carefully where he had found it, but just as he was about to move on, the camera director who had been following him and filming yelped in surprise and picked up the box for him.
"Hey! Wait a second! You have to take that with you!"
"Is this for me?"
"I'm not giving it to you. If you found it, you have to take it!"
"Ah, I see. Thank you."
Neoul clutched the box tightly and went outside. When he emerged, Ha On-ha was sitting on the floor, completely dazed.
Seeing Neoul come out at an unhurried pace, Ha On-ha pointed at the box and asked, "What's that? I don't think you had anything in your hands before."
"It was there on the way out."
Neoul held out the box. After checking what was inside, Ha On-ha gave a brief, powerless gasp.
"Oh... a Team Change Voucher?"
He handed it back, saying it might actually be useful, then muttered with every trace of amusement gone from his face, "Neoul... you're really not scared of anything, are you...? Honestly, the reason I asked you to come with me was because you looked like the least scared person here. I can't even watch horror movies, and ghosts are really scary... no, I mean I really hate them. Ughhh..."
The way he hid his face in both hands and writhed in misery made it obvious the place had truly terrified him. It was funny how he kept changing his wording, refusing to say he was scared no matter what.
But Neoul only tilted his head.
"There were no ghosts in there."
"Huh?"
"There were no ghosts in the horror experience area. Are there not ghosts here?"
Neoul pointed beside Ha On-ha.
Next to Ha On-ha, a group of middle school girl ghosts in gym uniforms were squealing that Neoul was handsome.
[Oppa, can you see us? You're so handsome! Are you a celebrity? Are you filming an entertainment show? What program is this?]
They were so excited they kept firing off questions one after another, and Neoul nodded in response.
"We are filming Idol Travel, an idol survival program."
"Wh- who are you talking to all of a sudden?"
"The ghost asked what program it was."
At the sight of Neoul speaking to empty air, Ha On-ha's face turned even whiter.
"Ha On-ha. They say your face is their type, and they're cheering for you."
"Aaagh! Why are you being scary like that!"
Horrified, Ha On-ha ducked behind the camera director's back and then fled straight toward the production staff.
The middle school girl ghosts puckered their lips in disappointment.
Neoul clicked his tongue and bent down so his eyes were level with theirs.
"I am Gal Neoul. I would appreciate your support as well."
He smiled as he spoke, and the ghosts' expressions brightened at once as they chattered away.
[Oppa, fighting! Please debut!]
Neoul nodded.
The camera director was impressed. Because the ghosts stood between Neoul and the camera director, it looked as if Neoul were speaking straight into the lens.
To the camera director, Neoul came across as a bold, fearless young man of twenty who was genuinely mischievous enough to tease his friends.
And on top of that, he had the poise of a professional idol, smiling without a trace of stiffness even while facing the camera and telling people to cheer for him.
The camera director was delighted by how handsome Neoul's face was and how good his voice sounded, and he took the footage with great care.
***
Producer Seok Oh-young went through the self-introduction videos one by one, rubbing his stiff eyes.
He had already finished checking the sheep ranch, the Olle Trail, and the green tea field, and now it was time to review the folk village footage.
Hoo...
Seok PD rummaged through his drawer and fished out some artificial tears. He dripped them into his eyes in a perfunctory way and stared back at the monitor.
Videos filmed by eighty-one different participants in all kinds of locations. He had expected a wide variety of distinctive results, but disappointingly, they all felt much the same.
They're all too aware of the camera.
He had handed them self-cams and let them loose in hopes of getting something natural, but it seemed that well over half of them had no idea what to do and were acting stiff as a board.
Well, most of the participants were still trainees and had no broadcasting experience, so that made sense.
Some viewers would probably find those awkward, broken-robot movements endearing and fresh.
But that kind of freshness and cuteness only really works when it comes from the especially attractive members of the already handsome eighty-one. What was he supposed to do about the ones in the middle, whose lines all sounded like copy and paste?
At least the videos from the participants who had stood out from the start, like Baek Yuri, Woo Cheong, and Gye Tae-seok, were worth keeping.
In the footage from the Olle Trail, Baek Yuri and Baek Gi-yeom introduced each other instead of themselves.
[Oh, right. Long ago, the adults told Yuri to call me "big brother," so I thought Yuri was a year older than me. He seemed smart and mature, too, and when we were little, Baek Yuri was even taller than me. But then we entered elementary school and ended up in the same class! Wow, nobody told me we were the same age until then! That's seriously mean, right!]
[You never once asked how old I was. Everyone, this is what Baek Gi-yeom is like. He's a fool, he overreacts all the time, and he's incredibly simple-minded.]
[And Baek Yuri's a fool too! He's insanely complicated! I don't know why life is always so complicated for him. He's got too many thoughts in that head of his. Aigoo~]
It was a smart strategy, using the fact that they were cousins to get both entertainment and chemistry at once.
Once the self-introduction videos went up on MuTube, viewers who watched Baek Yuri's video first would naturally want to look up Baek Gi-yeom's too. And viewers who started with Baek Gi-yeom's video would be drawn into Baek Yuri's as well.
In other words, they would gain an advantage in views over the other participants without even trying.
Woo Cheong, at the sheep ranch, ran around so much while laughing that the camera work turned chaotic.
[Aah! Sheepy! Sheep No. 1! Sheep No. 2! Sheep No. 3! Come here! Come here!]
He pushed his self-introduction to the back burner and said he had always wanted to try being a shepherd boy, then ran all over the place herding sheep. But no matter how he looked while scurrying around, he seemed less like a shepherd boy and more like a shepherd dog.
[Everyone! Look, look! Look at me! I've always wanted to do this! The wolf is hereee! The wolfff is hereee!]
Seok Oh-young had nearly blown out his eardrums while wearing his headset, and quickly turned the volume down.
Gye Tae-seok did a lying-down broadcast. He sprawled among the green tea bushes, filming the sky, then turned the camera back and gave a close shot of his decadent, dissolute-looking face.
[......]
[My strongest point is that I'm handsome.]
[I'll show you from every angle.]
Then he slowly circled the camera around his face and showed off his looks from every possible angle, as if to say that when you had a face this good, nothing else needed to be said.
When Seok PD moved on to the folk village footage, he rubbed his tired face while checking the video, then paused and frowned at one participant's clip.
"What's going on with this camera angle?"
What appeared on screen was Gal Neoul. At first the camera had been pointed straight at his face, but then it gradually tilted downward and kept filming him from a low angle.
Unlike the participants who had been hyperaware of the frame as they hunted for the prettiest angle...
Isn't this a bit too unconcerned?
Why was it so extreme?
Gal Neoul seemed not to care at all how he came across on screen. Or maybe he had no idea at all.
Ah... right, he was an ordinary participant.
Even so, the fact that he showed no humiliation whatsoever despite being filmed from an angle that made his nostrils visible was unfair in its own right. The world really was unjust.
Ha On-ha, who was terrified out of his mind beside him, had been captured too, and the contrast with Neoul, who had not a speck of fear in him, was worth seeing.
The footage showed Neoul returning from the well and walking around at his leisure, looking about, before picking up a Random Item Box.
Oh, he found it?
One box had been hidden in each of four locations: the sheep ranch, the Olle Trail, the green tea field, and the folk village.
Of course, no one had been told they were there. It was a hidden event reserved only for the lucky and the sharp-eyed.
At the Olle Trail and the green tea field, the search area had simply been too broad, so nobody found anything.
They had even arranged for a hired elderly actor to ask for help carrying some luggage and lead the participants past the place where the box was hidden, but none of them saw it.
At the ranch, child actor Lee Gal-chae had found the box while taking part in a lamb-feeding experience.
He had spotted the clue note with the box's location attached to the neck of a lamb in an instant and quietly found the box on his own.
[I think my powers of observation are... pretty good. I mostly observe people for acting, but I figured it couldn't hurt to observe and remember anything I can...]
In the case of the sheep ranch, the box was relatively easy to find. But the folk village had been much harder.
Where Neoul found his box was a place the production crew had hidden with great care.
The first condition. To discover the box, the participant had to choose the dark, narrow path at the fork instead of the broad, bright road leading to the exit.
So they had used a trick to lure the participants in.
- Please help us!
However, several participants took the wide path and passed by without a second glance.
They had thought it was just one more sound effect meant to scare them, like the screams that kept echoing through the horror experience area.
A few sharp-eyed participants realized it was a trap laid by the production team. They willingly stepped into the narrow, dark path to secure some screen time.
The second condition was overcoming fear.
But most of the participants had gone in and come out in such a panic that they fled without ever seeing the box.
The third condition was having good night vision.
The path where the box was hidden had been kept extremely dim, with only minimal lighting installed.
And yet Neoul had rushed into the dark path without even a second's hesitation the moment he heard the cry for help, then easily found the box on the way out.
"How on earth did he do that?"
What an odd fellow.
Still, it made for a good scene. Neoul's self-cam, though, looked as if it had been shot with his feet.
Seok Oh-young made a note that they needed to get an interview about this and moved on.
***
The interview writer, having received the producer's memo, called the participants out one by one during their breaks or practice time and conducted short interviews.
"At the horror experience area in the folk village, you heard someone calling for help and Gal Neoul participant went into the dark path, right?"
"Yes."
"Later, when we checked, Gal Neoul participant had the fastest reaction time. There were participants who didn't go in, and participants who hesitated before going in, but was there a reason Gal Neoul participant rushed in immediately without even a second's hesitation?"
Neoul recalled the moment and tilted his head, looking as though he didn't even understand why the question was being asked.
"One must not hesitate."
Oh. So he means that when someone is in danger, what reason could there be to delay? Why hesitate at all?
The way he said it as if it were obvious sounded pure-hearted and full of chivalry.
It could be a broadcast-friendly answer, but...
Looking into those serious eyes made the writer want to believe it was sincere, without a shred of falsehood. But then the next answer was strange.
"They may be eaten while one hesitates."
"Huh? Eaten? By a ghost?"
At the absurd answer, the interview writer smiled, finding Neoul rather cute. But Neoul shook his head seriously.
"By an apex predator of land."
Huh...? Apex what?
Was this some kind of eccentric concept...? Or a joke? His expression was far too serious.
Not knowing how to react, the writer simply moved on to the next question.
"You didn't predict at all that it might be a trap the production team had prepared?"
"It was a trap?"
Neoul's eyes widened, then he nodded as if something had just dawned on him.
"That was a trap...! So that was it!"
The interview writer was dumbfounded.
W-what? Why is he only realizing it now?
How hard had the production team worked on that?
Was the Gal Neoul participant so unbothered by it that he hadn't even recognized it as a trap...?
No wonder. After watching a little of the footage, he really did seem unnervingly calm in that terrifying place. It looked like he simply didn't know fear.
"It was very dark, so it must have been hard to see. How did you find the box?"
"......?"
Neoul answered, looking puzzled.
"It was not dark at all. I could see very well."
"Pardon? You could see well?"
This time, the writer's face was full of confusion. Not dark at all? Did he have such extraordinary night vision that he might as well be psychic? People said carrots were good for night blindness; did he eat a lot of carrots?
In every possible way, he was an extraordinary participant.