Baseball Bat and Sword
Even as Yeon-woo and Han Hae-un pressed their investigation harder and Kim Su-hyeok left on assignment for Japan, time marched steadily on until the day of the commercial shoot arrived.
"Actor-nim, we've arrived at the parking lot."
"Yes. I'll be right out."
Yeon-woo went down to the garage and climbed into Kim Min-su's car.
His manager seemed genuinely excited about the long-awaited schedule.
"Min-su hyung. You look pretty pumped that I've got a shoot today."
"Of course. You know I hate sitting around with my butt glued to a chair."
Yeon-woo tilted his head at that.
"But you're sitting with your butt glued to the driver's seat right now."
"Ahem—that's different. Lately I've been writing training materials for the new road managers the company brought in, and it turns out I have zero talent for that side of things."
Yeon-woo smiled at Kim Min-su's grumbling. Having served as both instructor and commander in his previous life, he knew exactly how hard it was to distill hard-won know-how into written educational materials.
"By the way, it's been ages since we went on a schedule together, Min-su hyung."
"That's right."
From Yeon-woo's perspective the theater troupe's plays and the recent YouTube variety shoot had all been schedules, yet unlike drama or film work there had never been much for Kim Min-su to handle.
"Min-su hyung. Should we put some music on?"
"Ohhh. What's the occasion?"
While filming Saebyeol Family, Yeon-woo had realized he was far too out of touch with current songs.
"Let's go with the top one hundred."
"Got it."
Kim Min-su queued tracks with practiced ease.
"Do you usually listen to music when you're driving alone?"
"Ah, yes. Quite often."
That was news. Kim Min-su had been handling him for several years already, yet he had never once played music until now.
"Then why didn't you ever put any on, even for long trips?"
"Well, Actor-nim, you mostly look over scripts and practice acting in the car, so I didn't want to risk disturbing you."
Yeon-woo gave an awkward smile.
"You didn't have to worry about that…"
Having reached the point where he could finish reading educational books even in the middle of a South Sudanese civil war where rebels might casually fire RPG-7s out of boredom, music playing or not made no difference to his concentration.
"I like listening to music these days, so please put it on whenever."
"Oh, will do."
Listening to upbeat idol tracks, Yeon-woo and Kim Min-su headed for the commercial set in Paju.
They parked and stepped out just as Jeong Cheol-min, arriving at the same moment, climbed out of the car opposite them.
Yeon-woo smiled lightly and nodded at Im Jae-uk, the manager assigned to Jeong Cheol-min. As before, Im Jae-uk bowed deeply at a full ninety degrees.
I told him he doesn't need to greet me that formally…
Since it clearly wasn't going to change no matter how many times he said it, Yeon-woo simply nodded back and walked over to Jeong Cheol-min.
"Teacher. How are you feeling about shooting the commercial today?"
"Like I could fly. What kind of luxury is this, landing such a good disciple in my later years?"
Yeon-woo bristled a little.
"Come on, Teacher, what do you mean later years? These days the retirement age keeps going up and the working years keep getting longer. You're not even fifty yet—you're still a young man."
"Is that so? Anyway, you sure talk a smooth game."
It would be a problem if Jeong Cheol-min were in his later years. Counting from his previous life, Yeon-woo was roughly the same age, so this was less consolation for his teacher and more self-defense.
"Let's go in."
Jeong Cheol-min led the way; Yeon-woo followed him onto the set.
Come to think of it, I've always done commercial shoots alone, but this time I'm with colleagues.
It felt strangely refreshing.
Inside, the other actors had already arrived.
"Cheol-min Teacher! Yeon-woo oppa!"
Han Byeol, her hair braided into twin tails just like Ella's look from long ago, waved both hands high over her head in greeting.
"You all got here early. Where's the director?"
"We said a quick hello earlier. I think he went inside for a moment to check something."
Speak of the devil— a familiar figure walked over.
It was Jeong Yo-han, who had served as CG director on White Blood.
"Yeon-woo-ssi. It's been a while."
"Ah, Director. Have you been well?"
"Thanks to our drama doing so well, I've been extremely busy."
"I never expected to see you again as the commercial director."
Today Jeong Yo-han was here not as CG director but in the role of commercial director.
When they had heard during the ad meetings that he would take the commercial director seat, they had been surprised at first, but everyone soon accepted it. Even while shooting White Blood he had been far more than a simple CG director—there was hardly any part of the overall production that hadn't passed through his hands. He had been essential to every aspect of direction, so him taking the megaphone himself was nothing strange.
"I'm not sure if I can do well. Still, I'll give it my best shot."
He said that, but Jeong Yo-han's eyes were full of confidence.
In truth, CG was used even more in commercials than in dramas or films. Commercials had to pack a great deal of commercial information into a short time while still feeling fresh and not boring to consumers, so they made far more eye-catching new attempts than other video content. Naturally, all kinds of special effects were employed.
"You're just being modest. Director Jeong, you handled countless commercials in America."
Jeong Yo-han smiled.
"Director Jeong… Hearing Yeon-woo-ssi call me that feels somehow embarrassing. Of course I've participated in a lot of commercial films, but this is still my first time as director."
"Then we should consider this your directorial debut?"
"I suppose it is. All right, once makeup is done, shall we start with the group shot?"
The actors nodded.
With familiar actors and a familiar director, it somehow felt less like shooting a commercial and more like filming a spin-off of White Blood.
After finishing makeup, the actors began shooting. The group scene they started with first got an OK relatively quickly.
But problems arose with Yeon-woo's portions.
The overall concept of the ad was a technique used by a certain sports brand: stitching different videos together so they looked like one continuous whole. In that famous commercial they would split the center of the screen, with a swimmer on the left and a track athlete on the right standing in their starting lanes and warming up, splicing half of each body together in perfect sync; or when a horse a jockey was riding leaped and crossed the frame, it would switch to an amateur on a freestyle bike.
The smartphone commercial Yeon-woo was shooting this time was structured similarly, splitting the screen or overlapping to cross-cut between real-life scenes and the fantastical ones from the drama.
The concept is a smartphone that heightens content immersion with vivid displays and uninterrupted data, I suppose.
Yeon-woo swinging a baseball bat in amateur baseball would cross the frame and transform into Jeong Do-jin of White Blood swinging a sword.
Acting both was no problem, and with the best director handling the editing, that was fine too. But the issue was that the person who wrote the commercial storyboard seemed to have created it without much understanding of sports movements.
"Ah, this is a bit tricky."
Looking at the screen, Director Jeong Yo-han shook his head.
Yeon-woo, who had swung the bat dozens of times in his baseball uniform, scratched his head and approached.
"The connection point doesn't match, right?"
Jeong Yo-han nodded.
"Yes. Swinging a baseball bat and swinging a sword are completely different forms, after all."
Aside from the act of swinging something, a sword and a baseball bat differed in body movement, weight, and angle. Most of all, a baseball bat was swung with both hands, while Jeong Do-jin in the drama swung his sword with one hand.
"Hmm… What about swinging a tennis racket?"
With tennis it seemed they could roughly match the form of Jeong Do-jin swinging a sword. But at Yeon-woo's suggestion, the advertising agency's person in charge standing next to Jeong Yo-han heavily shook his head.
"…About that. The client specifically insisted on including baseball."
"Baseball?"
Yeon-woo tilted his head, then looked at the uniform he was wearing and soon nodded.
"Ahh, this is the SL Group baseball team uniform, isn't it?"
SL Electronics, which had released the smartphone Universe, was a subsidiary of SL Group, and the group also ran a professional baseball team. Now he understood why they had forced baseball in.
Then Jeong Cheol-min, who had been watching, approached and patted Yeon-woo's shoulder.
"They're trying to squeeze every last drop of value out of it."
"Ahem, ahem."
Caught out by Jeong Cheol-min's words, the ad person in charge averted his gaze in embarrassment.
Currently, actor Ryu Yeon-woo wasn't signing any new ad contracts except for the defense industry commercial with Leehan Group, making him the hardest celebrity in the entertainment industry to book as an advertising model. From SL Group's perspective, having secured an ad contract with Yeon-woo under the pretext of the White Blood members, they probably wanted to achieve multiple effects with a single commercial.
No wonder most of the group shooting scenes were company or university concepts, yet amateur baseball suddenly popped up out of nowhere.
If he swung the sword like a baseball bat, Jeong Do-jin of White Blood would look awkward, and the reverse wouldn't feel like baseball at all. But what could they do? Once contracted, a professional accepted the client's demands and created a splendid piece of work.
"Director Jeong. Could you pull up the footage of Jeong Do-jin swinging his sword? And if you have a stopwatch, could I borrow one?"
Jeong Yo-han nodded at the request. Even while shooting White Blood, this young world star would pause when he hit a snag, think for a moment, then make some request. And if they just did as he asked without complaint, he would brilliantly solve the problem again. Jeong Yo-han, who had undergone this repeated learning many times, moved quickly.
He instructed the staff over the walkie-talkie.
Static—
"Jae-jun, does our production team have a stopwatch? Yeah, that black one. Bring it over."
Before long a staff member brought the stopwatch, and Yeon-woo stood in front of the field monitor, concentrating on his own footage of swinging a sword in Jeong Do-jin's costume.
Click, click—
Click—
"Play it again, please."
At Yeon-woo's words, Director Jeong replayed the sword-swinging footage over and over. Continuously pressing the stopwatch while staring intently at the video, Yeon-woo this time closed his eyes, matched the rhythm, and pressed the stopwatch.
2.75
2.73
The playback time displayed on the monitor and the timing Yeon-woo matched with his eyes closed were nearly identical. A 0.02-second difference wouldn't feel jarring even without editing.
This time Yeon-woo measured something like a length with his fingers from his sword-wielding self on the monitor, then nodded.
"Hmm, about this height? Let's try shooting again. I think I can roughly match it."
"All right, then let's go again."
Yeon-woo picked up the baseball bat and stepped onto the chroma-key set. He began swinging the bat again, recalling the sensation of pressing the timer as he checked the swinging time.
Hmm, the bat's weight is making it slower. I need to go a bit faster.
After swinging several more times and finding the feel, Yeon-woo called out.
"Starting."
And when the swinging bat reached about the middle of his body, he released one of the two hands holding it.
In baseball it was called a "one-hand follow-through." It was a motion used not only in baseball but in all sports like golf or racket sports where you swing to hit a ball—the subsequent motion after striking the ball was the follow-through. What Yeon-woo was doing now was performing that follow-through with only one hand.
The moment he swung, Yeon-woo instinctively felt it.
Got it. Timing perfect.
Then, as if he had hit the baseball that would be added in post-production, he released the bat and ran out of the frame, and Jeong Yo-han, watching on the monitor, shouted.
"Okay. Cut!"
Watching, Jeong Yo-han also got a strong feeling that something had clicked.
Yeon-woo approached the field monitor again, and Jeong Yo-han put both the footage of Jeong Do-jin swinging the sword and the baseball-bat footage just shot on the monitor at once. He set the transparency of both videos low so they overlapped on one screen, slowed the speed, and pressed play.
Then "Jeong Do-jin" from White Blood and "Ryu Yeon-woo" in the baseball uniform began moving in slow motion, overlapping simultaneously.
Clearly the beginning was completely different. The shoulder movements while swinging differed, and the heights of the baseball bat and sword didn't match each other. Then, around when the baseball bat passed the waist, the Yeon-woo on screen released one of the hands holding it, and soon the bat's height dropped with a thud and began moving to the same position as the sword.
After that, every movement of the body matched so perfectly that it seemed as if they had originally been one scene, merging into one.
At that magical sight, gasps of admiration burst from the mouths of the staff watching the monitor.