Special Skill Acquired (?)
When an actor performs in front of the camera, countless elements work together in complex harmony.
At the most basic level, the performance must unfold inside the frame the director has envisioned, and the actors must thoroughly understand the stage directions before delivering a performance that matches them. Sometimes the angle of the light falling across an actor’s face subtly changes the expression or atmosphere captured on camera; the pitch and speed of a voice can shift the emotions a viewer feels by the slightest degree.
But the essence never changes.
Immersion. I have to immerse myself if I’m going to pull the other person in with me.
That “other person” was both the audience and the woman standing right in front of him—Seo Ju-gyeong.
At Director Kim Han-su’s cue, Yeon-woo sank into his inner world. In a way it was not so different from how the character Ryu Yeon-woo in the drama Parabola experienced the world in slow motion and retreated into a realm all his own.
If only I hadn’t gotten sick…
A mother and son who lived frugally, never indulging in luxuries, did not need a great deal of money. Even without any special talent, if the two of them had simply worked diligently and steadily, saving little by little, they might one day have been able to live without watching other people’s faces—might even have secured a tiny one-room place where they could stretch their legs.
No. Being sick is just an excuse. What exactly was wrong with me? In the end everything depended on me…
If only he had gotten back on his feet a little sooner. If only he had possessed the passion to throw himself body and soul into something. If he had done even one thing a single day earlier, his mother would have suffered one day less. A few fewer wrinkles might have formed; the calluses on her fingertips might have been a little less hard.
A person’s heart is ultimately like a great wrapping cloth. To shield her child from a world that cuts like a knife-edged wind, the mother stretches and stretches her own cloth to cover him as he curls himself smaller. The holes that appear—gouged by knives, snipped by scissors, clumsily patched—tear and split in every direction as the cloth itself expands.
Yeon-woo slowly opened the eyes he had closed and looked at the mother standing before him.
On the opposite side, Seo Ju-gyeong watched Yeon-woo with mild puzzlement. Even after the call of “Action” that signaled the start of the scene, he kept his eyes closed. The performance she had seen from Ryu Yeon-woo on the first take had been flawless.
What part didn’t he like enough that he wanted to shoot it again…?
She knew perfectly well that the young man in front of her possessed the most successful career among the next-generation actors currently working.
A perfectionist? Well, that’s probably how he got this far.
Seo Ju-gyeong cleared her mind, silently ran through her lines, and looked forward again.
Then Ryu Yeon-woo opened his eyes.
They were filled with apology. No—not simple apology, but a tangled mixture of shame at his own guilt, resentment and self-reproach toward the time that had already passed, regret, and longing.
Seo Ju-gyeong’s gaze left his face and drifted naturally downward. She could not help looking.
His hands…
It was a bust shot that framed only the upper body, so the hands hanging limply at his sides would never appear on camera—yet the Ryu Yeon-woo standing before her was trembling. Exactly like someone who had just stepped out of ice water.
She did not know why the thought struck her so suddenly.
……!
Seo Ju-gyeong had married late and given birth to a late child; at home she had an elementary-school daughter about to enter fourth grade. She was a mother herself, yet she did not have a grown son like the young man in front of her, so she had approached the role purely as a professional immersion. Not every actor who plays a parent is married with children of their own. Still, expressing paternal or maternal love is rarely difficult. An actor cast as a murderer has never actually committed murder, after all.
But the moment she looked at Ryu Yeon-woo—the moment she met the emotion of a man trembling with guilt and berating himself—Seo Ju-gyeong suddenly thought of her own daughter at home.
It was absurd. What reason would her little girl have to feel self-reproach, regret, and longing? It made no sense to look at a tall young male actor and think of a tiny daughter. And yet, strangely, it was so sad.
A fraction of a second passed.
Then emotion surged up inside Seo Ju-gyeong, and before she knew it she was weeping.
Watching Seo Ju-gyeong’s upper body on the field monitor, Director Kim Han-su’s eyes went wide. Tears were in the script, of course, but not now. They were supposed to come in the next scene, when a different angle framed the two of them together.
Yet the reason the director’s eyes widened was not simply that Seo Ju-gyeong had suddenly begun to cry. The face the monitor showed was one of genuine surprise. The expression of a woman who did not understand why she was shedding tears was captured completely. That made it all the more immersive.
Originally she was supposed to call Yeon-woo’s name and murmur lines of dazed confusion—wondering whether the son who had unrealistically appeared from the other side of the earth was real or not. Instead Seo Ju-gyeong could not speak a single word; she simply stood there with a startled face, tears streaming.
The assistant director beside him glanced at Kim Han-su, trying to decide whether to call “NG” and cut for the sudden improvisation. But Director Kim Han-su kept his mouth tightly shut and stared only at the screen.
Then, without warning, Yeon-woo walked into the monitor’s frame. Silently he took the paper bag of vegetables Seo Ju-gyeong was holding, set it on the floor, and wrapped both of his hands around hers.
It was a complete mess. They had left the frame the director intended; the actors had ignored every stage direction and even omitted the dialogue.
Yet as he watched, Director Kim Han-su opened his mouth.
“Okay.”
After a few additional shots from different angles, Director Kim Han-su officially called the wrap on Parabola.
“That’s a wrap!”
At the director’s declaration the staff erupted in cheers. Yeon-woo smiled as he looked around at them. No matter how many productions he entered, the day filming ended always arrived, yet he never quite got used to it. Diving deep into one world and then climbing back out was never easy.
Beside him Seo Ju-gyeong stood in silence. Having plunged so deeply into the story and emerged again in such a short span of time, she still looked dazed. She shook her head, collected herself, and turned to the young actor at her side.
“Yeon-woo.”
“Ah—yes, sunbaenim. You worked hard.”
Yeon-woo smiled at Seo Ju-gyeong and bowed his head; she returned the bow.
“…I learned a great deal today. Honestly I’m still so dazed I don’t even know what I learned yet. I’ll have to go home and quietly replay it all for a long time.”
At her words Yeon-woo silently bowed once more, then spoke quietly.
“I learned a great deal from you as well.”
The surrounding staff might have thought it was merely a warm exchange of greetings and well-wishes between senior and junior actors, but Yeon-woo’s reply was every bit as sincere as Seo Ju-gyeong’s.
If the most important moment of a work is one where the chemistry with your partner hits hard, then it’s all right to forget you’re filming and immerse yourself completely like this.
In the end it was the director who decided whether to use the take or not. If another opportunity like this arose on the next project, he thought, he could free himself from shooting technique and the script and pour out emotion to the fullest. When immersion was total, even if they strayed a little from the page, another kind of charm for the work might be born.
It’s not a game… but it really feels like I’ve acquired some special skill.
Once filming wrapped, the Parabola team hurriedly packed their gear and boarded a flight back to Korea. The rest of the staff could take their time, but the directing team had to return at once and complete high-quality editing. With the broadcast date looming, time was short.
Yeon-woo also boarded a plane leaving New York’s JFK Airport—only his destination was not Incheon International Airport with the rest of the crew, but Los Angeles International Airport. The country was so vast that even a domestic hop required more than six hours of long-haul flying.
The aircraft carrying Yeon-woo, Manager Kim Min-su, Security Team Leader Park Jung-hyeon, and two security staff touched down at LAX. As the five men cleared the gate, a familiar face waved from a distance and approached with several other staff in tow.
“Hahaha. My friend!”
“Bernard. How have you been? We’ve talked on the phone, but it still feels like it’s been ages.”
“I thought my eyes would fall out waiting for you.”
Yeon-woo clasped the hand of Bernard Fenton, who had come to meet them, and shook it vigorously up and down. Outwardly the age gap made them look like grandfather and grandson, yet the two greeted each other with the genuine delight of friends reuniting. When conversation flowed easily, interests aligned, and both parties benefited, becoming good friends regardless of age was only natural.
Yeon-woo had covered most of his face with a cap and mask, but LA had a particularly large Korean population; lingering at the airport risked being recognized and drawing a crowd. After a brief greeting they moved quickly to the vehicle Bernard Fenton had prepared.
Once Yeon-woo was seated, Bernard settled beside him and spoke in a friendly tone.
“I already heard the news that you’ve become the muse for Armand and Capela.”
“The story’s already reached LA?”
“Haha. Of course it has. Armand and Capela are probably even more famous in America than in Korea. You have no idea how extravagant Hollywood people are.”
Yeon-woo gave an awkward smile. Bernard Fenton clearly had no idea how fervently Korea worshipped luxury goods under the name “myeongpum.”
Our country is every bit as bad as Hollywood—if not worse. It’s not only the rich who love luxury brands.
Then he noticed the clothes Bernard was wearing and the watch on his wrist.
“Bernard, you’re a Hollywood man yourself.”
“Hmm?”
Of course he was a Hollywood man—what was that supposed to mean? Then he glanced down at the Armand suit he was wearing and the Capela watch and burst out laughing.
“Hahaha. What can I do? The one thing I don’t have is youth, and the one thing I have plenty of is money… Come to think of it, Mr. Ryu, you’ve been selling the brands you model for?”
“They’re brands Bernard likes, so of course his friend was happy to take the modeling job.”
“I still can’t beat you with words.”
Meanwhile, at the very moment Yeon-woo and Bernard Fenton were discussing ambassador work, the Armand pictorial Yeon-woo had shot as his final schedule before leaving the country was released simultaneously worldwide.
Eyes half-lidded in languid ease. An air of decadent, dreamlike allure that looked indifferent on the surface yet carried an undercurrent of chaotic violence. It was a spicy, red-hot vibe—a complete 180 from the image Yeon-woo usually projected.
The internet had already been burning so fiercely that little seemed left to catch fire, yet with fresh fuel supplied it blazed up all over again.