The Advertiser Wants It
How long had it even been since the second making-of dropped? Every corner of social media was nothing but Hyejin talk.
Or was it?
Maybe I was just noticing it because nothing else was catching my eye besides our drama.
"Man, they edited this really well."
It was the edit racking up the biggest reactions across every community board — a cut that blended the first and second making-of videos just right, splitting Hwang Hyejin's real face and the CG-aged version side by side on the same screen. They'd matched the angles and the timeline almost perfectly, so you could compare them at a glance.
How completely she'd poured Han Yuna's rage into the performance. How naturally the CG had layered years onto Hwang Hyejin's face. Everything came through crystal clear.
This is the exact concept I was going to push viral myself.
I'd planned to seed it while posing as some hardcore fan hyped for the drama. Turns out I didn't need to. Whoever mashed up the first and second making-ofs — I had no idea who they were, but I was grateful they'd carried out my plan for me. Probably one of Hyejin's fans.
"Manager Cha, weren't you the one telling Hyejin not to ego-surf? Looks like you're worse than she is."
An Byeonguk, our road manager in the driver's seat, glanced back at me as he said it. He was three years older and a longtime senior at the company, but my rapid promotion had twisted the internal hierarchy into something weird.
"This stuff is ridiculously addictive. No matter how much I search, I keep looking for new reactions. Watching the buzz snowball is half the fun."
"That's the joy of raising an artist for you."
"You sound like you know."
"Just things I've heard. From seniors and bosses."
I'd expected him to resent my rocket promotion, but An Byeonguk was cooler about it than I'd thought — mostly because he figured I'd eventually peel off into directing and producing rather than stay a manager like him.
Hwang Hyejin came out of the house with her mother.
"Oppa! Phone! Tablet!"
The second she climbed into the car, Hyejin stuck her hand out at me. She was fully hooked on ego-surfing too.
I shoved her into the far corner of the seat first and greeted her mother properly.
"Hello, ma'am. You've been keeping her completely off phones and computers, right?"
"Yes, don't worry. I powered down her phone and hid it, and I confiscated every computer."
"Perfect."
"But how long do we have to…?"
"There are still people running around lighting fires over Jo Siyeon. It should settle down soon enough, though."
"Take good care of her today. Hyejin, have a good shoot."
The car pulled out, and I handed over the tablet where I'd already organized the web reaction files the night before. Hyejin took it with a little giggle — then her pupils shook the moment she saw how many PDFs there were.
"D-Doyoung oppa? What is all this?"
"You said you were curious. Internet reactions. So I scraped a bunch together last night."
"There's way too much. Oppa, did you pull an all-nighter just to show me this?"
"Not an all-nighter, but I did spend some time on it."
About ten minutes?
No — it hadn't even taken five. Since surveying drama reactions counted as part of "video production," the Future App had cheerfully one-clicked the whole job for me. Out of curiosity I'd even tried asking it to scrape and organize investment intel like stocks and futures, but it shut that down cold.
This application's operational purpose is to support Cha Doyoung's video content production.
Whatever else you said about it, the app had a rock-solid sense of mission.
"At that volume, you won't finish reading it even if you spend the whole day. Ego-surf to your heart's content."
"…Oppa, thank you so much."
She looked up at me with eyes full of genuine emotion, and by now I honestly couldn't tell whether it was acting or the real thing. I'd been noticing it more and more lately — Hwang Hyejin mixed a quiet layer of emotional performance even into everyday social interactions. Not that it was a bad thing. That much was just cute little fox behavior.
While Hyejin sank deep into her ego-surfing, I prowled the internet on my phone hunting for any fresh buzz. At the rate I was going, An Byeonguk might be right — I was more addicted than she was.
I could practically hear the dopamine exploding inside my skull. All I'd done was nag the Future App a little and click a few times with my brain. And yet people's reactions hit me with this kind of full-body thrill.
And Hyejin…
I snuck a glance. She was grinning with her nose practically pressed to the tablet, like she might fall into the screen. Unlike me, she was earning every bit of that praise through her own hard work. Did that mean she felt something different from what I was feeling? Suddenly I wanted to know.
Nope. I was getting way too addicted to ego-surfing. I closed my phone and shut my eyes, pretending to sleep while I poked around the Future App interface. I pulled up the underwater scene from Chae Seoyun's Nike CF that I'd made not long ago.
Swimming in a long dress, discovering a pair of Nike sneakers on the seafloor, fleeing a grotesque giant deep-sea fish as a mermaid tail unfurled, bursting through the surface to gain two legs, planting her feet on the sand, and sprinting in those sneakers — the whole sequence. I hadn't come up with the concept, so I couldn't speak to that. But the footage itself was flawless from start to finish. This wasn't this world's CG. This was CG built with technology from a thousand years in the future…!
This video was produced to match the standard home television resolution of this era.
It is not a quality that fully applies technology from a thousand years in the future.
Ah. Right. Got it. So you want to emphasize that you didn't even use one percent of your full power. Thinking about it, even if the Future App churned out 4K, 16K, 64K — whatever absurd resolution — the viewer's playback device was still a TV, a computer, or a smartphone.
Video production is subordinate, from the very start, to the final consumer's viewing environment.
Then what about theaters?
The thought had barely skimmed through my head when the car arrived at the set.
"Cut! Great work!"
"Thank you for your hard work!"
"Thank you for your hard work!"
The final cut call that marked the end of shooting. Hwang Hyejin finished her performance with full energy and bowed left and right in every direction. I was capturing the moment fondly on camera when PD Son Junggu walked over.
"Assistant Director Cha Doyoung — are you free after wrap today?"
"Manager Cha Doyoung is busy, but Assistant Director Cha Doyoung will make time even if he doesn't have any. What do you need?"
"We've finished editing episode three, and I was hoping you'd take a look. As you know, episode three includes that 'tribute footage.'"
The overwhelming visual of a skyscraper in the middle of Gangnam exploding in a gas fire and collapsing, turning the major intersection into hell on earth — the CG that the director of the 30THC channel, a "fan of Hwang Hyejin," had offered up as tribute for the drama's success.
"I did my best to stitch it together properly, but I still worry it might not hold up under the 30THC CG director's eye…"
"Understood. I was curious myself about how the final cut turned out."
The broadcast date was already in countdown mode. I loaded Hyejin into the van and sent her off first, then headed to the editing suite with PD Son.
"Would it be possible to watch from episode one?"
"Oh, of course. Absolutely."
PD Son lit up and queued the drama from the top. Adolescence began quietly. I found myself smiling at the fresh, tender days of a young Han Yuna. Then trials, conflict, and separation crashed in all at once. The storm of teenage pain finally ended, and with the healing of her heart's wounds, episode three — adulthood — began.
—Rumble. Crumble-rumble-rumble!
The skyscraper, engulfed in flame, came down over Gangnam Intersection. Viewers were going to jump out of their seats. It was a mega-blockbuster set piece that home television dramas had never managed before — and likely never would again. Adult Han Yuna barely surviving the catastrophe, then unleashing her raw fury on the male lead, Hyeon Jinwook, heir to Haegyeong Trading — the scenes flowed into each other as naturally as water. I watched in a focused daze all the way through the episode three ending BGM.
"…Your concentration is something else. You didn't look away from the screen once."
PD Son watched me with a mix of nerves and expectation.
"Does it feel like it connects well? The opening footage the CG director gave us was so grand that…"
The old me had been deeply disappointed after the Future App simulated the quality that would come out of PD Son's hands. But I knew better now. It hadn't been because he was lacking or incompetent. In this era, with this budget, with this technology — that had been the best possible result. And for someone like me, who'd lucked into a Future App from a thousand years ahead and could do nothing but click, click, click, the only attitude I could offer a creator who gave his absolute best no matter the circumstances was…
"I hope it airs soon. I can't wait to see the viewers completely lose their minds."
"Ah — thank you. That means a lot."
PD Son, eyes hollow with piled-up fatigue, managed a much easier smile.
I stepped out of the editing suite and checked my phone to find a mountain of missed calls. Some from unknown numbers, and a few from Jo Unseok, Team Leader of the 3rd Team. And he was calling again right now.
"Yes, Team Leader. Sorry — I was with PD Son and just left the studio."
"Byeonguk already told me you went together. Doyoung — do you know Director Kim Seongjin is practically stomping his feet because he can't reach you?"
"Ah, Chae Seoyun's CF director?"
"Yeah. He couldn't get ahold of you and was about ready to cry."
I knew by now that this was just Jo Unseok's brand of dramatic exaggeration.
"I take it the Nike response was good?"
"Good doesn't cover it. Nike's marketing director saw the underwater CG from 30THC and decided to scrap the whole thing."
"Sorry — scrap?"
"They're tossing every part except the underwater scene and rebuilding the whole story around it as the main piece."
"Oh. Is that so?"
"Tough break for Director Kim Seongjin, but it looks like our 3rd Team will be handling this CF going forward."
Jo Unseok's laugh sounded happier than I'd ever heard it.
I barely managed to hold down the rush of excitement.
"So — think you can smooth things over with 30THC?"
"No problem at all. Just bring the whole thing over."
"Okay. I'll move on that."