there for you

Seriously.. Get a room.

Love ya _❣️ “꾹” kook

💛+💙

🕶 + 👬

🌈

Song :

Recognized by :

On :

🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈

Me :

[cr.]

Disclaimer: 

The following post is a personal interpretation of JK’s latest work ‘G.C.F in Saipan’, by a veteran film director. He’s a family friend of mine, has watched and shared his thoughts on the previous three GCF videos, and is an admirer of JK’s works. He is aware that BTS is a Kpop musician/idol group, are close friends, but other than that he has no knowledge of them. The context he gathered from watching GCFs is that BTS were on a mini vacation or working for a photoshoot. I did not elaborate on the context to him this time. 

This post is his personal take on JK’s story-telling skills and technical prowess as a budding director. This is NOT an analysis nor a review of GCFs, but rather an outside opinion by a professional. Kindly DO NOT use this as fodder for ships or take it as a standard interpretation of GCFs. I am only posting this to share what a director’s outlook on JK’s videos looks like. Please take this as an opinion piece only. Everything mentioned here is the director’s own unbiased thoughts and interpretation, I have not included any of my own.

Links to the director’s background and opinions about the previous GCF videos:

G.C.F in Tokyo/Osaka

G.C.F in USA

(Prior to GCFs’s release, I had sent him the teaser video JK posted on Twitter, along with the song. Hence he was aware of the song lyrics before the watching the full video.)

Opening remarks

“First of all, I don’t think this is the video that he originally intended to post. When I saw the preview he released I thought he would be continuing the narrative of his very first video (GCFt). This product is completely different. Looking at the preview, it seems like he had already finished the pre-final cut and was working on the post production, which is when he took the clip and shared it to the views, as a ‘teaser’. Naturally one would believe that the full video would be focused on the narrative he indicated in the preview, so I am quite surprised to see this result instead.”

Were you disappointed to see the final video be different from what was teased?

“Well, I wouldn’t say I was disappointed but I was looking forward to see how he would have continued the narrative of [GCFt] in this video. Hence this end result is quite unexpected.“

Missing storyline?

I felt that this video didn’t really have a proper narrative as his previous videos did. What do you think?

“It looks like this time he has omitted the storyline and focused on the cinematography instead. This is in stark contrast to the previous video he posted. That one had proper flow storyline-wise with all of his friends given balanced focus, and the narrative was defined. That video was a one time show with no promised sequel so I am wondering what is the purpose of him releasing this video right after.

To me, this initially looked like a mini vacation vlog, but there are only two major scenarios being shown. A vacation vlog would show more captured moments but this has very limited content, even more limited than the previous video (GCFu). I also see that he’s brought out his crutch again. So this can’t even be called a vacation vlog, but an amalgamation of ‘moments’ that were cut-and-pasted together. That and the fact that he wrote ‘Summer Package 2018’ at the end makes this look like a photoshoot catalogue of his friends in a place called Saipan. Maybe they went there for a outdoor photo-session and that is what this Summer Package is, I don’t know, but this gives off the image of a promotional video, with his friends as the focus (since they are the models) and Saipan as the backdrop.”

Odd factors in the narrative

“However, I see three ‘odd’ factors in this video which is making me think that he did not originally intend to make a promotional video.

The song he chose

The clips with his friend from the teaser.

The b-roll that he seems to have added in after the pre-final cut was made.”

1) Song choice is weird:

(Song: Best of Me by John. K)

“The song choice here makes no sense to me. From his past works, I gathered that he is one who speaks through every aspect of his films, including the choice of music. However this song, looking at the lyrics, seems to be for two people and not a group. So his choice is weird. I think, that since he revealed his song choice by sharing the teaser preview beforehand, he had to go continue with it, to give the impression that the video he teased and the video he delivered are the same one. He probably thought to mask the fact that he had originally made a different type of video. Going by the teaser, it seems the song choice was made with the same intention as his first video (GCFt), meaning it was very likely intended for him and [JM]. That is why I expected a continuation of the (GCFt) narrative. Here however, it becomes an odd-ball because the song for once speaks against the story, not for it.“

2) Teaser clips don’t match the promotional-edit style:

“If he was going for a promotional video kind of outlook, then some of the clips with his friend [JM] do not fit. Those look more suited for home videos, or bloopers. I can understand why he included [JM’s] dancing clips, since they were showcased in the teaser so if he omitted them it would have been even more strange. But I find it interesting that he still inserted them in more or less the same time stamps as the teaser. Because this way he is giving a glimpse of the narrative that he may have originally intended to share. The placement of the song lyrics are also suggestive. So he’s contradicting the intent here, he shows the originally intended narrative using the blooper-like clips of his friend and the placement of the lyrics, and then goes back to the narrative-less promotional video style.” 

“You see that shift in the way he switches focus from his friend dancing or boxing, to all of them gathered around having dinner. The dancing/boxing clips are from the teaser, hence pertaining to the original narrative. The eating clips are part of the promotional video style. He’s used a cinematography trick to show this here, but why he would intentionally give away the fact that he originally had a different narrative in mind, I don’t know.

After this we see the same promotional-video style being continued, until he brings in the odd blooper-like clips once again, again with the same friend [JM]. By now I can surely say this friend is his crutch, since he relies on him to push the storyline forward. In my opinion, he didn’t have to use a crutch if he’d meant to keep this a hundred percent promotion-video style, but for some reason he does. Also, the placement of the lyrics once again and the hyper-focus on his friend’s goofy expression (odd for a video that is meant for professional promotion) shows he’s bringing in the narrative from the teaser. Also notice how his other friends seem to interact with the camera, but this friend interacts with the cameraman, just like in the [GCFt] video.”

3) Extra b-roll added during post production:

“Some of the clips seemed to have been added AFTER he made the pre-final cut. Like the starting clip with his friend [TH] and some of the landscape shots. The starting clip looks to me like b-roll taken when he and [TH] went to shoot the sunrise maybe, since [TH] also has a camera. This clip was not meant to be included in the promotional-video edit.”

“Also, if you noticed  the placement of the first clip [with TH] is in the same place as the teaser clip with his friend [JM]. So this b-roll was added in later to cut the flow of the narrative indicated in the teaser. He does the same trick in the second half, where he uses clips with another friend [JH].

To explain it in detail, let’s say the original narrative he intended to show from the teaser is T-narrative , and the promotional-video edit (the end product) is P-narrative.

He starts the video with P-narrative, then at 0.27 he brings in T-narrative (check placement of song lyrics also, that’s very important to the T-narrative). Then later, he uses jump-cuts to switch focus between T- and P-narratives, from 0.45 to 1.01, then continues on with P-narrative. Then in the second half he brings in T-narrative again at 1.47, then switches to P-narrative at 2.07 and continues it for the rest of the video.

This is another cinematography technique that is used to switch narratives within the same storyline. The reason it is odd here is because:

P-narrative has no storyline because it is used purely for promotional purpose.

The initial clip he used for P-narrative (the one with [TH] ) is b-roll that was not intended for this video, but he had to add it in for some reason. It could be the clip was meant to show sunrise perhaps, but in his opening clip, he already shows the sun risen, so the placement of this clip looks odd to me. The same goes for the landscape b-roll clips added in at 1.01 and 1.20.

If he had originally intended to hide the T-narrative, then doing this switch makes no sense. Seeing how all the clips he uses for the T-narrative are with his friend from the teaser [JM], I think these are all the clips he meant to include in the original video. The vibes of all the T-narrative clips are the same and again, the placement of the song lyrics is suggestive. He seems to use [JM] here as his crutch to convey the should-have-been-hidden original narrative.“

Many have begun to notice this bias towards using [JM] in his videos and mentioned that it’s particularly obvious in GCFs. Do you think so too, and if so why?

“Looking back on his previous three videos, all his other friends seem to ‘act’ for the camera except this guy. I mentioned before that this friend must be the one he’s filmed the most, and also the one he’s most comfortable filming (hence why I call [JM] his crutch). Some of his other friends, like the guy who comes in at the last [RM] and the one who was sleeping [YG] seems to be the least used to his filming, hence they appear awkward and their ‘acting’ is made more obvious. [JH] and [TH] seem a bit more natural in their ‘acting’ but their interactions are solely towards the camera in this video.  

[JM] is the only one who interacts with the cameraman, and the one with the most ‘blooper-like’ clips. I’m guessing every b-roll he has of this guy would be the same. [JK] here seems to really like filming his playful side more, since 90% of [JM] clips i’ve seen in his videos so far are him being goofy.”

Concluding statement

“Judging from the three odd factors I mentioned - the song choices, clips with his friend [JM] and the additional b-roll intentionally added after pre-final cut - I am thinking that he had originally intended to continue with the same narrative as his very first video (GCFt), but later had to change course. Had this video been released before (GCFu) I would not have paid much attention to this deviation. But as I mentioned before, (GCFu) had a very contradicting narrative, with him stuck in the past while playing clips of the present. This is of similar scale, except here the choice of song only would only fit the T-narrative.

This is just my guess, but I think he will continue to mask the T-narrative in his future videos. So far he’s working with limited resources, meaning he’s only focusing on filming his friends and the landscapes etc. I think he needs to expand his filming techniques a bit more. He’s done four videos now and that is enough experimentation. Also it looks like he won’t be able to convey the narrative he wants to freely with his current filming style, so in that case I think he should try out more styles. Like bringing in dialogues to speak his story instead of music. Or use narration instead. 

This video - while it looks visually more aesthetic than his previous one (GCFu) - feels like I am chewing on pieces of cardboard sprinkled with pepper. Flavoured enough to keep the palate satisfied, but the hunger for real food will still remain.”

Thank you for reading.

Disclaimer: PLEASE READ BEFORE PROCEEDING!

The following post is a personal interpretation of JK’s newest GCF video, by a family friend of mine who is a veteran film director. He’s shared his opinions on the previous two GCF videos (post link here) and is quite a fan of JK’s works. He is not well-versed in Kpop nor is he very aware of BTS, other than they are musicians/idol group. In order to explain the context of the video, I gave him a brief background of BTS and the BBMAs.  He interprets the video as JK filming his bandmates and is aware that they are all close-knit friends, but knows nothing more. 

This post is his personal take on JK’s story-telling skills and technical prowess as a budding director. This is NOT an analysis nor a review of GCFu, but rather an outside opinion by a professional. Kindly DO NOT use this as fodder for ships or take it as a standard interpretation of GCFu. I am only posting this to share what a director’s outlook on JK’s videos looks like. Please take this as an opinion piece only. Everything mentioned here is the director’s own unbiased thoughts and interpretation, I have not included any of my own. 

Please check the above link for info on the director’s background. (I made a typo in my last post, he is a script-writer, not screen-writer)

Opening remarks

(He watched the video twice, once before checking the lyrics and once after. The opening remarks are before he read the lyrics of the song)

“The people in the video seem happy but I feel nothing but his sadness. This looks like he’s reminiscing on the past while looking at the present, showing shots of the present, which does not make sense because the present is what seems to be hurting him.”

What makes you think he was talking about the past?

“He shot the camera and the studio backdrop didn’t he? Every idol/actor starts from the studio before moving outside. it’s indicative of their ‘starting point’. The camera is a representation of himself, the studio of his friends. That’s the 'past'”

(After checking the lyrics) 

“His narrative style was very clear in his first two videos, but this time it is very contradictory. Last time I said that he weaves the story clearly in his shots, this time it’s the opposite. Whatever pain he’s expressing, it seems like it’s only for him to know and not for the viewers to see. But he fails here because the song suggests otherwise. 

It’s like if I film a wedding scene but play funeral music over it, would it make you laugh or cry? That’s his true narrative here.”

Narrative ambiguity and division of Focus

Do you think this video follows the same narrative pattern as his previous ones?

“Unlike the first video where he had a clear cut message and the second where the narrative was somewhat concrete, this one is ambiguous at best, lacking at worst. The shots are beautiful and his style is prominent. City b-roll, time lapse, frames matched to the song, from an editing point it’s his definitive style. But the substance is lacking.

However, certain scenarios carry a lot of weight and are pertinent to the narrative. He shows one of his friends yawning. The same friend is the one who acts as if he’s going to smack(?) him. Indicates that he and his friends, or at least that friend in particular, shares a playful bond and that he’s comfortable enough to show the other’s goofy side. There’s another shot of another friend dancing in the midst of eating. I think he was the one he ‘fired’ in the previous video? Good to see him back. There’s a sleeping / napping guy who after waking up ‘glares’ at the camera. Another guy who seems like the leader I think, since it looks like he’s the one taking initiative and directly communicating to their guests (referring to Zedd, etc).”

“From these focus shots, he is showing each of his friends’ ‘roles’ in his life. The two friends [JM and TH] from his previous video, the Osaka one, their roles were already established. With this the set looks complete. Or are there more to add?” (I said no, they’re a total of seven).

“The common element in all three of his videos is the choice of focus. The first video was crystal clear as to who had 100% focus. The second showed a neutral ratio at the start then panned into a 60-40 divide. The third has an equal focus for the people, his friends, meaning each person gets 10%. That’s 60, plus a 10 for them all in a group so 70 out of 100% focus ratio in this video is solely his friends. His cameo takes a 5%, while the city shots take another 5%. The remaining 20 is what points to the supposedly hidden narrative. It collectively goes to the background shots (camera, studio, current environment etc) and the song lyrics. Without those particular shots, the song lyrics would make lesser sense and wouldn’t tell us exactly what he is reminiscing about. Those shots are the only indication of their ‘past’. Using this, I can conclude that the narrative he inevitably portrays is this:

“We smile but I cry. We live but I die. I’m a contradiction because ‘we’ are now the present, but ‘I’ am still the past.”  

I cannot say for certain what the ‘I’ here refers to; is it he himself or his inner desire for the past days, or his evaluation of the group as a whole.

One thing to note is the 70/20 divide between the focus on his friends and the song+’past memories’ shots. This is why I say he chose to project the ‘happy’ narrative. Did he choose this himself? I want to say no, because if he did, the remaining 20 wouldn’t exist. He wouldn’t play funeral music over the wedding scene.” 

Why do you think he went for the 70/20 divide then?

"Because he is not telling his true story this time, he is telling a story that is tailored for the audience.

You remember Lion King? There is a scene where the villain lion (Scar) is about to eat the little mouse but the king lion (Mufasa) comes in at the nick of time. Why did the animators add in that element? Since it was a children’s movie, showing the mouse being eaten would be cruel. However it contradicts with the villain lion’s words ‘Life is not fair’ and ‘You will not live to see another day’. The director put in that element to indicate the harshness of life but let the mouse escape so the audience wouldn’t have to witness it first hand. 

This is a method of storytelling that is used in most Award-winning films. The director/character induces an element of immense pain and sadness but soothes it over with a deux ex machina ‘happy shot’. Lion King was not a personal narrative so the impact of this duality is very less. But coming back to [JK]’s video and his narrative, it is has more impact because what he essentially says here is “I’m in pain and I wish to say it but I don’t think I want to burden you, so I’ll spare you from it”.

Now I cannot judge his character for certain, but all of his videos up until now have shown me that he is someone who narrates his story to the truest form. The production of the third video indicates that he may have half-assed it. Despite the 70/20 focus I mentioned, he did not want to put this out. I’m thinking he had this prepared beforehand and released it now for some reason. Comparatively, the first video remains, to me, his strongest narrative. He wanted to show that film to the world. The second one could also be said the same, more or less, but he was clearly happier then than now. 

This film, however, tells me that he is regressing. There is a lack of passion in this story-telling, so he compromises with his editing instead. He is trying to shift audience focus onto greener pastures, while the swamp is in the background. Then why show the swamp in the first place? He can’t help it, that’s his true narrative. The same reason why he couldn’t help the 60-40 divide in the second video [GCFo]. A director will always find ways, sometimes even subconsciously, to slip in their true narrative as long as they WANT to tell their story to the world. This video tells me that he wants to share his true narrative, but he cannot do it freely so he uses the best means available to him.”

Focus imbalance and usage of ‘crutches’

“I mentioned that he divided the focus equally amongst his friends and that is true. However, regarding the slow-motion shots, not all of them have the same significance. His slow-motions shots I’d say were slightly biased. It’s an amateur move in my opinion, but at this point I think it’s more of him experimenting the best ways to communicate his narrative than anything else.”

How do you say they are biased?

"The slow motion shots are biased editing-wise. He seems to have a pattern of 'filling in the gaps’ when he is low on content or not sure where to place his focus on. When filming a story with multiple subjects, focus has to be shifted in a way to lessen the bias unless there is a main character to the story. Here he wants to film all six members equally but the spectrum he’s chosen to go with is limited. perhaps this is all they did during their vacation trip so ‘content-wise b-roll’ is less. The story element is lacking at worst, and in such cases the director will fall back on a familiar element. This is similar to a director leaving their personal touch, a fingerprint, on the story they film. Like how Tim Burton uses actors he’s most comfortable portraying his stories with, for example. We call it a ‘crutch’. 

Here, [JK] is still inexperienced, and he has limited content to work with on top of that. So he uses a familiar actor, or familiar shooting styles with an actor he’s most comfortable with, to fall back on. However, since he knows he has to keep the focus equal on all subjects, he uses the same editing element on a couple other actors, the background city shots etc.” 

“This works in his favour due to his well planned editing skills. The slow-motion scenes layer beautifully over the music so people will see it more like an editing gimmick and not realise the lack of content. He’s played it well because he probably knows his audience and can guess how they will interpret his films. But an unfamiliar audience, who has seen his other two films, will wonder why he’s using the actor as his crutch, and will deduce that he probably does not have enough content to work with.

It’s not a problem though. Like i said, he’s still experimenting. In time he’ll find a way to branch out his content much better and he won’t need to use a crutch. He’s balanced out the focus on all subjects fairly well for the most part, and in a story where there are no main characters that is quite difficult to do. He’s worked with what he has best and used his editing skills to his utmost advantage. That is truly commendable I think. He has hugely immense potential as a director, but he needs to hone his story telling skills. I believe he can do it.”

Cameo shot and self-referencing

What did you think of him including shots of himself in this video? He did a similar tactic in GCFo as well.

“I found the overlay of the song lyrics ‘I feel smaller as I go’ on top of his cameo shot quite interesting. That’s the only shot where he alone is the focus in the frame, with no other supporting elements. Also does not seem to be a clip from his own footage, which suggests that he did not film many self-shots, if not none at all. 

What I found particularly interesting however, was the inclusion of a random moon shot. It reminded me of a similar shot in the first video [GCFt: 1.43]. In that video, I saw the moon as an indication of the passage of time from day to night. Here however, there were a couple night shots included before the moon shot was shown, which tells me that perhaps the director connects the moon to himself. Going by the narrative, and the fact that it’s a crescent moon, I’d say he was probably referring to himself as the waning moon. In which case, the lyrics ‘I feel smaller as I go’ would also fit better. 

So cameo shot + waning moon + timed overlay of lyrics gives a symbolic representation to him feeling smaller and smaller as days go by, until he eventually disappears.”

He did refer to them as the moon, saying they shine because we the fans shed our light on them. Could that be a reason for having the moon shot?

“Maybe. I don’t find any other interpretation that works for this shot. Since he used the moon shot before in [GCFt], he must know that fans would wonder about this shot as well. It could be a representation of the group as a whole, or like I said, it could be a self-reference.”

Song choice and lyrical significance

What do you think about the song choice this time?

“Pay close attention to the smaller, easily missed details. From what I see, this boy is getting good at deviating from his true narrative. If one did not pay attention to the lyrics and only focused on the music and the beats, the narrative will be lost. This is similar to the second video, the lyrics in that were not sad but they weren’t super happy either. The second video still had a rather direct delivery style, even with the double narratives. This one however, is very subtext-heavy. People who are close to him will probably get what he is hiding, but the usage of subtext is quite evident, to the point that even an unknown audience like myself can feel that there is an underlying heaviness. It seems deliberately done, hence the usage of these lyrics. You said he is a singer? Then all the more reason for me to believe that he communicates not just through his shots, but through the songs he chooses too.”

“One thing I wanted to mention; in the ending scene if you noticed, he fades out the song while fading in the voices of him and his friends talking, or celebrating. The video then ends but his friends are still talking. If you remember in his first video, the scene with his friend walking in slow motion abruptly cuts to black but the song is what ‘ends’ the video. There is one line of song that plays after the video is cut and before the credits appear. This slows that the final focus is not on the subject in the video, in this case his friend, but on the song line. 

So “Running to keep my hands on you, but you have to be there for me too” is the closing remark, and it appearing AFTER the video ends indicates that it will be a continued remark for that narrative [GCFt: 3.34].

In this video, the closing remark comes from the subjects and not the song. The song fades away, it’s his friends’ voices that close the video post ending. However, this looks like a past moment, so here it seems like the closing remark is a moment taken from the past. And by placing it after the video ends, he is indicating that he wants THAT moment, with all of them together, to be the continued remark. I can interpret this as him wanting to continue on in the future, with all of them set in whatever emotional state they were in during that ‘past moment’. Going by the first video’s style, I think he aims to close his videos on a note that is positive to him. So I think the closing remark of his third video showed his happiest moment of that past.”

Concluding remarks

"All in all, I can say that he has done a really good work once again. [JK] seems like someone who is not that big on self-shots, seems like the type to take self-shots and keep them to himself. Either he’s the anxious type and does not want to showcase himself to an unknown audience, or he’s much more comfortable filming the world than himself, and prefers to be behind the camera.

Personally to me, he seems like a very soft-hearted kid. His way of filming is mellow, he tries to weave his stories in a kinder way, focusing on elements that will make people smile rather than hurt them. He’d be good at directing romance movies, or family-centric movies, with meaningful storylines. I feel like he’s the type to focus on the transience of life, he brings emphasis onto things that 'once were and no longer are’, but he does it in a way that the viewer can still enjoy the beauty of what he shows, even after the original has passed. He’s good at capturing fleeting moments of joy and expanding it for the viewer to enjoy for longer periods. that makes the impact of his films last in the viewers minds even after it has long ended. He gives that impact because he sees life the same way. It’s like he still sees the beauty of the flower even after it has wilted away. It’s a beautiful mindset to have. I don’t know how to explain this well enough. 

However, I hope that this phase of regression comes to pass. He has a brilliant eye for story-telling but if he is disallowed from sharing what HE wants to the world then that passion will die. It is clear that he wants to be a film-maker, the level of hard work he puts into his videos tells that. But hard work can easily become mechanical and robotic if passion is not involved. So far, the most passionate work of his that I’ve seen is the first video (GCFt). This video severely pales in comparison to that one. As a film-maker who’s been through several ruts myself, I can say that if he goes deeper into his regression phase it will be difficult for him to come back lest he find a different branch to climb onto. If there is a way to show him support I suggest the audience do that. 

Listen to HIS story, read HIS narrative , acknowledge HIS message. That’s all a director wants from his audience.”