G.C.F in USA - Director’s outlook
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)
(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.”
"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.”
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