2017 Selection: Dramaworld (KOR/USA)

What inspired your web series?
I lived in Korea for a number of years. It was where I did my first short film, and for the longest time I was trying to figure out a project that could take me back over there. And suddenly the first episode of Dramaworld popped into my head. It just made sense on so many levels. I also distinctly remember as a child literally trying to dive into a book. I might not have been the smartest of children, but I think we’ve all wanted to pop into our favourite stories whether they be novels, TV shows or movies.

Why did you choose web series as your format?
Independent features are really hard to get funded. On top of that, it’s hard to convince people to watch them, but I figured with Dramaworld if we did it as a series, we could more easily convince viewers to take a chance on it and watch. Also, it just made sense because we could put it on platforms where these K-Drama fans were already consuming content. We could tap into the pipeline they were already using.

Why did you decide to merge the two styles of Western series and K-drama together?
I spent around a decade in Asia and one of the things I realised was that no matter how hard I tried I’d never be able to make Korean movies, which was kind of my dream when I went over there. But then once I moved back to the U.S., I also realised that I didn’t feel like I could make simply American content either. So Dramaworld felt like the perfect mix of what I feel like I can do really well now. It’s third culture content and that global mash-up gets me really excited.

What are your favourite K-Drama tropes that you have used in Dramaworld?
There’s so many, and so many more I wanted to put in, but I think my favourite is the rampant, unapologetic use of shower scenes.

What are some of the challenges you’ve found in creating and directing a bilingual series?
I speak Korean, too, so that’s really helpful, but I think one of the things I was always thinking about was, ‘Will this be funny for Korean speakers and English speakers?’ It’s hard to hit both audiences because humour and storytelling can be so different, but when I saw people all over the world reacting pretty positively, it made me happy.

What did you learn from making this series? What would you do differently?
Before this, I’d only done shorts and commercials. I think the longest shoot I’d ever done was 5 days. For Dramaworld, we shot for 24 days, which comparatively felt like a marathon. I’d done a lot of prep, storyboards, etc., but I learned that you can never have enough pre-pro because once you get into it, once the train starts to move, you can’t slow it down and you just have to keep going. It felt like a lot more decisions had to be made on intuition than you would on a short. All that prep is necessary so you can just know the right answer to the hundreds of questions you’ll get every day. So, what would I do differently? Maybe a little more pre-pro.

What did you want to achieve in creating this series?
I wanted the audience to feel like we’d taken them into a whole new world. I was trying to create Harry Potter on a budget. I wanted people to feel like they were Claire and it was their adventure. And at the end of the show, I just wanted people to want to go back into that world, to want it to exist.

Do you have future any plans for this series?
We are working on getting another season going right now. We’ve got at least two more seasons planned out, and it gets really wild, so I’m hoping we’ll have the opportunity to make them.

What advice would you give to emerging creators?
I’ll steal something Justin Chon who said, ‘Create, create, create.’ It’s tough sometimes, but that’s all we can really do. Hopefully somebody likes what you do and you find your audience, but if you never put anything out there for people to find, no one will ever know about the masterpieces you’re cooking up in your head.