If the various indicators are combined, Shin Won-ho is likely to be the tv series director with the highest Douban score. Of the five TV series he has aired, the lowest score is 8.7. Among them, "Please Answer 1988" reached a score of 9.7 under the evaluation of nearly 530,000 people.
On March 12, 2020, his latest attempt at the season drama "The Life of a Witty Doctor" premiered on South Korea's tvN television station, at the height of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in South Korea, and the drama formed a clever intertextuality between fiction and reality.
Different from the typical medical professional drama that pursues a tense and exciting plot and a deep excavation of human nature, "Witty Doctor Life" continues the tradition of the "Please Answer" series, still focusing on the daily life of ordinary people, still writing an ideal and intimate alliance composed of several people, only this time Shin Won-ho chose the space of the hospital and set the protagonist as five doctors who have known each other for 20 years.
As the first season drew to a close, we contacted Shin Won-ho, who was still busy. The show is planned to shoot three seasons, and Shin Won-ho hopes that it will be like the American drama "Friends", "that is, to tell our ordinary lives, to accompany the audience to fully feel the comfort that time can give us".
This may not be a typical drama review, without too much laying out and describing the specific plot of the play, but hoping to share some information and perspectives on watching Shin Won-ho's episodes. Note: Chinese network mostly writes the director as Shen Yuanhao. After confirming with Shen Dao himself, we adopted the won-ho Shin script.
Wen | Kandy interviewed | Starry Sky Kandy Editor | Juan
"Burning Gasoline Barrel"
In a telephone interview with director Shin Won-ho, it's easy to hear the lines that only appear in the "Please Answer Series" and the "Witty Series"—in real life, it sounds a bit abrupt at first, always too affectionate and seems "chicken soup", but it is accurate to put them in a society without conspiracies and villains, full of good intentions and human feelings.
For example, we notice that his avatar of Kakaotalk is a huge, burning gasoline drum with a small line written on it: "Director Shin, we will miss you." It was at the final screening party of "Please Answer 1988", in order to celebrate the heavy work finally came to an end, the staff set the abandoned script on fire, and Shinwara-ho filmed this scene and used it as an avatar, which is still used today. Regarding this image, he explained it like this:
"When burning, it seems that everything disappears into the torch, but in fact, the feelings between people are not only fully presented through the TV series, but also through the symbolic behavior of burning, which embodies a kind of joy and sublimation, which has always been the source of my motivation and continuous creation." 」
On the evening of May 28, the first season of "The Witty Doctor's Life" ended, and he claimed, "I may have similar behavior because it puts more pressure on me and my effort than "Please Answer 1988.""
Most Chinese audiences' understanding of the ace combination of "Shin Won-ho Director & Lee You-jing" began with the "Please Answer" trilogy, especially "Please Answer 1988". Even five years after its premiere, Shin Won-ho was still amazed at how popular it was in China, saying it was hard to imagine that we would find our own memories of youth in Seoul's Shuangmun-dong in the late 1980s.
"This also made me understand two points: one is that the description of the daily life of people can attract people's most fundamental recognition no matter where they are; the other is that, just like I myself (in the play) quote many Chinese cultures, there will be more interesting sparks in collisions and exchanges." Shin Won-ho said. Taking one detail as an example, the Hong Kong movie "The True Colors of Heroes" has appeared in his episodes many times.
Stills from "Please Answer 1988"
I tried to split and summarize the elements of the play "Director Shin Won-ho & Lee You-jing":
In a semi-enclosed space (block, prison, hospital), create a group portrait of the characters with their own personality characteristics, and make them ally into intimate small groups, at least twice a dinner party in an episode, the music is always present, guess the CP to guess the end of the play; all the "conspiracies" are a gentle reversal, making you cry or make you laugh, more often two goals are achieved at the same time; patiently describe the daily life, describe people, even the supporting characters of the supporting characters have their own arc, if you draw a relationship diagram of all the characters in the play, It is likely to be an extremely divergent network structure, and when the plot is tightened, you will find that every detail is under precise control.
Take the first season of "Witty Doctor's Life" as an example: Lu di Hospital, the 40-year-old "group of five" - Li Yijun, who scores full marks in social life and studies, An Zhengyuan, a "Buddha" doctor who wants to be a priest, Kim Jun-wan, a satanic doctor who is a demon, Yang Shuoheng, who pursues a minimum level of interpersonal communication by spontaneous outsiders, and Cai Songhua, the spiritual pillar of all people and the only heroine.
They cooperate professionally, form bands in private, have intertwined story lines with patients and colleagues at work, and are always pulled back to the hospital when they are practicing meat and singing after work, camping and running half a horse; there is an unquestionable friendship between the five, there is also a love that has not yet seen the end, and their families and parents are also slowly unfolding their fate in it. As for the past 20 years, there are many secrets hidden, Shin Won-ho used flashbacks and interludes in the first season, and only some clues still appear. It is conceivable that in the plot of the second and third seasons, there will be more past and more echoes.
Stills from The Witty Doctor's Life
This determines that Shin Won-ho's drama is not so easy to enter, the audience is like a transfer student suddenly in an already intimate collective, the first three episodes are basically used to recognize faces, and futile to find the story goal. I often suspect that there is a so-called "Shinwara-ho inflection point", and if you don't have the patience, you can easily give up in the first three episodes, but as long as you reach the fourth episode, you can enthusiastically enter the story.
This may be because, in Shin Lee's episodes, the story goals are usually vague or even non-existent, and Shin Won-ho & Lee You-jing doesn't care much about where the story ends up, they only point to the personal feelings that can touch you in the process.
For example, in the "Please Answer" series, "Dad is also a father for the first time, please forgive my daughter", Zheng Huan constantly encounters red lights on the way to confess, the dinner table of Aze's family is always piled up on the entire street, and the leopard lady shows timid shame in front of her son... This time in "The Life of a Witty Doctor", most of the patient stories are written about human beings, elderly parents spread small clothes from infancy on their seriously ill sons, the whimpering sound of the mother who knows that the child in the abdomen is dead when she checks the body, and the strength that the intern doctor feels when he touches the beating heart for the first time...
If I were to think back to what stories these dramas tell specifically, what obstacles the protagonists overcame, and what breakthroughs in the meaning of life they achieved, the first thing that comes to mind is always these pictures and details.
Shin said he was not good at being profound, brain-burning and plot-provoking. "Whether it's the previous "Please Answer" series or this story, although the characters who appear each time will change according to different worldviews, what they want to tell most is the story of the people around us and the people they are living. Only such a story can get more people to feel the same way."
"Nth heartache" and "4:33"
Two years ago, during an experience visiting a hospital, Shin Won-ho happened to witness the death of an old gentleman, without ceremony, quietly, and beside him, only two doctors and a nurse stood. "The shock of that moment made me realize that the profession of a doctor lives in extreme and difficult circumstances, which aroused my strong curiosity."
"The Life of a Witty Doctor" was broadcast at a time when the COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea was played, and in reality and in the series, the "life under extreme and difficult circumstances" of medical staff was staged, and Shin Won-ho was not the kind of Korean director we know as well - a strong focus on reality and direct social expression in film and television works. He used a different approach.
In Yoo Jae-seok's variety show "You quiz on the block", Shin Won-ho shared an experience, when the "Sewol Incident" occurred, he was preparing for "Please Answer 1988", and he could not do anything for three or four months, he had an idea at that time, "Don't avoid this matter, share one-nth of their heartache together, isn't it the obligation of being a member of society?"
His perspective is the "Nth of the heartache", the story background of the "Please Answer" series involves the follow-up to the "Gwangju 518 Movement", the Mitoyo Department Store incident, etc., and his lens focuses on the fact that at the time of the major event, the protagonist is worried about whether the person he loves is safe, recording the fear of that moment.
Shin Won-ho said that in "Machine Doctor", the most important line is, "The doctor has only one sentence, which can be said exactly to the patient, that is, 'I will do my best', only this sentence." I suspect that we may see the detailed and real feelings of ordinary medical staff under the new crown epidemic in the story of the next two or three seasons.
Due to the difficulty of the five main lines and the seriousness of the theme itself, Shin Won-ho gave up the practice of consistently using newcomer actors in "Machine Doctor", except for the heroine Tian Mei, who is a newcomer to the TV series, and the protagonists are veteran actors who are well known to the audience. The official website of tvN TV designed a badge for the "group of five", and wrote a character biography for each medical staff (regardless of the size of the character) according to the hospital department, which will be updated in real time as the plot progresses.
A major feature of Shin Won-ho's plot is that although it does not involve suspense, but there are more preparations, more details, still have the fun of puzzles and puzzles, if you are the examination party, the best way to watch "Machine Doctor", after each episode, go to see the cultural analysis and detail reasoning of the B station UP master @ Rock Sugar Sydney Shirley, she collected a series of findings from netizens who "watch the drama with a microscope", the color of the protagonist's clothes, the placement of the bedside doll, the interpretation of the flower language, the lyrics of BGM, a cup of coffee is cold or hot, They are all important clues to predict the emotional line.
If it weren't for the limited time, I would have liked to ask ShinHara Hao what the purpose of these designs is, and how to arrange these details that are not important to most viewers by mobilizing props, post-production, editing and many other tasks in the chaotic and busy shooting phenomenon.
But one thing I confirm is that Shin Won-ho & Lee You-jing like to continue the story line of the past in different dramas, and feel great pleasure in this process. For example, in "Machine Doctor", there are Phoenix Hall couples who successfully fall in love with "Please Answer 1988", and he even asks Aze's father to give the golden turtle that his son won in the game to the doctor, and this prop and line are from past episodes.
The Phoenix Hall couple who appear in "Mechanic"
For example, 20 years ago, the scene where Li Yijun selected a birthday gift for Cai Songhua appeared in "Please Answer 1994", which is exactly the same as the store layout in "Please Answer 1988", and the clocks on the wall in this picture point to 4:33 (even the protagonist's mobile phone also shows 4:33), and I saw this "433" law in the fan discussion of "Please Answer 1988" a few years ago - when Cui Ze or Deshan came to the Phoenix Hall, the table on the wall would stay at 4:33.
This discovery first came from a Korean netizen's blog, according to his popular science, at 4:33 this stem comes from the experimental art of American avant-garde musician John Cage, the pianist stepped on the stage, sat for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, stood up and closed the curtain: "Thank you, just now I have successfully played "4 minutes and 33 seconds."" If you take it for reading comprehension, this design is likely to be the foreshadowing of the fate of the characters in the play.
I was very surprised when I first learned these details, until a few days ago I watched the filming tidbits of "Mechanic" and I noticed that even in a normal dinner scene, all the actors would adjust the hands of their watches to the same before shooting.
Behind the scenes of Doctor Mechanic
This leads me to believe that this is not accidental, nor is it over-interpreted. For the audience, whether or not to capture these details does not affect the smooth viewing of a TV series, but for the creator, it may be a creative pleasure, and even "contains" selfishness, in some episodes, including "Medic", the names of the characters are often taken from the baseball players that Shin Won-ho and Lee Youjing pay attention to.
"Variety Choreographer" and tvN's Ambitions
At the farewell moment at the end of "Doctor Mechanic", I saw a Weibo netizen joke, "Watching "Parasite" sweep the Oscars at the beginning of the year, and then turning on the TV, I hope that Luo Yingshi Team, Shin Won-ho pd and Lee Youjing writers will work all year round."
Interestingly, in addition to the idol industry, several people mentioned in this sentence are the most outstanding representatives of Korean cultural output, not only from the mood of ordinary audiences, but also from the creative end you can also find this trace.
Korean variety show producer Luo Yingshi
Shin Won-ho and Lee You-jing have a rare "history", they are tv drama directors who have transformed from "well-known variety show directors in the circle", and they are related to "South Korea's real top" Luo Yingshi. Shin Won-ho was originally a variety show director at Lo Young-seok's contemporary variety show at KBS (one of South Korea's three major TVB stations), and Lee You-jing is a variety show screenwriter who has worked with Luo Yingshi for more than a decade.
The three have a 15-year friendship, Shin Won-ho will let the protagonist of the play watch Luo Yingshi's "New Journey to the West", find Yin Zhiyuan and Lee So-gen to record a radio broadcast that only appears in the play for ten seconds; Luo Yingshi and Shin Won-ho will collude and directly at the crew's vacation party, pulling the "Double Door Cave Brothers" to Africa to record a variety show. In a way, they themselves are an ideal small group.
From Shin Lee's plot, there are also many creative traces brought about by the "variety show": the cooperation between BGM and the protagonist's action line, the sense of humor and small reversals that are everywhere, the use of a large number of variety effects (President Kim's sheep call, fried chicken shop chicken cry, the explosion of red flame fried sauce noodles, nervous stopwatch sound when asked... ), and let the four old men play the "mafia" game and patiently shoot for ten minutes.
Luo Yingshi recorded the beginning of the transformation of the two at the end of the book "Anyway, the competition is still very long", and he knew that they poured cold water on the first time after writing the TV series. Li Youjing replied to him like this, "When have we ever considered success and failure in our work?" We usually want to be involved just because it's fun. When we started doing Two Days and One Night, did we know we would succeed? It's not that we're doing it ourselves. This time too, I'm writing a series for the first time, and it's surprisingly funny, so if you screw it up, screw it up."
Of course, this is still repeated today, most likely a few months after this conversation, when a drama called "Please Answer 1997" caught fire.
In 2012, after finishing the five-year shooting of the Korean national variety show "Two Days and One Night", Luo Yingshi, Shin Won-ho and Lee Youjing led the team to join the younger and more energetic tvN TV station, and opened a new era in the next eight years.
Shin Won-ho and Lee You-jing produced the "Please Answer" series and the "Witty" series of TV series, and Luo Yingshi produced the "Pattern" series ("Flower Grandpa", "Flower Sister", "Flower Youth"), "Three Hours and Three Meals" series, and "New Journey to the West" and other seasonal variety shows.
In fact, this story is not only about personal interests, abilities and courage, but also reflects the ambition and boldness of South Korean tvN television. One of the important conditions given by tvN when attracting three people to join is to allow free trial and error, and reduce unnecessary consumption at the decision-making level. It is understood that the decision-making process of tvN executives on "Machine Doctor" took less than ten minutes.
When he first arrived at tvN, Shin Won-ho chatted with Lee Youjing, "This TV station doesn't even have an award ceremony." Compared with the three major wireless stations, tvN at that time was really small, "but I didn't want to get the award myself, I wanted to hold a fun award ceremony."
Five years later, the fun awards ceremony was finally held in Seoul, and Shin Won-ho said in the pre-recorded film, "People with variety SHOW DNA that are different from the DNA of previous TV dramas can also do it (to make TV series)". The awards ceremony is iconicly seen as the starting point where TVN and South Korea's three major wireless stations sit on an equal footing.
Another narrative thread about this story is that tvN's parent company, CJ E&M, helped Bong Joon-ho win the Palme d'Or and oscars over the past two years.
Shin Won-ho at the 10th anniversary awards ceremony at tvN
This time, "Doctor Mechanic" was also broadcast on Netflix at the same time. If a few years ago, tvN focused only on China and the Asian market, after many cooperations with Netflix, it has demonstrated the ambition of a larger culture to go to sea.
In a behind-the-scenes interview with a play, it was almost routine for the director to thank the team, but Shin Won-ho repeatedly stressed to us, "If I just follow my own opinion, I will never go beyond the script a little." When he first joined tvN from a wireless station, he was shocked by these young people who lacked mature experience but were full of creativity, "I felt really old. It's also because we respect the opinions of each team member that we make Life a Witty Doctor even better."