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Among the films that showed the most unique visuals in recent Korean cinema would be VANISHING TIME: A BOY WHO RETURNED directed by UM Tae-hwa. This film expresses fantasy of 'time-stopped space' with original imagination. The role of the VFX Supervisor PARK Min-yong from VFX company MACROGRAPH was very important here. KoBiz had an interview with PARK to hear how he created that amazing world.

When I read the scenario and received the conti, my worries began. I looked for references to films that expressed "stopping of time", but it did not fit well with the idea of VANISHING TIME: A BOY WHO RETURNED. The quick silver scene from the X-Men series was about all we had. I talked a lot with UM and went through every shot together. 

That's what I found very hard. This was the first fantasy work for me. It is a fantasy, but it should not completely diverge from reality. The shooting environment was also incredible. The setting was in the summer, but shooting took place from October to March. So you had to check every minute detail for shooting. It took 1,000 or more shots, when the war blockbuster Roaring Currents (2014) took 1,500~1,600 shots.

It depicts a world where the physical laws of reality are destroyed. Did you have to develop a new software program for this? 

Nope. Instead, I used a lot of unfamiliar features that I rarely used in my existing programs. They are the images you obtain through a great high-speed photography, I would say. The time represented is very relative. So it had to be completely different from the existing VFX work in terms of speed.

It may be a tricky task, but I tried to take a lot of actual sources from early on. It was not a work of a fantasy world where everything was perfect, but with a lot of realistic feelings. The scene in which the actors are staying still is not an outcome of the VFX. They were actually staying still like that. I worked on the premise that the images shot by the camera were the best. We did consider building a set, but I wondered if it would give a natural feeling. Even if it meant harder work for everyone, I tried to give it a lot of reality.

It came like a random chance. I was taking a few months off before going back to college after discharge from the army, and my mother told me to learn something, even computer. I was then computer illiterate. As a result, where I ended up turned out to be one of the leading graphic institutes in Korea. I finished the course and luckily got into an animation company. Afterwards, I moved on to Insight Visual and started working on TaeGukGi: Brotherhood Of War (2004). Later on I went through a few more companies including AZworks and 4th Creative Party, and now I am at MACROGRAPH.

It was a difficult task considering the technology level back then. In the final scene, two main characters rush in and turn into dust, and PARK wanted to express it directly. It was not easy at all.

This film is probably the first work in Korean cinema to create digital creatures in full scale. In the Korean film industry back then, people were not that confident to make 3D full digital creatures.

When do you feel the happiest as a VFX specialist? 

The best moment is when my digital work goes unnoticed, with the audience not even knowing it was computer graphics work. "That was computer graphics?" is a better compliment than "That was great computer graphics!". For example, in VANISHING TIME: A BOY WHO RETURNED there is a scene where the two main characters are sitting on the porch. The entire background was made of computer graphics, but people did not even notice it. 

There were several VFX companies including MACROGRAPH working on The Forbidden Kingdom. Our technology was well praised, which led us to join Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons through invitation by Stephen CHOW, the director himself. We also worked on The Mermaid by CHOW as well. We had a great response to the creature with the octopus legs. The Chinese film we are currently working on is The Bombing. We are towards the very end of work, and it is a very big scale movie in terms of VFX. 

Although it is technologically advanced, it does not seem to be exactly at the Hollywood level yet. Instead, it is the best in the world compared to the price.