The "Blood(maybe not so much),Sweat and Tears" Behind Music Videos

For our cover video, I was both in charge of being a dancer and actor, I also had the responsibility to learn the choreography and teach it to my fellow members. While creating this video, I learned the system behind how K-pop idols learn choreographies and progress into the complex creation of music videos.

While completing our video, I gained a better understanding that the perception of K-pop idols amongst the public and their fans are heavily influenced by packaged delusions. The actual process behind the making of their art work is complicated and extremely exhausting, and it takes an enormous amount of effort to produce high quality products like those seen in the current K-pop industry. Despite stages which last around 3 minutes, along with music videos usually around the same length, the process behind the glorious performance is way more complex.

Throughout the project, I had to learn and practice the choreography individually, teach it, then practice as a group, and film the dance multiple times. Thinking that the choreography looked simple before preparing for the video, I was truly surprised by the sophisticated details within the choreography. After completing the video, my arms and legs became quite sore, and I never wanted to hear the song again. However our video is no comparison to the idols which take an entire month to prepare for albums, 2-3 entire days to film the music video, and perform at endless promotions on aired and offline shows. Knowing how difficult it is to learn and master a dance routine, I gained more respect to K-pop idols which do this as a living.

I also had to film certain scenes that required acting and lip-syncing. One specific example that made me realize the intensity of the production of music videos was when I had to lip-sync to a fairly short line at least 10 times in order to perfect the scene. I found it fascinating that it took so much time and effort to film components that only lasted a few seconds of the cover video. This made me realize how much more difficult it would be for K-pop idols to film music videos with large amounts of content and details.

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