(continuing from interview ①) Actor Um Tae-goo of the film Wild Sing revealed the hidden details he worked on while preparing for the project.
Um Tae-goo conducted an interview on the afternoon of the 28th at a café in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. He met with domestic reporters there and talked about the new film Wild Sing.
Wild Sing, which opens on June 3, is a comedy about a once-dominant pop music scene trio mixed-gender dance group called Triangle that was swept up in an unexpected incident and disbanded overnight, and now makes a reckless attempt to seize a comeback opportunity that comes 20 years later. It is raising expectations as a new work from the production company behind Extreme Job, the 2019 comedy that thrilled about 16.26 million viewers and was the audience leader.
In particular, Wild Sing has drawn attention because actors Gang Dong-won, Park Ji-hyun and Um Tae-goo play Triangle members Hyun Woo, Domi and Sang-gu respectively, and prepared by practicing actual dance and song. Regarding this, Um Tae-goo said, "I went to JYP Entertainment to learn rap, and I went to where the choreography teacher was to learn dance. I tried to work as hard as possible. Including the shooting period, I practiced choreography and rap for about five months. The character isn't set up to be someone who raps that well, so if I did my best for five months, I thought it would naturally show that I wasn't that good, so I did my absolute best."
Among the characters, Sang-gu had particularly difficult storylines. Um Tae-goo said, "I was embarrassed when we shot the photo spread. Of course the butt is CGI. The back is my back and the front is CGI. But the place where we shot the spread was the doorway where staff were coming and going during our test shoot, and I shot it alone there. So I was very embarrassed then. It wasn't that they were inconsiderate. The shooting location was set there."
He also said, "I didn't choose JYP; the film company connected me there and I practiced at that place. The teacher taught me very well, but at first I couldn't lift my head while rapping. Later, by continuously imitating what the teacher did, I unconsciously began to pick up the teacher's gestures and habits when speaking. I remember laughing together because such gestures came out while talking with the teacher. At that time I thought, 'Maybe I've become a little more natural.' But what's always strange is that when I rapped with the teacher in the booth I would really enjoy it, but when I walked out the door everything became awkward. So the teacher recorded a video, but I didn't show it to the company," he laughed.
He added that regarding Sang-gu's lyrics, "They are lyrics I made together with the rap teacher. When I wrote the story, the teacher matched the rhymes and we worked together to register them."
He continued, "I think the choreography teacher's intention was remarkable. It seemed to me that he taught things slightly differently. The movements were slightly different. When I wondered why he didn't teach me, he said Sang-gu only needed to do this. Also, on set I didn't originally intend to be that cute. But when I tried rehearsing in costume on set the teacher said he wanted Sang-gu to be a bit cuter. While talking we tried various things, but there weren't many options, so I winked a lot," he explained.
About facial expressions, he said, "I decided that on the day so I didn't practice cute expressions separately. I used every cute act I knew, had seen somewhere, or could do that day," and joked, "But no matter how much I made a fuss, Ms. Ji-hyun was completely the center."
So how was it when he monitored everything after going through all these processes? Um Tae-goo said, "At the time I only had that thought. Looking back, on set I thought most about whether this was awkward or fit the character," and laughed, "If it looked natural then that's fortunate. I felt surprised and amused."
Above all, he said, "The choreography teacher and I decided it would be good to be cute and I had to go on stage, but since it was a look I'd never shown anyone there was a lot of conflict. I thought exactly that if it doesn't look cute now I'd rather die, so I winked. I did everything, not just the wink."
He continued with a jest, "The rap teacher praised my voice a lot. The teacher kept praising me from the first day. But he kept laughing, so I always laughed a lot when rapping. Maybe because I'm not very good. I worked really hard though. The teacher praised me. As I shouted out I felt my stress ease."
Um Tae-goo added, "I had no separate references. I truly relied only on the rap teacher and the choreography teacher. If it came out well, those two are truly amazing and taught me well. The group I liked when I was young was a team my older brother liked more than I did, but the team we both liked was Deux."
(to be continued in interview ③)<
[photo] provided by Lotte Entertainment.
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