The Face Genius Actor

Episode 092

Scene 29.

I’m climbing a mountain with Yoon Woo-sung.

We have no choice.

The Japanese army is thoroughly monitoring downtown Pyongyang.

We plan to enter downtown Pyongyang when the sun sets.

Only then can we contact the provisional government’s agent and obtain information.

We still haven’t received permission from the provisional government to return to Shanghai.

For this reason, Yoon Woo-sung and I are hiding and waiting for the sun to set.

The problem is that we’ve been starving for days now.

We haven’t had a single bite since eating a bowl of soup in Seoul.

Growl.

A loud sound comes from my stomach, regardless of my will.

Yoon Woo-sung looks at me, but I pretend not to notice and turn my head away.

“Shall we eat something?”

“What is there to eat in this mountain valley?”

Then, another thunderous sound is heard.

Growl.

It’s embarrassing.

“Let’s move. We might as well dig up some dirt to eat.”

“What if we get caught by the Japanese army while doing that?”

“We might get caught even if we just hide anyway, don’t you think?”

I certainly feel that the hunger sounds are too loud.

I reluctantly follow Yoon Woo-sung.

Yoon Woo-sung moves somewhere, crouches down, and starts digging something up.

“Are you really going to make me eat dirt?”

“Would you eat it?”

“I’ll pass.”

“Don’t worry. I know all about wild vegetables and herbs. This is meadowsweet. And this is wild lettuce. And this is…”

I listen to Yoon Woo-sung’s lengthy explanation.

Then I throw in a casual comment.

Because there’s something more important than the names of wild vegetables right now.

“Does it taste good?”

Yoon Woo-sung’s hands, which were busy picking vegetables, stop.

Then he looks up at me with a look of exasperation and answers.

“It’ll taste better than just eating dirt.”

“That’s a relief then.”

And so, Yoon Woo-sung’s wild vegetable lecture begins again.

The vegetables all look similar enough to remind me of the saying ‘same old, same old’, but Yoon Woo-sung distinguishes them precisely.

“This is trifoliate, and this is Acanthopanax shoot, and this is burdock, and…”

I mutter while listening to him.

“There’s nothing you can’t eat, huh?”

While saying this, I pluck any random grass from the ground and put it in my mouth.

Then Yoon Woo-sung looks up at me and continues speaking.

“That’s angelica… It’s poisonous.”

Surprised by his words, I unconsciously swallow the grass I was chewing.

Yoon Woo-sung jumps up, forcibly opens my mouth, and shouts.

“Spit it out!”

* * *

“Cut! Okay!”

Finally, we received the okay sign from Director Kim Pil-sung.

It was the result of repeating the same scene over a dozen times.

“Good work!”

“Thank you for your hard work!”

As I turned my head hearing the voices of the on-site staff, everyone’s expressions were bright.

It wasn’t just their expressions that were bright.

Everyone had smiles on their faces.

Some people couldn’t hold back and burst into laughter.

From this, I could understand why Director Kim Pil-sung had given the okay sign this time.

We had finally succeeded in shooting the funniest scene.

Director Kim Pil-sung quickly approached me and said,

“Swallowing the angelica instead of spitting it out is definitely funnier! The last part where Actor Ji Jung-hyun forcibly opens your mouth and shouts was good too!”

Scene 29 was a scene composed almost entirely of ad-libs by Ji Jung-hyun and me.

Originally, the script only stated that Kim Sung-yeon makes continuous growling sounds and goes to pick wild vegetables.

But Ji Jung-hyun gave Yoon Woo-sung the character trait of knowing the names of all the wild vegetables.

I acted as Kim Sung-yeon, who listens to this with displeasure and ends up carelessly picking and eating any grass.

In the end, all the dialogue in this part was ad-libbed.

As a result, the situation branched out in several directions.

Whether to spit out or eat the angelica after hearing Yoon Woo-sung’s explanation.

And how Yoon Woo-sung would react to Kim Sung-yeon’s actions.

As we continued acting, various versions of the scene were produced.

At some point, I became a writer, a director.

I became a person producing the film, constantly thinking about how to fill in the blank spaces of this scene.

I had filled my notebook with the question, “What if I were producing ?”

That effort allowed me to imagine and act freely on the filming set.

And finally, the scene was fixed with Kim Sung-yeon swallowing the angelica and Yoon Woo-sung shouting at him to spit it out.

Not only from the on-site staff’s reaction but also in my opinion, this was the funniest version.

“It’s fortunate that we finished filming before the sun set.”

Ji Jung-hyun nodded and replied to my words.

“If you hadn’t come up with the idea, the sun might have set. We almost had to shoot Scene 29 again tomorrow.”

And I could easily tell that this was Ji Jung-hyun’s way of praising me.

“Thank you, senior.”

As I bowed my head like this, Ji Jung-hyun looked at me quietly and then spoke.

“…Honestly, I didn’t think you’d find the answer this easily.”

“When I thought about how you were able to show different acting, I found the answer.”

“This is my first time being involved in a project like this, so I was surprised at how my acting improved.”

After that, Ji Jung-hyun told me the story of what had happened until the preparations for the next scene were complete.

Ji Jung-hyun’s story was quite meaningful in that it turned my guesses into certainties.

Especially surprising was the fact that Ji Jung-hyun realized his own change in the process of acting with me.

I had thought that Ji Jung-hyun had prepared everything for Scene 15 before showing that kind of acting.

From what I felt, Ji Jung-hyun seemed too indifferent to the filming of Scene 15.

So I had no choice but to come to this conclusion.

But it seemed that Ji Jung-hyun was originally the type who didn’t show much emotional change before filming.

“To find this kind of answer without being involved in production… It’s surprising even when I think about it again.”

“It’s because you consistently gave me hints. It’s all thanks to you.”

“It seems my hints were more helpful than I thought. If I had known this, I should have just told you the answer outright.”

“If you had just said it outright, I might have been more confused. Saying to look at your acting with a producer’s eyes isn’t exactly a straightforward concept.”

“Is that so? Anyway, at this point, I have no choice but to acknowledge you. In fact, I’ve been thinking you were more than qualified for a while now.”

“What?”

When I questioned like this, Ji Jung-hyun took a step towards me.

Then, placing his hand on my shoulder, he whispered in a low voice.

“I’ll appoint you as my successor. You can use the name ‘Little Ji Jung-hyun’ wherever you go.”

Hearing Ji Jung-hyun’s words, I felt my mind go blank for a moment.

I thought I might have misheard.

So I almost asked, “What? Little Ji Jung-hyun?”

But I quickly came to my senses and hurriedly raised my voice.

“Yes! Thank you!”

I thought this was the fastest way to smooth over the situation.

* * *

After filming Scene 29,

The filming of proceeded in an even more heated atmosphere.

It was natural since I, Ji Jung-hyun, and Director Kim Pil-sung were having daily discussions about how to shoot each scene.

Looking at the work from a producer’s perspective certainly gave me a lot to think about.

Also, I felt that simply doing my role properly wasn’t everything.

To ultimately create a good work, all parts had to function organically.

Even if one thing went wrong, the quality of the work would inevitably drop significantly.

Through these discussions, existing scenes were deleted and new scenes were created frequently.

Naturally, this led to an increase in filming time.

Even though we had dinner meetings and continued discussions late into the night on every filming day, the result was the same.

‘But all of this process isn’t meaningless.’

Rather, it was quite meaningful.

I could feel that the script of was improving more and more.

I could understand why Director Kim Pil-sung liked post-filming dinner gatherings, it was for these kinds of discussions.

And it wasn’t just the level of the script that was improving.

Not only my acting skills, but also Ji Jung-hyun’s acting skills improved, and the chemistry between us developed even further.

As a result, I could feel the thrill almost every day, like when I had worked with Park Jun.

Sometimes I felt so addicted to the thrill that I didn’t want to leave the role of Kim Sung-yeon.

Kim Sung-yeon was originally my favorite character in any work, and for that reason, it seemed I had a tendency to be more immersed.

One day, Ji Jung-hyun seemed to notice my state and advised:

“It’s good to enjoy acting, but if you keep doing that, it’s bound to get difficult later.”

“I suppose so?”

“That’s right. Maintain a distance from the role. Without you, that role doesn’t exist either.”

Thanks to Ji Jung-hyun’s advice, I was able to come to my senses.

And after that, I tried to distance myself from the role of Kim Sung-yeon.

However, it wasn’t as easy as I thought.

Even as I tried to distance myself from the role, I worried about what if I couldn’t immerse myself in the role of Kim Sung-yeon.

Of course, it was a needless worry.

I was always ready to immerse myself in the role of Kim Sung-yeon.

After experiencing some ups and downs like this, the filming of was progressing smoothly.

At this rate, it seemed we could complete an even better version of than what I had seen before my regression.

As a genuine fan of personally, I was looking forward to the future a bit more.

But not everything was going smoothly.

As we proceeded with filming in a new way, an unexpected problem arose.

No matter how many times we looked at it, we weren’t satisfied with the previously filmed scenes.

It wasn’t just a problem of being unsatisfied with the scenes filmed before Scene 29.

As the latter part of the content changed bit by bit with the new filming method, scenes that didn’t make sense started to appear.

At first, we couldn’t find these parts.

But in the process of repeated filming, I kept feeling that something was subtly off.

So I asked Director Kim Pil-sung for the footage filmed so far, and finally, I could discover the problem.

From Scene 1 to Scene 29.

In between, there was one scene that didn’t make sense.

Moreover, it wasn’t a scene that could just be glossed over with editing.

Director Kim Pil-sung seemed to have not yet discovered this problem as he was filming daily.

‘Ah… Should I suggest reshooting this?’

This thought occurred to me, and I sat quietly for a while before taking out my phone.

Before requesting a reshoot of , there was something I absolutely needed to check.