"......Why didn't I tell you I had a shoot? I don't have a smartphone."
Min Ji-yun blinked, then let out an ah of realisation, as if remembering a fact she had forgotten.
What reason could Min Ji-yun have for coming all the way here?
The business of the recast was settled ages ago, so it would not be to protest. I asked.
"How did you get here?"
"I came to visit! Sunbae-nim Choi Do-hyun said to come by sometime."
"I see."
Choi Do-hyun? She could just as well call him Uncle, and the fact that she uses sunbae-nim says this one really does have a child actor's seasoning on her bones.
When I only went on looking at her, Min Ji-yun worked her mouth and put both hands behind her back.
She hovers around the back of the chair, hesitating. Something like a hamster spinning in circles in one spot.
'......Or a puppy asking to go for a walk.'
I've seen this expression somewhere, ah.
'The kids who wanted to sit next to me looked like this.'
Unable to bear the silence, Min Ji-yun asked.
"You've got a shoot booked, right? Do you go straight in when the makeup's done?"
"Yes. I've got PPL acting booked."
"What kind of thing are you doing?"
"A headphone advert. You can see them over there. Do you want to try them?"
And with that she was trotting over to the headphones.
She picked them up and peeped over at me.
"You can try them."
"Hee hee, thanks."
The makeup artists watched the two of us with strange expressions.
Something like teasing us about being sweethearts.
Letting out a small laugh, I asked Min Ji-yun, who was playing with the headphones.
"Did you come with actor Ra Ju-hyun?"
"This is really amazing. I can't hear voices!"
"Where's your grandmother!"
Min Ji-yun took the headphones off her ears and said.
"Huh? Ah, I didn't come with Grandmother today. Mom brought me."
"Your mother?"
"Yes."
Im A-rin, Min Ji-yun's mother, is an actress of real craft who has walked the red carpet at Cannes.
I have seen films with actress Im A-rin in them before, too.
A few of them moved me deeply enough that I watched them over and over.
"Where is she?"
"She says if she shows her face it gets noisy, so she's in the car."
......A shame. I was hoping I might see her face. There will be another chance someday.
I smacked my lips, and Min Ji-yun put the headphones down.
Hesitating, she said.
"Can I watch you act today?"
"You can, but...... why bother? I'd think watching the other sunbae-nims act would be better than watching me."
"......Because I want to learn."
I raised my eyebrows. Because it puzzled me.
Min Ji-yun is a child actor who is already making her mark in broadcasting.
She has been in several commercials, and I hear she has been taking acting lessons lately.
'Going by the acting she did when she went up against me, her ability is already excellent.'
Fitting for a future ten-million-admission actress, you might say.
She's a child with nothing to be wanting for, so I don't know why she came here.
I said exactly what I felt.
"You're good at acting."
"......Sorry?"
"You were good when you acted. There can hardly be a kid out there as good as you."
Min Ji-yun stood blank for a moment, then dropped her head low.
Her fringe covered her eyes.
Min Ji-yun mumbled in a small voice.
"You're better. So much better I don't even compare."
What is she on about now? Is there better and worse in acting?
Whether it's painting or sculpture, once you reach a certain level you start to think this way.
Class? A gap? At the professional level that too turns into a difference of style.
Of course there can be masters, and geniuses.
Within a similar school you might argue about finish or detail.
But neither Min Ji-yun nor I are at a level where that kind of accounting applies.
Our acting styles are different to begin with, for one thing.
Min Ji-yun does a fine job of showing the genuinely childlike quality viewers want from children her age. And me.
'True enough. What kind of acting am I good at. I haven't done much yet, so I don't know.'
Well, whatever. The point is I'm in no position to strut.
I shrugged.
"What about me? You and I are much the same."
"......We're not, though, you're really good......"
"You can watch. In exchange, when you go in for a shoot later, let me come and watch you."
Min Ji-yun's head shot up and she said with a bright smile.
"Obviously! You said you don't have a smartphone, right? Where do I call? Oh, right. I'll tell CEO Kwon!"
"I'm buying a smartphone soon. I'll give you the number then."
"Really??"
Seeing her this happy, she is exactly a child.
While I watched her fondly, the makeup artists talked among themselves.
"He's a player."
"Is Gang-woo the older one?"
"No. Same age."
"Lovely age to be~"
"......Sorry?"
"Right! Enough chatter, face front. We're out of time~"
About ten minutes went by. The AD's voice came.
"Gang-woo's makeup is done, isn't it?"
"Just the lips left to do!"
The makeup artist hurried a tint onto my lips.
Seeing it, the AD said to me.
"Gang-woo, when that's done, you know the place we talked about earlier? Come there. Let's block the scene!"
"Yes!"
I felt a hand pat my shoulder. The signal that the makeup was finished.
"Done! Go and chew it all up!"
"Thank you! Ji-yun, you're coming too, right?"
"Yes!"
With Min Ji-yun trailing behind me, the place I arrived at was a set built to look like an ordinary family home's child's room.
The room of Jun-yeong, the part I play. There are more props than when I saw it on the first day of shooting.
Stationery arranged in straight lines, books ordered by the alphabet — they show the child's character.
The scene we are shooting today is the extra material that was not in the original plan.
A scene with PPL in it, and acting aside, the product's exposure matters most.
Maybe that is why. What the staff asked for in practice was a posture that would show the brand logo well.
"Gang-woo, turn your head a bit more to the right. Yes, just a little more, so the logo shows—. That's it."
"Ah— the posture's good but it's covering it slightly. Could you lower your forefinger a little? And angle the headphones a bit more toward the camera."
The feel of it is closer to shooting a commercial than a drama; is it because I have done this once already?
Taking poses has become more natural than before.
'But it's a little unsatisfying. Am I actually being captured well?'
When I made figures in my past life I looked at the face I was making from an observer's point of view, from every angle.
I even went so far as varying the colour, brightness and position of the lights to attend carefully to where shadow fell.
'Because you never know what environment or what angle the client will view the figure from.'
Even after the regression that kind of work continued.
A face shaped like a figure I made — I have practised expressions in the mirror for twenty or thirty minutes a day without missing one.
The problem is that I still have no proper sense of how I am captured on camera.
Depending on the lens position, the way a subject is held changes.
The staff are throwing me a thumbs-up at every pose I take, but I wanted to check.
"PD."
"Yes?"
"Would it be all right if I checked the monitor?"
***
Grab any advertising or broadcast hand and ask what shoot they most avoid and there is one that never fails to come up.
A shoot with child actors, and PD Lee Jae-won of was a man who shuddered at the word.
They cry, they whine, you coax them, and if you use industry terms they don't understand you.
You have to translate it so a small child can follow.
There is far too much to attend to. Especially if there is a scene where the child actor runs? Then it is death.
Because children laugh the moment they run.
In that sense Seo Gang-woo was on a different track from the ordinary child actor.
'He understands direction so well! Wonderful!'
He doesn't dig his heels in over nothing either, so he is better than adult performers who make a fuss.
Has he ever seen a child actor this good? Not from a new one, at least.
Lee Jae-won checked the time and whistled inwardly.
He had allowed a generous schedule in view of Seo Gang-woo being a child actor and a newcomer, and there had been no need for it.
It seems they could even pull forward a shoot scheduled for a different day entirely.
And then Seo Gang-woo suddenly put the brakes on.
"Would it be all right if I checked the monitor?"
Lee Jae-won's expression showed a moment's surprise.
Because it is rare for a child actor to ask to monitor his own performance.
A child actor with a few years on him might be one thing, but a boy who has only just begun acting for camera?
'......Well, there's plenty of time left.'
A boy who acts well can be greedy for more too.
Lee Jae-won nodded.
"Sure, shall we take a look?"
Lee Jae-won led Seo Gang-woo to the field monitor.
The footage just shot played on the monitor.
Him taking various poses with the headphones on, and Seo Gang-woo examining his own acting with a serious expression.
His eyes were going back and forth between the screen and the place where he had been standing.
Lee Jae-won's eyebrows twitched.
'What's this?'
Isn't he calculating the distance and the angle to the camera?
Lee Jae-won shook his head.
'Come on, surely not. How could a kid.'
Acting for camera is difficult.
Think of the cases where a stage actor doing well comes over to broadcast and film and flounders.
Actors who have spent their lives performing only in theatres — in front of a camera, boxed into a rectangular frame, they are at a loss like people adrift on an open sea.
That is why actors facing a small-screen debut all study the camera without exception.
There was no chance that Seo Gang-woo had studied acting for camera. He is a child actor and a newcomer.
It would be natural for him to flounder.
So what is this situation?
'......What is it?'
Little by little the acting is changing. The actor is dropping himself neatly inside the frame on his own.
"I'll try it again!"
The first time he wondered whether he was imagining it. It seemed maybe a bit better than the one before.
When that became the second time, and the third, Lee Jae-won's thinking changed.
'This is insane. He really was calculating.'
Seo Gang-woo had started producing exactly the picture Lee Jae-won wanted, from hearing the camera's position and the posture requested.
Lee Jae-won's mouth stretched to his ears. He felt it at the table read too, but this boy Seo Gang-woo is in another class.
Looks, acting ability, sociability. Not a rough corner anywhere, and on top of that he has another innate gift.
'What do you call something like that? A synaesthetic talent?'
Whatever it is, the more you peel, the more astonishing the talent. Laughing with satisfaction, Lee Jae-won called out.
"Okay! Let's leave it there! I think we've got everything we're going to get, bring in actor Choi!"
The next scene is one where Seo Gang-woo and actress Choi Ji-hye work together.
A mother giving her son a last farewell after the divorce ruling.
Lee Jae-won had been a little worried right up until they went in to shoot today.
'It's a boy who's never worked opposite another actor, after all.'
Having someone read lines at a table read is one thing, but in a studio with the cameras actually rolling the difficulty is another matter entirely.
At the read all he had to do was sit and recite, but in a studio he has to attend to gesture, where his eyes go, the distance to the camera.
And that worry has been washed clean away.
If anything, expectation has grown to match the worry.
'......This should be fun for once.'
Might this boy not show him something different?
Lee Jae-won's smile deepened.