Surprise Ep645 - The Frozen Teenager

A few weeks ago, on my last weekend before the end of the Christmas vacations, I get a message from a foreigner involved with Korean TV that had had my profile since I started sending them around in Korea, to get gigs and appear as extra in TV shows/dramas/movies, asking me if I was available the coming Saturday for a filming. I got no details on where or what, but as it is rare that filmings take place on weekends (I only have time on weekends) I was glad to say I had no plans at the time.

So on Saturday, wake up at 5h45, get to Yoeuido for 6am, get on their bus. We we going to film the Korean TV show "Surprise". I honestly had no idea what it was about, and had never watched the show itself. While I love acting and wish I could make a carreer out of it, I do not really watch TV, as I know it is the worst time-consuming hobby.

Apparently the show has been going on for some 12 years! 0.o and is basically a retelling of stories happening all around the world, that are as weird as their are unbelivable, while being true stories.

We took the bus for almost 2 hours, foreigners and Korean mixed up, but mostly all sleeping. I didn't feel awake enough to actually make any kind of conversation, but noticed that there were not as many foreigners as I had expected. I learned later, that the part we were filming didn't require much characters, so it was all good anyways.

When we got to the filming site, we were shown the make up room (that was still freezing, as it was early morning and the heaters had apparently not been working for so long). The door to our room had a paper that said that:

I was puzzled at the sign for a few moments, but seeing no one to ask for explanations, I just went in. It is only after a while, when I left the room to use the restroom, that I understood:

Right in front of our make-up room door, there was the door to another filming crew. Kill Me, Heal Me. Their sign roughly translates as : This is the make-up room for the Kill me Heal me crew. People who are not part of the crew stay out.

Have you watched Kill Me Heal Me yet? I read the synopsis and thought it was a cool idea, and that there were many ways the drama could be filmed (like having a different actors for each of the guy with split-personality disorder's different characters) and could turn out fun. However, a friend of mine tells me the acting is so so and thus, the drama too. I still have to watch it, but for now, I can smirk. You guys are not nice to Surprise's crew, take that, bad drama. :)

The makeup artists took a long time to make the beards, facial hair, and hairstyles of the Korean crew that was filming the traditional story of ep 645. They were making pieces of art. I was told that the make up would be done on site, so I went bare-faced, and as the hours went by, getting no one to help me with that, I ended up realizing that they wouldn't do it. I was a bit disappointed, to be honest, that they were not doing the make up after being told I didn't need to. It was not entirely make-up racism, however, as much as I'd like to blame it: they didn't put base makeup on anyone, the people apparently all did theirs on their own, during their free time, and the only make up that was done by the artists was the un natural stuff. I'll know for next time.

This picture is pretty unflattering, my skin was not in good shape at the time, and the lack of make up didn't help, but I figured it might help understand how exposed I felt. In the end, however, what showed on the TV show looked quite fine, and I was not hating myself on screen.

The make up of the main character, Jean Hilliard (19), was stunning. Whenever she sees her face, I am sure she hates life by remembering how painful it was to actually get all of those pieces of make up removed from her face and hands. The pieces stuck on her eyebrows and eyelashes were stuck using hairgel, but the rest was all make up glue, and her face was really read when everything got removed. Poor child. The actress was actually 19 for real, which was quite ironic taken her role.

She had dark nailpolish on her nails. We were filming a scene from the 1980. She had just gotten her nails done, so she didn't want to get it removed, but at least her nails were of an opaque classic color...

My hands, on the other hand... were a bit less authentic. Please watch the show, though, and take notice on how amazingly anachronistic they look :)

#surprise645 #KoreanTVshow #filming #Korea