I recently returned from a trip to Korea to shoot (as DP) a short film there for a few weeks. It was my first trip back to Korea since I lived in Seoul for two months in the summer of 2006 to study Korean. And it was fantastic. It definitely rekindled my intangibly strong attraction to Korea: the spicy yet healthy food that my stomach and heart appreciated much more than the oily fair I usually treat them to in China; the warm-hearted, courteous people who donated their time and resources to help out with our project; the clean, lively streets bustling with life (including drunk businessmen pissing off to the side, but even they add color to the spectrum of life that makes Seoul so dynamic to me); and the challenging language that I had largely forgotten since my last trip but had ample opportunity to refresh while working with an all-Korean cast and predominantly Korean crew.
The shoot was challenging, especially in terms of scheduling (we worked some insanely long hours) and crew size, as we were short of help in the camera crew on several days of the shoot. We shot on my Canon XH-A1 and Letus Extreme 35 lens adapter with my Nikon prime lenses (and occasionally one of my Canon primes). In fact, all of the camera and audio equipment we used were mine, which caused me to pay a hefty excess baggage fee at the Beijing airport. I also almost missed my plane because once I finished arguing with the guy about paying the fee for excess baggage, I kindly informed him that I had a fake gun in my check-in bag. Which I did. It’s a prop, and I got it out of Hawaii and into China without any problems, so figured I’d be able to get it out just as easily. Definitely not the case. The problem is that it looks and feels entirely too real (which is why it’s such a great prop, and we needed it for the film). So as I was waiting for security officers and eventually the police to take a look at the gun (several of the airport employees were actually posing with the gun and taking pictures with their cell phones as I stood there embarrassed as practically everyone in the airport looked on at this crazy foreigner who must be up to no good). So my advice is to not try taking prop guns in and out of China. I eventually convinced the police officer on the scene to hold on to the gun for me until I came back, then sprinted across the airport and got on the plane right before they closed the hatch (my baggage unfortunately did not make it onto the plane). I noticed everyone staring at me as I walked down the aisle of the plane and wondered whether I was attracting their attention because I was out of breath and covered in sweat, or because they had seen me at the check-in counter an hour earlier with my head in my hands as the airline employees did their James Bond poses. Or because I was the only white guy on the plane, which is actually the most likely reason. Get plenty of that in China. Not so much in Korea fortunately, which was just one of many reasons I was looking forward to this trip.
But back to the shoot. Since both primary locations for the shoot were indoors and mostly at night, I knew we’d have to rent lighting equipment (as well as a few other things), and wasn’t looking forward to this as I wasn’t familiar with any of the grip houses in Seoul and my Korean was a bit too rusty to be ordering equipment. My German friend Nils (who’d recommend me for the job), a photographer and filmmaker based in Seoul that I’d met while living there in 2006, told me not to worry because he knew the perfect place. And he wasn’t lying. MediACT was just that. The perfect place to borrow equipment. And a lot more.
MediACT was established by the Korean government to help train and prepare the Korean population for the digital media age. Not only do they offer professional equipment rental similar to a very small-scale grip house, but also offer classes, editing facilities, and various other kinds of support for filmmakers. Being government-funded, MediACT is able to offer these services at very reasonable prices to its members. And becoming a member only involves attending a one-time orientation explaining how to use the facilities and equipment and paying the $20 member fee. And up-to-date equipment and facility availability can be viewed on their website, where you can also make reservations. Their Seoul location is located in the heart of the city in a very nice building at the Gwanghwamun intersection looking down at Yi Sun-shin’s imposing statue. And with the success of their Seoul venture, MediACT has opened facilities in other major cities around Korea.
Now of course none of those big blockbuster Korean films you’ve seen were shot with MediACT equipment, and those overly melodramatic Korean soap operas weren’t edited in MediACT facilities (probably), but don’t be surprised if several years down the road the people making those films and dramas are currently cutting their teeth on MediACT equipment and in the MediACT classrooms. Because to me it seems the goal of MediACT is to make filmmaking accessible to EVERYONE, not just those who can afford film school or have already decided to devote their lives to filmmaking (God forbid!). Some brilliant politician (is that an oxymoron?) in Korea probably looked around him one day and realized that ‘Hey, everything around us in this global economy is somehow connected to media, and our society is becoming increasingly dependent on the dissemination of information in visual format’. Well, let’s hope he was a bit more articulate than that in his thought process, but at any rate someone got their act together and saw a need for training people – regardless of their age, background, or career field – in digital media to help Korea’s economy continue to compete well in the 21st century.
In my opinion, it’s far-sighted policies and experiments like these implemented by the Korean government that have helped Korea become one of the world’s leading technology innovators. Similar far-sighted policies on the part of the government helping expedite the penetration of broadband Internet throughout Korea has given Korea one of the most computer and Internet literate populations in the world. Ditto for their telecommunications infrastructure, putting them at the forefront of new cell phone technologies. They were one of the first to adopt the new 3G technology, which the US is still struggling with five years later. And one arena in which Korean government support (or interference, depending on which side of the argument you look at it from) has been in the film industry, where Korea’s controversial quota system has greatly bolstered the industry’s overnight transition into one of the leading cinemas in the world. And I think MediACT is just one more important step in this process.
And this raises an interesting question. Where are the MediACTs in the US? Why has the US government not taken a more active (and far-sighted) interest in the development of future media-makers? Or do they exist and have just not received the recognition they deserve? The best examples I’ve found in the US of multimedia programs being established to train Americans in digital media concepts and production are high school programs like the internationally acclaimed program at Waianae High School in Hawaii, which are typically the product of an individual or a school or school district. And while the number of such programs is on the rise, for the most part they still seem to be under-funded, under-staffed, and under-appreciated (or perhaps misunderstood). And of course the biggest difference between these high school programs and MediACT is that you have to be a high school student to take advantage of what they offer (and that’s only if they offer such a program at the high school you happen to be attending). What about the rest of us who didn’t even have computers in our high schools when we were that age (am I really that old?!), or at least came before the proliferation of the Internet and the rise of digital media. What outlet do we have but to drop our current careers or field of study and go back to film school or technical school… for a whopping $30,000 a year. And what about the professionals in other fields who want to learn to incorporate the new digital media technologies into their current fields but don’t have the time to attend school full time. A number of universities and community colleges offer continuing education classes in these fields, but I’ve seen the limited resources these programs typically offer and while it’s a noble effort, it’s often laughable how basic they are (especially given the prices they charge for these classes).
There are obviously plenty of avenues for Americans to learn these new skills and implement them (and being a nation full of well-paid and well-educated people certainly doesn’t hurt), but to me the issue at hand here is not now, but the future. The very near future. And it’s not just in the field of digital media training for the masses. It seems like in terms of education in the US, there just aren’t many far-sighted policies and programs being implemented. Like so many other things there, America seems to be complacent and satisfied that since we are on top, we will always remain on top. History has proven repeatedly that’s not the case, and I think Korea, with it’s many far-sighted policies targeting the key trends that will drive the world economy in this still fledgling century, offers a number of modern lessons that the US would be wise to learn from.
