“The thing, which has the look of a Sapsali dog and the size of a colt… ran away... The room was reeking of a fishy smell.” Based on the real-life events recorded in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, a new monster film set in the Joseon dynasty is coming. The production of creature films, which has seen an interruption since the release of BONG Joon-ho’s The Host (2006), is now resuming with a title taking place within the Geunjeongjeon Hall of Gyeongbok Palace, a symbol of the Joseon Dynasty as it was there that the king conducted most of his official duties. Monstrum, directed by HUH Jong-ho and produced by TAEWON ENTERTAINMENT, is set against the backdrop of a power struggle raging between the powerless King Jungjong and his overly ambitious Prime Minister. It is within this context of social and political instability that a wide hunt is launched to annihilate the ‘monstrum’ that has been terrorizing the people. who met with PARK Young-soo, Supervisor at the VFX company MOFAC Studio Ltd., which took a key role in the creation of this Joseon-era monster from its conception… to its death. 

MOFAC was in charge of designing the creature in Sector 7 (2011). It was an essential part of the story, but unfortunately, the film didn’t do well at the local box office. And we also worked on the climactic scene of Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea, from Chinese director TSUI Hark, where a gigantic stingray engages soldiers in a sea battle. After Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea, we have continued to work with TSUI Hark. (PARK has worked on the visual effects of a number of Chinese action fantasy films including TSUI Hark’s 2017 blockbuster Journey to the West: Demon Chapter and YUEN Woo-Ping’s The Thousand Faces of Dunjia, produced and written by TSUI Hark.)

A creature is not something based on an actual living animal such as a lion or a tiger, but a CG character created from nothing. This is why we call it a ‘creature’, not a ‘character’. So, first of all, we need to establish a character that fits the story, as if we were organizing a casting for a role. If the character needs to convey strength, we start brainstorming keywords by combining existing animals that embody power, such as bears and lions. But we don’t stop there; we invent backstories detailing how the creature was born and how it lived, we add a personality that goes with this storyline, and then undergo an extremely complicated process until we find the right design on which we can all agree.

The main keyword was ‘Haetae’ (a legendary creature in Korean mythology that resembles a lion with protruding large teeth). Because the historical period was the Joseon dynasty, we intended to step away from the typically Western creature designs you usually see in films like Lord of the Rings. But we did argue over whether the creature should be feline or canine (laughs). In addition, it is shown in the film as a creature that barely survived in the wild after being abandoned, so its body had to suggest this history of survival: the scars on every corner of its body, blisters caused by a disease, an eye gone blind after months spent hiding in deep valleys and grottoes to avoid humans, while the other eye has bad vision. Because the monstrum has a fatal malformation that affects not only its appearance but also its internal organs, we distorted its skeleton to the extreme – like, for instance, by raising one shoulder much higher than the other – to make its normal posture look grotesque. We also established that its movements were affected by its poor eyesight, and so it should always respond to sound first and move accordingly. 

Counting pre-production, it took us a total of 22 months. There were around 800 CGI shots, among which 211 featured the monstrum. While in most films the creature is just another actor of the main action, in Monstrum, since it is a character used in the narrative to evoke compassion, many single shots were added to show the creature’s eyes in close-up. Such additional revisions were only possible thanks to the recent change of working method implemented at MOFAC. Previously, we were using the ‘waterfall model’, which consists of finishing one stage before moving forward to the next one. When we were working on TSUI Hark’s Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, we started using the ‘agile model’, creating smaller teams of experts for each stage of our CGI work on a project. With this system, we can include the client (film director, producer, etc.) in the production process, allowing us to review the CGI shots as we produce them and to make revisions. Because our company works with full-time employees, we believe that this ‘agile model’ also has a positive effect in terms of education, as it encourages them to solve problems on their own.

A string of creature films came out in China after the success of blockbuster period fantasy films. In comparison, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be easy for creature films to become popular in the Korean market. Isn’t it a bit discouraging for you? 

Creature films heavily rely on box office success. Great performances lead to the popular appeal, which itself lead to a boom in production. But if it flops at the box office, it immediately gets depreciated as a whole. Through my experience working in the Korean film industry, I used to believe that there was a trend cycle, but when a film with a subject matter deemed unmarketable, such as sports, shatters your doubts, then it results in a rise of the film dealing with similar subject matters. This means that whatever the topic, what really matters is what you make of it. Creature films just haven’t had the opportunity yet to prove their box office potential. When I think about it, I don’t think there has ever been a great visual representation of a creature in any Korean film. Like the dragon in The Hobbit series or the characters in Avatar, these characters must have great roles to attract the public. The creatures in Chinese films used to be portrayed as scary and aggressive, destroying anything getting in their way. Then one day, a creature was depicted as a cute and likable character in Monster Hunt, which turned out to be a huge success. I hope this kind of change in approach can happen in Korea as well. I hope that we will see more films presenting the creature as the main character instead of being nothing more than an action actor. I would like to emphasize that a creature represents a technology that can broaden the scope of subject matters and the diversity among actors.