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Fifteen years since his debut with Die Bad, SHIN Jae-myung is now going through the biggest turning point in his film career. Having monitored the release of Memories of the Sword which has pioneered “martial art period film,” SHIN is now preparing for his film debut as a director. As an action director who has mastered the “Korean style action,”  he is now ready for another big challenge. To be sure, the box office failure of Memories of the Sword was painful for him. However, through this experience, he believes he has changed and now he knows how to blend the character’s emotion within action without violence. In fall 2015, he attempts to convey hopeful life through action. In 2016, we could probably interview a film director SHIN Jae-myung.
  
I guess you, as an action director, always had this wish for and challenge spirit towards martial art period film. Was Memories of the Sword such an opportunity?

 

You are right. Directing action for the last 15 years, I felt that I was becoming more and more violent. Memories of the Sword helped me set a kind of limit, I mean, the kind of limit where violence is not exactly violence.

 

 

All the staff were depressed because of its bad performance. So depressed that it was hard even to propose a drink to console each other. I am really sorry for the result. Maybe Korea is just not ready for martial art films yet, or the film itself was too hard to understand. We had big hopes, and worked very hard. The action team worked hard for more than one whole year for this film. When we were done with shooting, I boasted a lot to my friends as well. People often talk about Korean style action, and if this film did well, then it would have made a new definition of Korean style action. We made a lot of efforts to express action scenes as described in the scenario. In fact, a lot of action scenes are cut away; director PARK Heung-sik must have put a lot of thought on editing.  

 

 

In Korean cinema, action has been, in fact, pure violence disguised as martial art. Quite honestly, Korean action films are sheer violence, and they certainly in a way justify violence. That is because the subject matter is limited. Most action films deal with rascals, detectives, and secret agents. However, Memories of the Sword was different. We are not familiar with the sword but we tried very hard to describe it in a non-repulsive and non-violent way. Not only the main characters KIM Go-eun and JEON Do-yeon but also the whole stunt team learned dancing.

 

PARK asked me not to ignore gravity. So I designed the action movement in the way that you fall harder when you go higher, and bounce more if you jump further. On the other hand, I missed out some parts deliberately. It is often compared with Chinese films, but a glamourous action such as spinning 360 degrees and so on are deliberately missing. Those kinds of decorative action have appeared in a lot of films already, but I wanted to give a reason to every action scene. Every time you slay, stab, hit and get beaten up, you must have a reason why. Just like actors need the right lines when they act, I wanted to assign them with action that fits their emotions.

 

Yes, it sure was. In Roaring Currents, I had to choreograph a war, and a battle, while Memories of the Sword is martial art film. Roaring Currents is a film about a war where you fight for your life. Here, things like the sword and Zen are not important. It is a pure fight of life and death, a real action, where I must kill you to win at the war. To realize such sentiment I read ‘The Nan-joong Diary’ (the diary of Admiral YI Sun-shin, hero of Roaring Currents) that director KIM Han-min gave me, which was greatly helpful.

 

 

It was an endless fight with the hot weather and injury. The clothing itself was very hard to be worn with protection equipment. The shoes were old-fashioned and uncomfortable so there were many injuries. The shooting site was full of sharp and pointed things so after each shooting there was a medical treatment session. In addition, because so many people were in a limited space, playing action was more difficult, and we had a lot of injuries. Several of us would go to hospital each day. Fortunately there was no huge injury since everybody stuck to what they practiced. 

 

 

Actors suffered a lot, too. I am a very close friend of CHOI but I had no mercy on him. Because he had to wear the armor in a boiling hot weather, he was like, “Please save my life!” However, since all the characters are martial officers, they had to have a certain way of walking with the sword and the kind of style to be familiar with the sword, and to be able to handle it well, as if almost playing with it. And no double for actors was possible since they were battle scenes. All actors, whether they had action scenes or not, worked really hard and did a great job both at practice and real shooting. 
 

 

KIM Han-min and I agreed on one thing from the beginning: that they went to the battle to throw away their life. They did not think of winning the battle and coming back home. They were just hoping to save their families and the country, at the expense of their lives. Such resolution was reflected in the film, which in turn changed the action. KIM asked me to depict the situation like hell. That is the famous long take battle scene.

 

 

Films have diversified, but action has not. You now have a variety of different subject matters but the action itself has not changed. Veteran and Memories of the Sword were at the intersection of changing the action trend. Veteran did a great job, and I hope Memories of the Sword will be re-evaluated one day in the future.

 

I would say Veteran turned violence into action. RYOO’s action films are different from others because he himself does action and therefore has a deep understanding of action. In Veteran, I could see the actors playing within the right angle. I felt that RYOO and all the actors are veterans. The slapstick at the beginning of the movie was like that of Chaplin and in the later part you see a great fight scene in the real sense. It has the emotion and action structure successfully blended in. Fights and combats are different. The rules and the degree of violence are all different.

 

 

It was when I was begging the film people to let me be an action director. In those days, I used to go deep into the scenarios and then shoot and edit a video to show it to the film company. They liked it very much, and since KWAK Kyung-taek’s Friend, I edited pre-visual videos myself on a laptop. Before, I did the editing with the VHS equipment (laughs). Later on this practice was widely spread and such pre-visual became a popular method. It is always important to do the planning but action is not to be explained with words. So if you shoot the action outline and show it to the director and staff, it was easy to take it from there. Likewise, rather than attempting a revolution, you go for a little change each day. At first some producers didn’t understand what it was all about, but now, things have changed.

 

 

I had a rough time while working with independent films like Die Bad, and I also had a great success with many films since Friend. The film that made me proud of myself was Mutt Boy of KWAK Kyung-taek. The last jail scene was very hard to make. I wouldn’t be able to reproduce such reality even now. Then came Spirit Of Jeet Keun Do-Once Upon A Time In High School. YOO Ha, the director of the film is always very strong and powerful (laughs). My first period film was A Frozen Flower but I was not very happy with it because I couldn’t show enough of the sword. In terms of period films, my starting point is A Frozen Flower, and Memories of the Sword would be the turning point. 

 

I hear you are making a film debut with an original scenario of your own writing.
 
I am thinking of several works. First of all, Rising Up will be decided on investment within one or two weeks. I want to show real action in it. I want to show different martial arts and different fights in their proper ways. In terms of the message, I want to say that youth is worth living, no matter how hard it is, because it is like the rising sun. I want to make my own film with some ideas that I have stored while making pre-visuals in the past. I wouldn’t say I want to be a director. I would rather say I just want to direct my own story.