Stream K-Dramas at OnDemandKorea

A time to reform the drama production environment

Being at a drama set, it's obvious that many people are passionate and working hard on a drama. They struggle to make a single scene look better and are always busying themselves. This makes one keep silent or be in awe.

Advertisement

A drama production scene is like a warzone. The staff behind the camera work so hard to make the artists and storyline stand out. They spend a night up just for a scene that doesn't last a minute. This is because a drama is almost live-time. They take short naps, eat irregularly and suffer from various stress for a couple of months because of this.

Commonly an actor or actress say that they 'can't sleep' during a drama. Joo Won from SBS "Yong Pal" claimed he didn't sleep for 6 days. Park Bo-young had said she had a trauma of being on set. These statements prove that dramas are dangerous. It's like not knowing when a stack of eggs will fall and break. There can be results no matter what but the sacrifice is made by the cast and crew. They are overcoming this stress with passion, but the time is not about passion anymore.

Actor Lee Beom-soo complimented the JTBC drama production environment when the set of "Last" went out on media. According to him, JTBC takes plenty of time to prepare before going into making so the quality of the environment stands out better than other broadcasting stations. He said it was more humane as it didn't have last minute scripts and 'live-time recordings'. In reality, other dramas produce four episodes before sending them out but "Last" produces eight episodes before they are broadcasted. This is how they maintain a regular percentage although they are broadcasted at times that might seem abnormal for viewers.

The reason why drama productions have become common this way is because of greed for percentage. They try to edit the contents of their drama in the way viewers want them to be so they alter and film the drama last minute before sending them out. However, there have been backfires too. Sometimes the story of the drama go into the hills and sometimes even continue filming until the morning of afternoon of the day of the episode.

The eye level of the viewers have changed. Communication is important but if a problem isn't solved then one will be ignored. Korean dramas aren't competing amongst themselves but with American and Japanese dramas that are easily accessible through the Internet. Improvements must be made. The environment must treat the cast and crew with better conditions and leisure. The broadcasting stations must take the lead on this as they have the power.

❎ Try Ad-free