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00:00So tell me what's gonna happen in the sequel cut through your stalling tactics
00:30Welcome to behind the lens today i am so happy to have these two here because it is the phenomenal story of the year movie wise there's no question about it k-pop demon hunters has just broken every record you can break at netflix and for viewers and around the world and even when they did a weekend in theaters
00:59it broke records there it's just a phenomenon musically and animation wise and awards wise and everything else so please welcome the co-directors of the film and congratulations wow this is exciting of course the latest is oscar nominations two oscar nominations not just only for best song but also for best animated feature that's exciting what was that day like for you guys
01:26uh well started very early it was 5 30 when the announcements happened in los angeles so i was on my phone like in my bed in the dark watching it and going yay
01:36yeah not to wake up anybody definitely the happiest we've ever been at 5 30 in the morning
01:42it's a great tribute to also sony pictures animation which made the picture both of you had worked at sony is that right
01:51actually the working on the film was my first time that was your first time you had worked at sony yeah
01:56yeah they were a co-produce they were a partner in my first film wish dragon was a chinese sony co-production
02:02yeah but this is your first
02:04what is that a shotgun marriage or
02:08yeah it's an arranged marriage i'm just kind of curious when you're throwing together creatively on a project like this
02:15how that works you know it was pretty good i mean i feel very very lucky that um because sometimes i mean
02:23it could it could not work and and you'd have to you have to figure it out and it takes you it takes a while
02:28to do that and with us it was very seamless um i think we have the kind of perfect overlap of
02:34i come from a story boarding background and chris does too but he's more of a production designer
02:39like art background so but then where we overlap is is the writing and story and so we were kind of
02:46able to just tackle that together but then take on other parts that you know we individually excelled at
02:54a little bit more yeah um yeah it's one of the things that it's been so hard to explain it um properly
03:01because it's such a and i realized the honestly the best way to explain it is like
03:05a kind of this this sounds cheesy but like a kind of creative
03:09almost destiny feeling to it because the way that we both independently had 20-year careers
03:16learning things and also having like a lived experience of stuff that related to the movie
03:22so because i was thinking about it the other day i remember
03:26when i first sat down to talk with maggie about the movie because people think like the studio just
03:32forced two people to make a movie together that's not that wasn't this process like
03:35we sat down and maggie told me about the concept and she already had this great hook and she had
03:42this really clear vision for like the type of female character she wanted to see and what she
03:48didn't know is that my wife maureen goo who's korean-american is an author and her whole journey as an
03:53author in the last 15 years has been writing about young korean-american women who are not just a
04:00convention like they're funny and silly and weird and thirsty and vengeful and so maggie went on this
04:06rant our first time talking about a very wrench uh yeah a vengeful rant about everything that was
04:14missing from female characters i'm like it sounds so weird to say this but i know exactly what you
04:20mean because i've been hearing this rant in my own house for decades wow and then on the flip side of
04:25that i'd say the one thing that that you were sort of stumped on in the concept was how the music was
04:31going to work and maggie didn't know well i guess you did i'm a musician and and so i i sort of pitched
04:39her like what if we were trying to explain what's k-pop and demon hunting have to do with each other
04:43and so i was like you know this could be among many other things a film about the power of music like
04:48the way it can make the world better it connects us and it creates empathy what i didn't know is that
04:55maggie besides having this literal singing voice of an angel by the way she's she's been it's so true
05:03though she has been singing to k-pop literally from the first generation like like before like
05:11for 35 years so she has a lived experience of that bond the feeling music can have you the friendship
05:19the connection of it and so within that it seems like a kind of superficially it seems like this
05:26arranged marriage but it's actually two people bringing their whole lives suddenly to bear and
05:31then it clicked in that first few months well i think because i was talking to a few few other
05:36candidates too and chris was the only one that really came into it with and and trying to figure
05:42out like how he could like where where do it kind of attach emotion right and for him it was through
05:47the music and the music and you the musical element was not there initially for you it was always there
05:54but i didn't i didn't really think too deeply into it and how it could be very much uh incorporated
06:01into the storytelling so it wasn't just boy band versus them and this whole thing
06:05it was it was it was there okay it was there but um i guess i don't know just when he talked about
06:12it could be a story about the power of music yeah i was like oh that makes it more of a grand idea
06:17and not just uh like a competition through their music the music has been integrated chris so
06:24brilliantly obviously i mean i think seven of the songs have gone to the top of the charts which is
06:31i'd have to go back to something like saturday night fever to remember when that happened with
06:37the bgs with one song i mean the cultural impact and on the music business this is a
06:43all over the grammys as well and you know everywhere i think it was that was the other bonds i mean we
06:50had so many bonds where we just like you kind of glance at the other person like i mean like the taste
06:56meter yeah like do you like that do you guys like all musicals so we have like a we have a love of pop
07:04music and a love of some musicals but this really we agreed really steadfastly from the start that
07:11this was going to be not a typical musical and then we were sort of we were like it's not a musical at
07:17all and then slowly but it definitely is yeah it's just the way we've never really seen pop songs used
07:23in musicals before and with such deep storytelling right and so we didn't really have anything to look
07:30to as as an example so um i guess we didn't really think about that because it didn't exist i don't
07:37know it took us a long time months to realize oh no this is a full musical but we're using it we're
07:43using pop music different than like the string of alan menken musicals and all of those for disney
07:51you know that we're full animated musical properties yes well where where the songs are very
07:58narrative and the lyrics are very story driven literal yeah very literal but in pop songs you can't
08:04really do that yeah because our songs have to live within this within the movie but also outside of the
08:09movie and so it took us a long time to really figure that out and we realized we had to rewrite the
08:15songs a lot we had to write it first literally uh just to convey the story and then we would um come
08:23up with kind of ways to to to kind of explain that in more of a pop lyric that was cool and and more
08:30catchy and working with the lyricists to to get to that and so it was a very layered process where we
08:36were very involved with the writing of of the songs because we were we were writing the songs that
08:42are the that's also the film yeah there's a lot of writers involved in these songs i saw the list
08:47oh yes very layered and there's scenes first but we had to write we had to write scenes that were in
08:55both satisfying scenes we were just talking about this the other night and also they need to fit
09:01actually a song structure just the way you might write a conversation in which there's
09:06sort of counterpoints and then somebody lands a premise well that's your chorus and then you evolve in
09:12the second verse the conversation advances or the story does and the next time you sing that chorus
09:16there's a new meaning to it like that's a good scene right so we would write these documents and
09:21then a bridge that and then a bridge that breaks into a different idea yeah and then we hand those to
09:27the incredible songwriters and we talk then about the pop metaphor so because what we learned was like
09:33we can't sing and then the whole moon will be golden it was like we can't sing the word home moon
09:39we did and still be a pop it was no longer a pop song right it was not good so we were like oh it
09:44has to be like i'm gonna be gold it's something like that that allows you to fill it yeah you know
09:49and have that that people are going to go out humming that i mean yeah which they certainly do here
09:56once you hear that song you can't get it out of your head you know it's true but that's not just
10:01true of that song i mean for people that have seen the movie i'm sure hundreds of times
10:05for many viewers because it keeps way up at the top of the charts at netflix there's a lot of good
10:11tunes in this oh which is your favorite i've heard golden so many times i'm starting to play soda pop
10:17a little more because that is a pure pop song yes that really is that could have gone back decades for
10:23a lot of artists that kind of a song no that's true yeah we took you there's inspiration in there
10:28from like the 90s yeah it feels like that got some of those like in sync era synth chords that
10:35they use it yeah and early kpop did some great stuff yes it's a very like kind of typical boy
10:41group song yeah i would say yeah but that's all that also has a lot of different meanings too it's
10:47it's a very poppy catchy cute song but the lyrics say you know i want to eat you
10:52because they are demons um so we had a lot of fun with that i have to tell you when um marshall at
11:00netflix called me and said i really want you to see this movie k-pop demon hunters what you know
11:05k-pop demon hunters oh yeah yeah and it was thank you for your honesty absolutely you know it's kind of
11:14a hard sell i go okay i get one of those movies and but it's so not and when people see and i think
11:20that's why you're so on top of the awards mountain right now with this because this is something that
11:28is artistic in every way shape and form the animation is stunning yes all throughout it and
11:35and everything about it that the title when first i heard it told me it was going to be one thing and
11:40it wasn't that's sort of like your secret plan here i'll bet yeah i think we do a lot of subverting
11:46you know even in the movie so i think um we felt like the title also did that so it was kind of like
11:51a cheeky nod to the tone of the movie well yeah which it is i mean this battle and this whole thing
11:58and and at its heart though the film is really an emotional thing about these women yes and and
12:04their journey and it goes in deeper places than you normally see for this type of a film yes yes for
12:12sure can you talk about that yes when we uh we're talking about just a demon fighting girl group it
12:19felt like a missed opportunity to not have one of them be demon and when we uh kind of landed on that
12:25it we started to think about inner demons and um it'd be interesting to have this the main character's
12:31inner demon be a literal demon and so when we started to think on that it was you know it was
12:36it was like this idea of people having parts of themselves that they don't like whether it's um
12:42their history like where they come from or a choice that they made in the past
12:46things that you just cannot erase how do you deal with those like you could either let them
12:52consume you and make you you know disconnected from the people around you and the people that you
12:58love the most or you can you can just own up to them and not embrace them but just accept them as
13:05a part of yourself and and rise above it and so we we talked a lot about um just you know our
13:11personal experiences or the experiences of people that we have seen around us and um we were just
13:18really inspired by that and and when we and it came to the character of rumi who is a perfectionist
13:24because she has been taught that love for her is conditional once she gets rid of her demon which is
13:32the literal demon only then can she be accepted and fix yourself first then you can be loved you can
13:37be loved and so for her we felt like the lowest point that this kind of a character can go because
13:43she's also a warrior is i i can't erase this so i must not exist and when we figured that story point
13:51out it really told us it just really defined the character for us and you know we wanted her to be
13:56strong all the way to the end and so that really took it to a really dark place but we love the
14:02balance of this and we wanted to craft the film that that had you know uh scenes where popcorn's
14:08coming out of girls eyes but also this character is like i cannot exist and um and we just tried it
14:15we tried to see if it'll work and it felt like it did oh yeah no it's great it's almost you know
14:21fellini-esque in some way oh wow i mean the visual component talk about it the visuals here and
14:28working with the animation teams that you have to create this very distinct look yes yeah i mean it
14:36was the the look of the film is a synthesis of the things that we love which is everything from
14:44bong juno films to k-dramas to cowboy bebop anime to the simpsons those are like deep bonding yes
14:53sources for us and the design of the characters and and maybe above all like representing korean women
15:01on screen and men actually we were like we're going to make super hot korean men and show the world how
15:05hot they are so those drove our design decisions incredible crew at all levels and then we were mashing
15:13up other things that there's a lot of stuff that we loved that we didn't we hadn't seen in animation
15:19great passion truly editorial pushed lighting that's bold and strange yeah great makeup great
15:26makeup nail art nail art and and the thing that emerged as the movie developed was like those are
15:33both my favorite quote about movies is true foe the truth and spectacle like you a great movie has both
15:41right and so what was so neat as the movie emerged kind of in production was that the spectacle
15:48the costumes the glamour the patterns they are part of the story so like roomie's costume is her
15:56character arc she's got this amazing um persona but also she's got a turtleneck up to here because
16:03she's hiding a part of who she is she gets into her costume for the golden song which really represents
16:08a macguffin in the film it's like it's the false it's the false what i'm gonna make a a perfect version
16:13of myself and then all these patterns i'm hiding they'll be gone and then the dark night of the soul
16:18she's there she is costumes falling apart around her her patterns are all over and it was this mix of
16:24like kind of david bowie stylish high concept pop star but that was also her story of like i am walking
16:31right into a stadium finally bearing the truth of who i am and putting it on display for the two
16:38people who mean the most to me and the whole world so that that really kept happening it felt like the
16:44story and the spectacle kept asking for the same thing yeah and that just really led to a very seamless
16:52um look and and then you don't even notice that that stuff's telling you a story it's just built into
16:57it's it's a fake pop group huntrix but the casting of it is so real that you've created
17:06basically it's almost like you go way back date myself with the monkeys that they were put together
17:14yes as a fake group essentially and then became a major hit making group too here with your vocal cast
17:24is amazing yes yes and i mean we were so fortunate with both of our acting cast and our singing cast
17:32uh we we found talent that just are are the characters or are a version of the characters
17:40it's really interesting at the very end of the process which is what was weird it took a long time
17:44to cast and so and then when we finally did it was it was like oh well there they are of course it was
17:51always them of course yeah and it's that spider-man meme where both of the you know two audrey and may
17:58meet or arjun and uh and ej is like wait you you're you're roomy i'm roomy too and we're you know we're
18:04all roomy yeah and maybe why it's connected too because they're so real your your um your characters
18:11that's right that beyond the korean uh connections here and all of that i think it's universal yes you
18:18know particularly for younger audiences watching this yes you could see that at halloween all young
18:25all all american all races and and ages young women dressed up as these korean girls because
18:30they don't they don't care they just want to be roomy and i'm a zoe and i'm amira and that's yeah
18:35that's what we worked so hard on with those girls is like to make them feel so real and i just remember
18:40talking to audrey about it because audrey i don't think the girls even had met each other
18:45during their recording they only met after the movie was done wow but audrey talked about like
18:50watching the movie and seeing mira and being like this is both feels like a version of me that i want
18:57to exist and also like i'm so proud to lend my voice to this animated character who will be for a young
19:05this generation like they're that's going to be there that she didn't have yeah that their sailor moon
19:09is she's like i didn't have something like that who could just like chug a kimbap and and then go
19:15sing and be and be a star and so now i've seen i just saw all the action toys all the stuff i mean
19:23it's like it's whole suddenly you're disney you know you got stores full of this merchandise which is
19:30amazing amazing and that's more for the connection because they're physically connecting with these
19:36characters yes on the yes on the toy shelves yes which leads to the question what's happening with
19:42the sequel oh no we we have been joking that we feel like we're still working on the first movie
19:53like we're not quite done with it somehow still um but i guess it is kind of that like trying to close
19:59the circle on telling the story of it and then really we also really want some couch time yes
20:08yeah we haven't had that um since we completed we we finished the movie in april and we were kind of
20:14just sitting on pins and needles because we were like the movie hadn't come out yet so we were we were
20:20maybe 50 40 relaxed yeah maybe not even that great yeah so we've been kind of holding our breath and
20:26and then since it since the release we've just been on the road and just motoring on so we just need
20:32a little break speeches at award shows yes yes i mean doing all of that i mean when you make a movie
20:37it's when you finish the movie if it's something like this it's a long road it is i like to call it
20:44the fourth trimester because it definitely feels that way yeah it just keeps going it just keeps going
20:51going and going yes so tell me what's going to happen in the sequel cut through your stalling
21:00tactics oh gosh i mean i feel it you haven't thought about it or you're we have i'm sure there's
21:08pressure also also we just we've we've we've just thought about a lot of things you you have to kind
21:13of think about so many things beyond what's in the in the first movie to make that movie you have to
21:19think about all the backstories and you have to you have to really create that entire world in order
21:23to tell that one part of that of that world and um in terms of pressure um you know we put immense
21:31amounts of pressure on ourselves for the first movie we you know and and for me personally i i don't see
21:37a lot of people that look like me get this position and so i was like i'm not going to blow this
21:43this is maybe the only thing i ever do in my career um and so i'm going to give it everything
21:49i've got and and so i put a lot of pressure on my myself to to make a movie that i would be proud of
21:56and and my standards are very high and so are chris's so extremely high and and so it'll be like that
22:03for whatever we do next and um and i yeah i don't think anybody else can put pressure on us like like
22:09we do on ourselves yeah exactly and they'll come at you for a broadway show yeah so get ready
22:17if it hasn't happened already academy awards grammy awards everything down the line already won golden
22:24globes critics choice you name it congratulations on k-pop demon hunters and thanks for coming in and
22:31joining us on behind the lens of course it was so fun you
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