Please accept my apology for neglecting you for almost an entire week. Especially without warning you guys that I was going to be busy with school wouldn't be able to post anything for a week. I'm really sorry... T-T
So, shall we forget and move on? ^^
In this post tell you all about what we did/learned in week 10 of the K-Pop Academy, and tomorrow I'll post what we did in week 11 (that's this week). That will also be my last 'K-Pop Academy homework' related post, as this last Saturday was our last class... =(
That's really sad, right? But no worries! I'll still post about the graduation ceremony, KA's upcoming visit to Samsung, the D-100 Olympics event at KCC, and whatever else I'll come across that has slightly something to do with Korea. Also, as I mentioned before, Alice, Amy and I have multiple K-Pop cover videos coming out in the next month, so that's something to anticipate too. =)
But for now, let's focus on the last two weeks.
Week 10: The Future of K-Pop
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| Edwina Mukasa showing us all the fact and figures about K-Pop |
In class we had journalist Edwina Mukasa come in. She writes for the Guardian and has had an article published about the growing interest in K-Pop (see <here> if you are interested). In class she gave a presentation about the different perceptions of K-Pop and asked us a lot of questions about our views of the expansion of K-Pop.
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| We K-Pop Academy student can literally talk about K-Pop all day. No Problem |
This week's homework
Option A: Considering the varying perceptions of the future of K-Pop, if you were the CEO of an entertainment company, what kind of K-Pop artist/group would you be on the look out for?
Qualities of the perfect K-Pop group
In my opinion, what makes or breaks a group, is the chemistry between the members. The group has to act as a unit. All the members need to know their role in the group (preferably either everybody has a different role, or everybody in the group is a 'jack of all trades' so the group is versatile) and all the member support and help each other. Groups with a strong team spirit make the best bands.
It's not uncommon for groups to get split up, that 3 members are going to variety show A, while another member is performing in a musical that day, and the last member is shooting a drama. That happens quite often. So, not only do all the members need to have a clear role in the group, but they should be versetile so, as their manager, you can kind of mix and match the members and assign them to different tasks.
Technology
Then there is also the fact that, because of the rapidly changing technology, there will soon be even more pressure on idols to be perfect in every way (or on any artist for that matter), as most of the events will probably be broadcasted in 3D or what they call 'Super HD'.
SM is one of the companies that has been experimenting with this new format from early on to get familiar with all the new possibilities.
A 3D Music Video looks really cool, but working with this kind of broadcasting will be very hard. I imagine especially newly debuted idols will suffer, because they lack experience and in this kind of media format even the most tiny mistake will be visible and nothing can be hidden.
Language barrier
Of course it would be good if idols are able to speak English fluently, especially now K-Pop is going global, but their language skills are not the most important thing. Being talented at singing and dancing is the most important thing, because those things are not as easy to learn as the English language. Everybody can learn English (if they put in enough time and effort), but not everybody can sing or dance.
Also, the language barrier does not bother me too much, as most K-pop fans are willing to learn the language of the artist anyway.
Creating two 'super groups'
So, in order to create a 'super group', I looked for five male and five female idols that look sort of similar and give a similar vibe (cute/pretty, but can also adapt to a sexier concept), are all good at both singing and dancing, give strong live performances, and have other talents which come in useful for variety shows/dramas/musicals/tv commercials.
*After looking long and hard I came up with the following two lists of people.
Boy Group
1. Luhan (EXO-M)
2. Kevin (Ukiss)
3. Ren (NU'EST)
4. Zelo (B.A.P.)
5. Taemin (SHINee)
Girl Group
1. Sulli (F(x))
2. Jae Kyun (Rainbow)
3. Na Eun (A pink)
4. Ann J (C-REAL)
5. Suzy (Miss A)
*I'm not saying that these are the best idols in the industry. There are many other talented idols, but I choose these particular ones because looked similar and that fitted the concept that I had in mind the best.
Creative content
I was thinking about the future of K-Pop and that led me to think about the future of the music industry in general. With the way technology has been developing over the last few years, thing people didn't even dream about before. For example, being able to watch music videos from South Korean bands in HD within minutes after they are released is something my mum was not able to do when she was young.
Now, I can be a little bit of a geek every now and then. When I was about seven or eight years old I was really into Star Wars. So when I think about futuristic stuff the first thing my brain comes up with is spaceships, closely followed by lightsabers and holograms.
The last one gave me an idea. The quality of the videos keeps getting better and there are lost of experiments done with 3D, like SNSD's 3D Music Video for Run Devil Run, and I was thinking "how cool would it be if you were able to watch a K-Pop video in 3D without the glasses?". So, I decided to make my very own 'non-glasses hologram generator' to make extra special teaser videos of 'my super groups'.
Here is the result:
(Sorry for the poor quality in advance. The video had to be shot in semi-dark because else you wouldn't be able to see the hologram)
What do you think? Does it look legit? ^^
Do be fair, it isn't really 3D. I don't want to ruin the magic for you, but what you were looking at was a reflection of the video. I placed the plastic 'generator' on top of my laptop, which was upside down, playing the videos. If you look closely you can actually see the video on my Macbook's screen, and that I'm holding a notebook with a black cover in front of keyboard to keep the illusion alive.
Here are the normal versions of the teasers:
I know, I know, I'm a fraud. But look at it this way, at least this means that you can actually make one yourself if you want. All you really need is some plastic, carton board and glue.
Here is a video that explains you how it's done:
I hope you enjoyed this post. ^^
Tomorrow, I'll post the about last Saturday's class.
I don't want to reveal all of it yet, but I'll tell you this: the creative content will be a video made by Alice, Amy and I and I'll be dressed as a pirate/captain (or at least that what I should have looked like).
Does that tickle your curiosity? Than you show definitely have a look at this blog tomorrow!
Hopefully see you then! =)
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