Cinematographer – Chung Chung-hoon
Cinematographer Chung Chung Hoon is known as one of the most influential filming professionals in the Korean film industries, by researching on Chung I found I have actually watched quite a lot of his work that he produced back in Korea, Chung started to be known within the Asian film industry once he collaborated with one of the most famous Korean director Park Chan Wook and won his admired, rely on their first and most well known collaboration – film ‘Old Boy’, gradually Chung has become Park’s right-hand man which has also become the way that led his work being known in the global film stage, since then Chung started to work both in South Korea and America, I was attracted to Chung’s most recent work ‘It’ which was released at the end of 2016.
I am not a big fan of horror movies because I feel exhausted after watching them, everyone who has seen the film ‘It’ strongly recommended me to go and watch. I ended up with myself watching the film from the gaps of my fingers for half of the movie, it is still scary when I watched the second time. Although there is no doubt that this is another kind of film produced by Chung that is hard to watch but impossible to look away from it. Chung’s work is always a combination of beauty and brutality, at the first time I watched ‘it’, I paid full attention to the storyline which I didn’t have time to look at any of the cinematography in this film. When I found the film was one of Chung’s work I was very surprised so I went back to watch it over again for this assignment. The second time, I tried to compare with Chung’s past works, I can see ‘It’ belongs to the genre that he is most expertise with. There are a lot of Korean filmmakers who have been influenced a lot by the western filmmakers/ film industry, and Chung Chung Hoon is one of them, the smooth camera movements that he uses a lot in most of his productions especially in ‘It’ has reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s film style.
‘It’ director Andy Muschietti described Chung as a flexible and versatile cinematographer, he is always able to give varies of functional suggestions for the directors to choose from, he always set the basics during pre-production which gives more spaces for directors to choose whether to edit more in post-production. For example, the film ‘Oldboy’ is one of my favorite film from Korea, director Park never likes shots that have a totally dark area so he left little lights in various places with detailed on, this has given director Park freedom to set color grading in post-productions.
Chung is a clever filmmaker with a deliberate insight into the industry, “he never goes for the same aesthetic, each movie has a style that is particular and interest,” described by Muschietti. This ability is relating to Chung’s experience shifting between Korea and the US, working in the US which the film industry is fully developed with its rich history must be very different to Korea whereas its film industry has influenced by its cultural backgrounds. First of all, Chung sees that there is a clear difference between Korean and US film production, “the Korean film production focuses on the end result of the film that is made while the US film production set the required time in filmmaking”. Secondly, while it is difficult for him, Chung can also understand the filmmaker’s passion from both countries. It depends on external and internal factors, including the production teams’ passion and commitment, which impact the quality of the film they make.
Moreover, once Chung has perceived how fast is the Korean film industry developing with the widespread of k-pop, he has now chosen to reside in Los Angeles, in Korea we can rarely see any cinematographer turned 50 and is still working, filmmaker’s generation update and change very fast in South Korea. As the result, he thinks by moving to Los Angeles, he can also meet and collaborate with more directors and crews to broaden his spectrum for his career.
References:
https://ascmag.com/articles/it-fear-itself (Film IT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r7sGevKI-g (interview of Chung Chung-hoon for the 4th AFA Nominee in Best Cinematographer)