Love at First Site is a reimagining of 2020 horror/thriller Parasite, packaged as a Korean rom-com.
Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-ho, prior to Parasite‘s release, was known for dark thrillers such as Okja and Snowpiercer. Parasite can be considered his magnum-opus as the film went on to score, rightfully so, at every major award show, including both Best Picture and Best Foreign Film.
Despite dealing with dark themes, Bong’s movies always have a reasonable amount of humor; Parasite is no exception. I used it to my advantage and turned a twisted dark comedy into a romantic comedy.
Spoiler-free Synopsis: The film revolves around the relationship between two families. The youngsters in the two families, initially in a teacher/student relationship, soon turn into lovers.
Korean rom-coms are known to have sound design which can be considered slapstick or over-the-top in the West. As a stranger to both Korean dramas and cinema, this was a personal challenge. I requested a dear friend/ K-drama expert to send me trailers. The wide variety of trailers allowed me to recognize tropes and motifs used throughout the rom-com genre.
The trailers make use of bright title cards as well as an excess of sound design elements, ranging from springy boings to magical harps. The music is also upbeat, regardless of the mood in the scenes. A sizeable portion of Parasite is shot in high-key lighting, which aligns perfectly with the rom-com genre.
The trailers also focus on the love birds, concealing other supporting characters. Consequently, I decided to go down the same route by isolating two characters from the film, paving the way for a unique, spoiler-free version of the actual movie. Korean trailers are also heavy on dialogue so I had to extract scenes that had a minimal amount of musical score to facilitate sound design. Bong’s film only makes use of music when it is absolutely necessary, which worked in my favor and gave me an abundance of footage to work with.
Taking a page out of Emergency Couple‘s book, Love at First Site also makes use of heartbeats in the first half of the trailer. The beats were embedded in the scenes correspond to the rising on-screen tension between the characters. It can be heard at around 0:20 when the two are attracted to each other for the first time. The beat speeds up when it cuts back to them as they are about to kiss. It occurs once again at a later point when the tutor holds his student’s wrist and mentions her fast pulse. The heartbeat fits in nicely as it complements the awkward chemistry between the two stars.
Although most of the workload comprised of video editing, sound design was also tricky. My biggest concern while working on the sound design was to maintain the balance between music and sound effects. Overdoing the same sound would have ruined the trailer. Spreading out distinct yet cartoonish sounds not only maintained the general rom-com feel but also, prevented the sound design from being repetitive.
In conclusion, romance and comedy from Bong’s masterpiece paired up with K-drama sound design tropes, makes for a genre film distinct from the source material.
All assets used in Love at First Site were retrieved from Epidemic Sound.
