Why did blockbuster director Lee Joon-ik turn to short-form drama? [Interview]

Jung Jin-young, Lee Jung-eun lead 'Abeojiui Jipbap'

'Pushed into this' — a veteran director's response

Hoping to be the synapse linking generations

Director Lee Joon-ik of Abeojiui Jipbap [Courtesy of Lezhin Snack]

"Life is all about being pushed along, isn't it?"

For filmmakers, simply being able to do the work they used to do has, at some point, become a distant dream. As investment dried up, even well-known directors began abandoning theatrical films altogether. More and more people, despite pouring decades into the craft, still find themselves struggling to make a single project happen. Amid all this, a veteran director with more than 30 years of experience spotted a new opportunity in the short-form market and urged his younger colleagues to take it on.

"But why don't you do it, director? Is this a class society?"

The half-joking response from his juniors hit him where it hurt. His own words came back to bite him, and being pushed along by them is how he ended up here. Lee Joon-ik is the filmmaker behind hits like The King and the Clown (2005), Dongju (2016) and The Book of Fish (2021), and has long been regarded as a master of the period drama. Yet he did not have any grand reason for turning to short-form drama.

Abeojiui Jipbap ("Father's Home-Cooked Meal"), an original short drama for Lezhin Snack directed by Lee, will premiere later this month. The story, adapted from a webtoon of the same title by writer Gorita, was scripted by Shin Dong-sun. Shin worked alongside Lee on the production team of Hi! Dharma! in the early 2000s. Lee then translated it onto a vertical canvas — a format he was tackling for the first time himself. With a trustworthy cast led by Jung Jin-young, Lee Jung-eun and Byun Yo-han, the short drama has been meeting audiences first in theaters since Wednesday. It is screened as a 2-hour, 26-minute "vertical cinema."

Lee Joon-ik, making a rare public appearance, was interviewed on Wednesday at Kidari Studio's headquarters in Seongdong-gu, Seoul.

A scene from Abeojiui Jipbap [Courtesy of Lezhin Snack]

"There may be some resentment — the idea that I shot something for short-form and am now trying to cash in by bringing it to theaters. Some may also think an already-established director is encroaching on younger generations' territory."

Lee was well aware of how people might view a veteran director's unusual foray into short dramas and a theatrical release. Still, he agreed to direct the project, believing it was his role to widen the base of short-form content — a trend he sees as unstoppable.

He had a specific reason for bringing a thoroughly ordinary, understated story to a genre often criticized as nothing but sensational. The plot follows Ha-eung (played by Jung Jin-young), a father who has kept his distance from the kitchen his entire life, as he belatedly begins cooking for his family. "Everyone says the cliché is bad, but nothing is as precious as the cliché," Lee said with a laugh.

"The relationship between spouses, or between parents and children, is the most cliché and yet most precious story there is — its essence hasn't changed in thousands of years. Whether it's film or short-form, everyone these days chases stimulation, but I wanted to tell a story with almost none of it. What could be more precious than what feels obvious?"

The basic mechanics of storytelling — writing a story, having someone act it out, then filming and editing it — do not differ much between film and short-form. What did differ was the frame. Both the camera and the director's monitor switched from horizontal to vertical, forcing Lee to think about what to put into a narrower frame, and how. The conclusion he reached was that "if a horizontal frame is a landscape painting, a vertical frame is a portrait."

In Abeojiui Jipbap, so-called panning shots — moving the camera horizontally to shift the frame — are almost nowhere to be found. Nearly every scene instead captures a single character's expression and actions.

As a result, viewers come face to face with the emotions of Ha-eung, flustered as he tries to cook for the first time in his life; his wife Sun-ae (played by Lee Jung-eun), who has spent 40 years of marriage known simply as "the meal"; and their son Myung-bok (played by Byun Yo-han), who misses his mother's home cooking amid the grind of his job. Watching a face fill the frame, almost like viewing someone's portrait, produces a depth of emotion distinct from what film typically offers. This is exactly where the director focused his attention.

"In a landscape painting, several figures appear together as a group, but on a vertical screen, there is only one person. If I had shot the same script horizontally, I probably would have focused more on the 'relationship,' but in a vertical frame, I felt I needed a way to connect directly with a single individual. Not just the older Ha-eung and Sun-ae, but the younger versions of them, the daughter-in-law, the younger sibling, the granddaughter — each of their lives comes to me individually, one on one."

As the director put it, his move into short dramas may simply be the result of being pushed along. Lee described it not as a "challenge" but as a "response." In his view, short-form content is an unstoppable trend in an age when individualism has become universal. If the trend cannot be reversed, then actively responding to it is the only option — and the response he offers through Abeojiui Jipbap is precisely "breaking through the limits of short-form."

"Today's media environment is polarized by generation. Older people still flip through TV channels to watch content, while younger generations watch Netflix alone. Each generation has grown accustomed to different platforms and different kinds of stimulation. There is no way to unify this at the hardware level, but I believe that if you create 'content' that spans generations, the story changes."

A drama that anyone can relate to — one that becomes even richer when a family watches and shares it together. Breaking the assumption that short dramas are meant to be watched alone on a mobile device is exactly why Lee describes Abeojiui Jipbap as "a film good for sharing with family close to you." In an era of disconnection, what he hopes to achieve through this work is to forge connection through story.

"Abeojiui Jipbap is a story that a grandfather, a daughter-in-law, a son, a grandson and a granddaughter can all share. Even across different devices, it can be content shared with just a single link. It's almost like a kind of synapse — the junction connecting one neuron to another — that lets generations share a common emotion. At a time when stimulation keeps splitting apart and repeating along generational lines, could content like this become a bridge connecting the gap between them?"

No one knows whether vertical short-form content will make its way back to the big screen again, the way Abeojiui Jipbap is doing now in theaters. That depends entirely on audiences' choices. Still, Lee made clear that short-form is neither an alternative to film nor a lesser category beneath it. "Short-form is a medium that persistently and continuously delivers what film fails to capture," he explained. In the end, what matters is not the vessel but what is placed inside it.

"If film feels like serving audiences a beautifully set table, a vertical screen lets audiences intently observe exactly what they want to see. If you look closely at Abeojiui Jipbap, it shows that what matters is eating warmly together as a family, whatever the meal, and that within that, a grandfather's home cooking, a son's home cooking and a granddaughter's home cooking each carry a different meaning. Works that portray three generations this richly are rare, and I think that was only possible because of the short-form format."

balme@heraldcorp.com