Answer: < Real Fiction (Siljaesanghwang)> (2000, Kim Gi-deok)

The movie that was made in the least number of hours for public release is director Kim Gi-deok’s film in 2000,
< Real Fiction (Siljaesanghwang) >. He made the 100 minute feature length film in just 3 hours and 20 minutes,
putting his film down in history as the fastest production work in Korea. This is something for the Guinness
Book of World Records. This was possible because of production plans to create a whole feature length film
without a single retake. It was an experiment that befits director Kim’s reputation to create endless debates and
issues, drawing both support and criticism. The experiment challenged the essence of films by cutting out the
‘editing’ process altogether, which lies at the core of film aesthetics.

Destruction and reconstruction of time and space defines the beauty of editing. This was made possible through
various functions of editing, such as filtering. That is, the feature time may be filtered out from the actual filming
time, and a since scene may be filtered out from many different takes of the same scene ? both commonly used
skills in editing. Naturally, the actual filming time is much longer than the feature time, and the number of
scenes taken during filming exceeds the number of scenes used. It seems almost impossible that the actual
filming time is identical to the feature time, and the number of scenes taken matches the number of scenes
selected for the movie. Director Kim Gi-deok challenged all these preconceptions.

< Real Fiction (Siljaesanghwang) > is a story about a street artist Kim Han-sik (played by Ju Jin-mo) when he
meets a girl (played by Kim Jin-ah) by chance. He realizes that he has repressed his instincts all along and vents
them out whenever he wants. The film is a direct reflection of director Kim’s tendency to reveal raw human
instinct.

Eight 35mm cameras and 10 digital cameras, as well as two 35mm steady cameras that maintained focus on the
protagonist were used for this experiment. And 11 sequence directors participated in the experiment to make
this film in ‘a single take.’ The sequence directors played a crucial role, taking responsibility for the actors and
their acting, and the exact position of the cameras and the lighting. This made < Real Fiction (Siljaesanghwang) >
also the movie with the most number of participating directors in Korea. Assessment of this experiment where
director Kim attempted to “freely traverse in and out of the film” was split between people who felt it was a
useless effort and people who considered it meaningful, but there is no doubt that it was clearly a refreshing and
challenging test. Ironic as it is, while director Kim Gi-deok did this for the sake of experiment, there is also a
director who had no choice but to shorten the filming schedule as much as possible due to production costs and
bad circumstances. It is director Nam Gi-nam, who was a master at whizzing through film production. People
even told jokes saying, “Then let’s start filming, Nam Gi-nam.” He memorized the storyboard by heart and filmed
similar scenes all at once, directed several films at the same time, and chose to use movie narrators because it
yielded greater control of sound. Naturally, his work was crude and unsophisticated. Nevertheless, director Nam
Gi-nam is the father of grade B movies and the living proof of the history of Korean film, as well as the
unfortunate scapegoat of the 4th Revised Film Law, amended in 1973. According to the new film law, film
producers were obligated to make 5 domestic films a year to obtain import quotas for foreign films. But
whenever producers were unable to fill that obligation, they all gave the job to director Nam Gi-nam. Although
the movies would not be artistic or great hits, and were made purely for the purpose of obtaining the import
quota for foreign movies, director Nam Gi-nam was quick on his feet and made films that exceeded
expectations, with a fair bit of success in the box office. So this is how director Nam Gi-nam gained his
reputation for making movies in the shortest time. In the end, ‘fastest production’ is not the issue;
understanding the film’s aesthetic experiments and the context of the production environments is.