Fan girls await
Last Saturday, I was able to get tickets to a Korean music show, Music Core (쇼!음악중심). I figured while I'm not doing anything I might as well take the opportunity to see one of these things live after I've spent countless hours watching artists perform through YouTube. Unfortunately, I was not able to achieve one of my goals for this Korea trip: seeing SNSD in person. They are no longer doing live performances in Korea, and on top of that, they are out of the country!!! I knew they were no longer performing their latest song, 'Run Devil Run', but I was at least hoping to see Tiffany and Yuri (Two out of nine SNSD members) because they are the regular MCs for the show. Alas, I was disheartened to learn they would not be there.
Stage with Camera Crew
After seeing these shows only through YouTube, it was really interesting to see how they actually produce the show. Most of the performances are live and go straight to broadcasting and the live performances all use the same backdrop you see above: a oval screen looking down upon LCD columns interspersed about the stage. Every group that comes on gets different colors, lighting effects, and sometimes fog machine stuff which gives each performance a distinctive theme. I would have loved to take more pictures of the different groups performing, but there were security guards around the whole theatre deleting pictures and videos off of people's cameras -- I didn't want to lose the few pictures I had.
Because all the performances are live, the artists need to get on and off very quickly so that they don't cause a gap in show. However, they often put pre-recorded performances in between the live ones so the artists can take a bit more time to switch places (you can usually tell if there is a backdrop in place of the pillared stage seen above, but not always). During a pre-recorded performance, the group will usually only be able to perform part of the song, or just introduce themselves to the audience -- the stage crew needs enough time to set up for the next number. Finally, it was cool to see the cameras all moving around to achieve the dynamic effect you see on TV.
It was also fun to see those crazy fans scream the names of the various groups that performed. It was kind of sad to see the newer groups not get as much attention as some of the better established groups like Super Junior, SS501, f(x), 4 Minute, and MBLAQ. When one of the MBLAQ members took off his shirt during their performance, all the fan girls started screaming their heads off -- I thought the roof would cave in.
Like I said before, I was initially disappointed to hear Tiffany and Yuri would not be hosting the show that day, but I was somewhat consoled by the fact that Hara (하라) and SeungYeon (승연) of the girl group Kara were hosting that day. I couldn't help but notice that every time an unknown artist came up on stage, my eyes would drift over to where the MCs were sitting. ㅋㅋㅋ~
MC booth
P.S. How about Korea in their first World Cup game? Excellent game 2:0 against Greece. Korea Fighting!!!
-Emoinacloset
