Though anticipation is significant for Park Chan-wook’s upcoming projects – Decision to Leave and The Sympathizer, the acclaimed director and filmmaker has released a new project to tide fans over in the meantime. Teaming up with Apple for his latest project, the iconic South Korean director has released Life Is But A Dream – a short film which was shot entirely on an iPhone 13 Pro.
Recent years have seen South Korean cinema reach the forefront of entertainment with compelling plots, enigmatic characters, and bold storytelling. As such, it is not surprising to see a South Korean filmmaker front and center of an emerging trend. Life is But a Dream joins Tangerine, Unsane, Searching For SuperMan, and more, in furthering a new and democratized form of filmmaking that sees whole projects being shot on smartphones. Interestingly, this is not Park’s first film shot on an iPhone; the director notably used an iPhone to create his award-winning short film, Night Fishing. He also credits the film for motivating him to make more short films.
Details of the plot, via IndieWire, reveals Life Is But A Dream to be a bold supernatural outing that embraces several genres, refusing to limit itself. The short film follows an undertaker who awakens a ghost when he attempts to steal a coffin. The awakened ghost then forms a friendship with the ghost of the warrior the undertaker was trying to bury. The short film has an impressive cast in tow, with Yoo Hai-jin, playing the undertaker and Park Jeong-min and Kim Ok-vin playing the awakened ghost and warrior ghost respectively. The multi-genre film is equal parts musical, martial arts and romance, and utilizes a traditional Korean musical narrative known as Pansori and a traditional Korean outdoor play format –Madanggeuk – to tell its story.
Speaking on the process of making Life is But a Dream, the filmmaker – who is internationally recognized for directing the critically acclaimed Oldboy – revealed in a press conference that he appreciates the flexibility, affordability and freedom that comes with making short films stating, “It's not easy to dive deeper into genre experiments in a full-length feature film because it costs a lot of money and there is a lot of pressure. When making short films, I have creative freedom."
Park reunited with cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung, who he worked with on The Little Drummer Girl to bring Life is but a Dream to fruition. The pair utilized the iPhone 13 Pro’s cinematic mode, macro video, night mode, optical image stabilization and ultra-wide camera to create the visually stunning and aesthetically appealing short film. “We were able to create cinematic shots and moods just like the movies when they use traditional camera equipment," the cinematographer explained.
Park has two highly anticipated projects in the pipeline – Decision To Leave which follows a detective who falls for a mysterious widow who is also the prime suspect in his ongoing murder investigation, and The Sympathizer – an upcoming HBO series from A24 which has tapped Robert Downey Jr. as a cast member and executive producer. Until these projects hit our screens, fans can watch Park’s latest project Life is But a Dream below: