The King’s Affection – TV Show Review
Many people think that visual effects are mainly only in big screen films or tv shows, but that is not always the case. Visual effects are used in a lot of digital media, and sometimes you may not even know it’s being used! I am currently watching a Korean Drama called “The King’s Affection,” which is a story set in one of the old dynasties in Korea. This TV show has a good mix of action, dangers, and love, along with visual effects that tie it all together.
The overall show has a solid storyline that keeps you interested from the get-go in the first episode. Although, around the middle of the show, it gets a bit slow and drags for a while before the action slowly picks up a bit. The story is about a girl who has to pretend to be the crown prince and a boy due to a series of unfortunate events that happened to her and her twin brother. (In order to pretend that the character had a twin, they used a split screen effect!) The show details her life acting as the crown prince of the region and the many troubles that come along the way. Just like all Korean Dramas, this one has a love story in it. The love story is cute, but I will say that I think the editing of the episodes was sometimes a bit much. For example, they would leave the shot on the characters’ faces and have them staring at each other for a long time. But overall, the story is solid, and it has you wondering what will happen to her if people find out she is actually a woman.
There are many action scenes in this show for which visual effects were needed to enhance it. The little things that you may not think of, such as blood splatters, arrow shots, and other CG integration elements, were needed. There are multiple action scenes where characters shoot arrows at one another, but shooting an arrow in real life is dangerous, and additionally, the camera might not pick it up correctly. Arrows flying by characters were comped into multiple scenes and were made obvious for the viewer while still being believable. This show has many interesting sword fights, and in each one of them, blood splatters are needed to be composited along with the practical effects of blood. When someone swings their sword at an enemy and slashes them across the front, blood splatters are shown in order to enhance the effect of the characters fighting. Practical blood is still used to make it look more realistic, and so are some prosthetics used for minor injuries to the face like cuts. Besides those elements that are needed to enhance battles, CG integration of animals and insects were used in this show. For example, there is an episode where they are hunting deer. A CG deer was integrated into this chase scene. Although, I will say that this one is probably one of the worst ones. You could obviously tell it was fake, and the deer’s proportions looked a bit off. They might have been shooting for a different species of deer that existed back then, but it looked a little too bulky compared to how deers actually look. I thought one integration that worked really well was a scene where there were butterflies over a pond and a little garden area. There were a ton of butterflies populating the area, which made the scene look very magical. At first, when I was watching it, I thought to myself, “How did they get all of those butterflies to stay there?” Then I realized they were CG! Either that or they somehow trained the butterflies to stay in place. But, I thought that the integration was done really well, and it enhanced the overall scene by making it feel magical and happy.
Not only were the unexpected visual effects pretty decent in the show, but I thought that the cinematography was good. There were multiple scenes where it was very sunny and beautiful, and the cinematographers definitely got good shots. They used the brightness of the sun to their advantage to make these shots look dreamy and ethereal. The settings where they shot some of these scenes probably contributed to the beauty of it all because of how much vibrant vegetation and intricate architecture there was.
Although I have not finished the show yet, I think overall that it is a decent show to watch that keeps you wondering what will happen next. If you like watching period pieces, this is definitely a good one to watch as it has lots of interesting things about Korean culture. The show also has a decent mix of love stories and action. This is a Netflix Korea Original, so you can watch it there!