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Interview with Choi Yoon-tae: Baseball Girl is Almost Like A Healing Process

The debutant director talks candidly about his inspirational sports drama.

Translated by Grace Han

was born in 1982 in the Yeongdeok county on the eastern coast of South Korea. A graduate of the prestigious Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA), Choi would go on to work as an editor for a number of years and work in the editing department on projects such as “Bedevilled” and “The Piper”. 2019 saw him take a leap to behind the camera with his debut feature “Baseball Girl“, an independent production funded by KAFA. The film screened at the Busan International Film Festival in the “Korean Cinema Today – Panorama” section as well as competed at the Seoul Independent Film Festival, where it won the Independent Star Award.

On the occasion of “Baseball Girl” having its international premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival, we spoke to him on his inspiration for the story, the situation of female sportspersons in Korea, his leading lady and more.

A lot of your previous work, according to Hancinema website, has been in the editing department. What made you decide to take the leap to directing and script-writing? Was this a story you had been developing for a while?

I've always dreamed of being a film director. In the commercial industry, I started working in the production department before moving on to the editing team. In Korea, the positions of 3rd and 2nd director have elevated, but I have been fortunate enough to be 1st director at such a young age. 

When I worked as an AD, I felt like the job was more akin to that of a producer than a director. So I thought about what position would be more conducive to production, when I came across “field editing.” (I don't know if it's the same in other countries, but most Korean productions edit during principal photography). 

” was just one of the many scripts I'd written. Unlike other scripts written for commercial use, “Baseball Girl” was written with both an independent and commercial audience in mind. 

Please talk us through your inspiration behind this story and your writing process.

After selecting the subject and drafting the script, I dug deeper into the research. I looked at baseball-related essays and interviewed female baseball players, high school baseball players, and professionals as well. 

Among all of the characters I've written before, Joo Soo-in in “Baseball Girl” is the most similar to me. I, too, wanted to make movies since I was younger, but I've always been told by people around me, “It's impossible.” “Baseball Girl” is almost like this healing process, a project I took comfort in, one in which I could endure difficulties but still continue to do what I love.

In general, what is the situation like for female sportspersons in Korea?

I don't know much about sports outside of baseball. I'm not sure which other countries have pro baseball, but in Korea, women are no longer accepted to professional teams after they graduate from middle school. In the film, the phrase “Women's High School Baseball Players will be Born in 20 Years!” marks the first and last time that a player named Ahn Hyang-mi entered a high school baseball team in Korea. 

Though this was deleted from the final cut, there originally was a scene depicting the original Korean women's national baseball team. They're a national team, but there are no other commercial teams to compete with, so they have to buy all their equipment at their own expense. Like Teacher Kim (the female teacher character who plays professional baseball), everyone has a different job.

Is the part where the father cheats on his exams based on real-life? Is that something that actually happens?

News related to cheating does come up from time to time. In Korea, year 12 students across the country all have to take one test on the same day. It's a competition, and the stakes are huge; “winners” get the first chances into elite society. I mean, even the SKY system – which standards for Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University – demand only the highest test scores. 

In the episode of Joo Gwi-nam, the father, I wanted to portray an event that Korean audiences could easily accept without blinking an eye, and that just happened to be cheating on a test.

What was the most difficult scene to plan and execute? Can you tell us some memorable incidents from the shoot?

The budget for “Baseball Girl” amounted to about 120 million won (about $104,000) – so all of the scenes were difficult to shoot. We had to reduce the number of filming sessions. Though we filmed 28 episodes' worth of content, around six episodes' worth took place on the baseball field. We ended up with too much footage per day. In the case of the tryout scene, for example, we had to take 90 cuts during the eight hours the sun was up. There were times when the staff – save for me and the cinematographer and some of the actors – didn't even know what we were filming at the moment. 

In other interviews, I've been asked about memorable incidents. Whenever that happens, I think about our filming conditions and — I remember just how pressed we were for time.

Lee Joo-young's performance is the highlight of the film. Please tell us a bit about that casting process.

When I imagined an actress for Joo Soo-in's image, Lee Joo-young immediately came to mind. She already fit the character quite well, and her athletic ability is quite impressive. I mean, in she even runs better than her male counterpart Lee Ju-young in a short film she starred in before.

I remember October 1, 2018. In our first meeting about a week after casting, we talked for around 3 hours. At the time, even though we didn't confirm any casting decision then, we exchanged many opinions to revise the script. 

Since “Baseball Girl” would become my first feature, I wanted to have experienced actors to cover any mistakes I might make. In that regard, I have been very lucky to work with such good actors for “Baseball Girl.”

Can you tell us if you're working on any other projects right now?

I'm preparing a work with production company Mubirak, which produced “Midnight Runners”, “Innocent Witness” and “Tune In for Love”. We've just started talks.

About the author

Rhythm Zaveri

Hello, my name is Rhythm Zaveri. For as long as I can remember, I've been watching movies, but my introduction to Asian cinema was old rental VHS copies of Bruce Lee films and some Shaw Bros. martial arts extravaganzas. But my interest in the cinema of the region really deepened when I was at university and got access to a massive range of VHS and DVDs of classic Japanese and Chinese titles in the library, and there has been no turning back since.

An avid collector of physical media, I would say Korean cinema really is my first choice, but I'll watch anything that is south-east Asian. I started contributing to Asian Movie Pulse in 2018 to share my love for Asian cinema in the form of my writings.

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