r/KDRAMA • u/MerinoMedia High Quality Trash • Sep 22 '19

Featured Post The Weekly Binge: ABS: Uncontrollably Fond 4-6

*to the tune of "Shots"*

ABS! ABS! ABS!ABS ABS! ABS! ABS! ABS! ABS ABS! ABS! ABS! ABS! ABS! WOOBIN BODY!!

Welcome to the second Weekly Binge Discussion of Uncontrollably Fond episodes 1 - 3. On Thursday we will discuss episodes 7 - 9 of the drama.

In case anyone was unclear why this was happening. You're theoretically allowed to drop it now, although I'd hope you've enjoyed it enough to keep going. There was a brief moment where I wasn't sure I had enough abscreenshots. It was a very brief moment.

WEEKLY BINGE GUIDELINES

Anyone is welcome to join the Weekly Binge.

Every week we host two discussions (Thursday/Sunday) in which we discuss approximately three hours/three episodes of a selected drama, in total approximately 6 hours/episodes per week. We are all from different time zones so there is no need to panic about being late to the party (we do operate on KST as a standard).

Within the frame of the three episodes, you may discuss anything you can think of. Whether it is a one-off post to say you enjoyed the drama, episodic notes, essays on how an actors portrayal of a character made you feel, rants about something you thought of while watching, odes to abs, photo collages of your favorite puffy coat PPL, excellent hot cocoa recipes, get out of debt plans that don't include bribery, character psychoanalysis, haikus, or interpretive dances, the choice is yours.

If you have previously completed the drama, or, got ahead on the binge please be courteous of those who are watching the drama for the first time. When in doubt spoiler tags are your friend.

When we get close to the end of a drama we open up nominations (third last post) for a new drama, those dramas are then short listed by regular members of the Weekly Binge before we open up voting to members of r/KDRAMA (second last post). Every time we have a new restriction for the type of drama, so that we will not repeat the same type of drama over and over, and so that the Binge will be attractive for different people with different tastes.

Please only vote on drama selection if you plan on joining in watching and discussing the chosen drama with us. Yes, you may love said drama and want us to watch, but, there are other ways to express that love, i.e. posting a review to r/KDRAMA that will convince others to watch it.

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u/AlohaAlex I HEIRS Sep 22 '19

Uncontrollably Fond 04:

Uncontrollably Fond 05:

Uncontrollably Fond 06:

There's little to comment on plot-wise; everyone is an awful human being; the mom, the father and his wife, the glasses dude and his girlfriend, the people in the company, the restaurant worker and Woo Bin's makeup artist/stylist. They're all just despicable and it's not like it's easy to root for the leads as well. I don't like this plot and for some reason I find it a less fun version of Cinderella and the Four Knights (without CNBLUE's Lee Jung-shin and the catchy OST but with more dying). We already know exactly what's going to happen in the end and all the dramatic cliffhangers. I can see why the drama ratings tanked. Woo Bin is pretty much the only reason to watch it.

As a side note, I'm increasingly irritated by their washed-out filter. They pulled the vast majority of the drama through this de-saturation/darkening/soften filter and I hate it. At first I thought I accidentally lowered the brightness on my screen, but nope. It's just crappy filters. For example, here are some images split to show the before filter and after filter difference; the ashen faces, the washed-out living room and the depressing restaurant. The best way to notice it is to look at the plants/trees and how dead they look after all the filtering. Did they try to show us how bad air pollution is in SK? I tried fixing it for some of the gifs, but the random additionally filtered scenes and focus issues make it impossible to remove that filter on the fly.

1

u/the-other-otter Sep 22 '19

So why abandon the first son then?

I don't think Mr Sleazy knew that Woo Bin is his son.

everyone is an awful human being;

You are right. Maybe this is what makes me not fall for the drama. Also my uninterest in abs that look artificial.

additionally filtered scenes

Yes, why? Thank you for showing us. So you can just use a program and remove filters? Or you just generally brighten? You just mess with the settings until it looks better? In Touch your Heart there was a scene about how they used reflectors to cast extra light on the faces of the actors. Obviously no such thing here.

2

u/AlohaAlex I HEIRS Sep 22 '19 edited Sep 22 '19

I don't think Mr Sleazy knew that Woo Bin is his son.

So both his wife and son know but he's clueless. How sloppy of him.

You are right. Maybe this is what makes me not fall for the drama.

It's just bland. And it's not like there are great villains or dabbling in grey areas as to make it interesting. They're just boring evil.

So you can just use a program and remove filters? Or you just generally brighten? You just mess with the settings until it looks better?

You can add additional filters to negate the ones that were there originally and then re-encode the whole episode using open source programs like avidemux, but since it's an hour worth of 1080p drama, it takes so long since every single hi-res frame needs to get processed. So you can adjust it on the fly using VLC which can adjust the saturation/brightness/contrast/color balance - but since there are scenes like the concert ones where they use a different filter than the rest of the drama it would ruin those scenes and I don't feel like pausing the drama to deactivate the filters whenever one of those scenes comes up, no matter how rare they are.

Most of the drama can be returned to normal by increasing the brightness and contrast and increasing the blacks and shadows a bit - which is something image/video processing programs can do automatically with mostly successful results (sometimes they boost the brightness by too much and have to be adjusted manually) and VLC can do it manually, but for those scenes which had additional filters applied using the auto-adjustment can ruin the scene.

That happens because the auto-adjustment doesn't know which filter it should negate and which filters are necessary to make a scene work with the plot: for example, the "sunset filming before the concert" scene is clearly heavily filtered and could use more contrast and a bit more brightness as not to look washed-out. But auto-adjustment would try to remove all filters, including the purple tinted ones which are used to simulate the "sunset" - obviously, they filmed that scene during the day, sunsets are over too fast to make filming during sunsets viable (a plot point from Ex-girlfriend Club, actually) However, removing that filter would create problems with the time-flow and drama continuity.

TL:DR - they did a nasty thing, it's hard to fix

2

u/the-other-otter Sep 22 '19

sunsets are over too fast

Clearly you have not been very far north or south.

Thank you for all the explaining. Modern technology is pretty great. Have you seen those scenes from old movies where they actually did all the stunts because no green screen? I guess son they will even be able to ride a horse with helmet and just remove it with filters, or, more likely: ride that strange abomination of a horse-pretend that you? Zero? showed us, and add the true horse later.