The Secrets Behind the Stunning Visuals of The Oscar-Winning 'KPop Demon Hunters' With Gary H. Lee

KPop Demon Hunters is a wide-ranging piece of visual spectacle. For cinematographer Gary H. Lee, the project presented an array of environments and tones to visualize, including rollicking demon-slaying action, passionate K-Drama, and rousing stadium concerts. In short, it’s a fully-realized epic vision.

Lee and his collaborators received a nomination for Outstanding CG Cinematography at the Visual Effects Society Awards. KPop Demon Hunters went on, of course, to win Best Animated Picture at the Academy Awards. Shortly after the win, Lee spoke with What’s On Netflix about his work on the film and a cinematographer’s role in animation.

Lee began his career in visual effects. He was a previs artist on the Star Wars prequels, Life of Pi, and Kung Fu Panda, to name a few credits. KPop Demon Hunters is another breakthrough in his storied career.

What were the final touches for KPop Demon Hunters that you, directors Maggie [Kang] and Chris [Appelhans], and the team worked on?

From the camera standpoint, once we do the rough layout blocking, determining the cinematography for how we’re going to shoot the film, a lot of it is based on what was in the storyboards. There’s always a camera polish pass at the end.

We would do our camera blocking as a rough layout stage, the animation takes over. They do their animations in those shots. Eventually, we’ll get to do our final camera on top of the final animation. Sometimes you do provide another touch that makes the camera feel tangible, stylistic to the theme of what we’re trying to do.

In animation, cinematography tends to be broken down into camera and then lighting. In traditional cinematography on a live-action film, a DP will set up the camera and light the shot. But in animation, the process is so detached because it’s divided up into so many different departments.

Also, due to technical constraints, we’ll set up the camera, we’ll do our blocking, and then animation can get started on those. Months down the line, when animation’s done, the lighting department will take over and start lighting it. That’s sometimes in collaboration with the production designer, doing color keys. Basically, at the end is when all of that comes together to get you the final pixel on the frame.

Like you said, you want the camera to be tangible in KPop Demon Hunters. How’d you try to accomplish that?

On each film, I do a cinematic pitch for the project. Much of it is a conversation with the director and the creative team to look at the opportunity and the potential of what a film like KPop Demon Hunters entails. Every different film has its own DNA. Our job is to make sure that the cinematic language reflects the content.

For KPop, what was really fascinating is that you have your live concert events. You have your flashbacks to ancient times. You have the KPop music video sensibility that is not live, but it’s more like a music video. It’s a very dynamic, well-choreographed camera style. And then you also have the K-drama, which is the TV production-quality look that you try to do when Jinu and Rumi are having their dates.

A lot of stories to tell.

K-dramas sometimes don’t have a lot of budget, so they will go to a location where they probably don’t have permits. Four people on the crew, two people [on camera] talking, and you blur everything behind them out. So, you have a really shallow depth of field, a really big bokeh, and that almost becomes a visual language on its own.

KPop Demon Hunters is fearless in multiple tones. Because of that, the palette of how we can utilize the camera to tell the story becomes vast. We’ll use a lot of long lenses for those intimate K-drama-feeling shots. The live concert on stage, the game show, still using long lenses, but everything is in focus. When you’re watching a game show, they want to keep everything super sharp.

What about the action scenes?

When we go into action sequences, that’s when every rule goes out the window. We don’t care about what lens, short or long. As long as the shot is dynamic, as long as you get punchy action with a choreographed sequence, then we’re not going to constrain the camera.

As a cinematographer, the bathhouse must’ve presented a lot of challenges and fun with all the water, reflections, steam, demons, and color. Chris told us Eastern Promises was an influence there.

Eastern Promises was one of the early references given to me. Actually, Oldboy as well.

Oh, cool.

They were willing to go pretty raw, just on a visual level – not the content or anything like that. With the bathhouse, there’s a lot of atmosphere in there. You have the greens, you have the orange. A lot of the color choices are going to go to the production design team.

What I can speak to is that when we’re doing scouts, we’ll be like, “Hey, let’s channel Wong Kar-wai in there.” I’m jumping to a different sequence, but it’s about when Rumi and Jinu are at Bukchon. Whether Rumi and Jinuare under a street lamp in an alleyway or on the rooftops of Bukchon’s historic buildings, we would set it up, take a step back, and go, “Wow, that looks like Wong Kar-wai.”

When you say Wong Kar-wai, you imagine the slightest of features on a person or touches having a major impact.

You just hit it on the head because one thing we also noticed in K-dramas is they exaggerate the smallest interactions. In Western drama, they just go for the kiss, go back to their house, and go to it.

With Asian drama, even the slightest handshake or touching hands, it’s like, “Whoa, did they just do that?” That’s fireworks. It’s crazy. We definitely are paying attention to those close-ups, making a huge meal out of something that felt very restrained. It speaks to the cultural aspect of connection.

When you’ve got Rumi, Mira, and Zoe around a dinner table, what work does that require as a cinematographer?

When Rumi was down and lost her voice when they were at the Korean restaurant, that scene took a very long time to shoot. It’s an intimate sequence, but you’re trying to capture how they want Rumi, Mira, and Zoe to feel differently at that table. It was a sequence that started very early on, and it didn’t wrap until much later, because of the amount of density in the restaurant.

How shallow the focus is, or what is behind them? Is it just a conversation with the three of them? There’s a fridge in the background that is emitting too much light, that’s too distracting, so let’s turn that off. There’s so much thought process that goes into that. Also, how they posture themselves gives out so much of a girl’s personality.

Were there any colors you wanted to chart their journeys?

I have to defer to Helen [Chen] and [David] Bleich, the production designers on the show. Traditionally in animation, a lot of the color becomes owned by production design. I do see that even on this film that I’m on right now, there’s beginning to be a collaboration between production design and cinematography talking about light.

Again, it’s all due to the fact that traditionally animation is such a separate process. Because of the Unreal Engine now, we can do real-time interactive lighting. I do see the future that the cinematographer on an animated film is starting to become a real cinematographer in the traditional sense, someone who’s in control of the camera and lighting. On KPop Demon Hunters, my job was blocking cameras, lens choices, f-stops, all those things.

Are you excited about the process becoming less separated, where cinematography in animation is going?

I’m very excited about where this is all going. In fact, I’m personally doing a little bit of a push to have cinematography as a category in awards.

That’s great.

Because ever since the very first Toy Story, 3D previs and layout cinematography have become a very pivotal part of animation. It’s been three decades, and I think people are still thinking about animation cinematography as traditional layout, which is something that’s done in 2D.

Ever since the beginning of 3D animation, now we have a virtual camera that we are moving, staging, and making choices on lenses like in live action. The light is still not a possible realm because lighting wouldn’t start until eight months later, so it’s a different department that takes care of that.

Because of Unreal Engine, now you can literally set up your shot and light your shot right there. It will get you 75–85% to what the intent of that shot is, then it becomes meaningful information to go down the pipe. So, to answer your question, am I excited about the next chapter of cinematography in animation? Very much so.

Speaking of the future, you worked on a project that paved the way for where digital filmmaking and VFX is today: the Star Wars prequels. When you worked on Episode II in particular, did you see glimpses of the future of where filmmaking is today?

Oh my God, that’s a lot to unpack. I really felt that I was born in the right time, the right place. At the time, the industry was looking for people to do not final animation, but something that is crude enough that you can tell a story.

When I was working on Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Francis Ford Coppola would come by and talk about how he invented the word “previsualization.” People didn’t understand it. If it’s already visualized, then how do you pre-visualize it?

When I was at Lucasfilm, it was with a group of people on that film that really helped define the new generation of cinema. I’m talking about 10 to 12 people, and I feel extremely honored to be part of that. They all became industry giants. There’s previs companies like The Third Floor, HALON Entertainment, and people who came off that group went on to work on all the Marvel films.

George Lucas really had it down. He kept pushing the industry forward, especially with the transition from film to digital cameras, which also happened on Episode II. It set so many milestones in a single picture.

It did. He’s really the Walt Disney of filmmaking. As a Lucas fan, I had to ask, so thank you. To conclude with KPop Demon Hunters, how exactly did Oldboy influence the film?

Right after the bathhouse fight, Rumi was chasing Jinu down a hallway. It never ended up going there, but in earlier iterations there were thoughts of doing one of those profile shots of them fighting in the hallway. Oldboy had that really iconic shot, almost like the camera’s inside the wall and you watch this fight go down.

The tone and the energy, all of that, is so different. I would say the biggest takeaway is the texture of the sequence, the feeling of the tone – something sweaty, muggy, and doesn’t feel super clean. If you want to take away what the closest association is to Oldboy, it would be that.