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  1. The Shangri-la Diet

    Good news for weight-watchers: Seth Roberts from Berkeley has discovered a new, mostly painless method to lose weight. Check out his paper on self-experimentation for the full details, but if you just want the executive summary, Dubner and Levitt do a pretty good job. Kudos to Marginal Revolution, as usual.

    Something to keep in mind as I don’t quite need to reduce intake as much as increase activity. My sedentary lifestyle must cease at once.

    Posted in Bildungsroman.

  2. My Name is Kim Sam-soon / 내 이름은 김삼순

    My latest obsession is the korean dramedy series in the title of this post. At the risk of oversimplifying its charm, its the korean version of bridget jones’ diary: its eponymous heroine is a single working-class 30-year-old (29 by western count) patissier who’s a little on the chubby side. Well, at least by their standards. Here in Singapore she’d be modelling for Marie France, but you get the idea. After getting her heart broken by her squeeze of three years, she meets Jin-Heon, hotel chain heir and ice prince (with a prince syndrome, no less). They sign a contract to pretend to be lovers – hilarity ensues.

    KSS wallpapers now adorn my office workstation (replacing 김태희), its OST is on shuffle/repeat, and anime has been put aside (temporarily).

    I suppose what sold me on KSS are its moments of unexpected honesty that somehow segue the comedy and drama aspects almost seamlessly. This one’s a tissue sink, people. Despite having several staples of the genre (love polygons, public transportation chases, stretch-of-the-imagination contrivances and coincidences, mistaken identities etc) it’s somehow very original. Well written and well paced, this one ought to be on the syllabus for the next screenwriter workshop. If I could ever bring myself to pay for one.

    Posted in TV Dramas.

  3. Markets and Screenwriting

    As a screenwriter I’m very aware of the limitations of media and how that influences plot presentation. One particular media form is the hour-length episode for a tv series. If you look at say, Lost, you see that what makes it very fast-paced is its tight construction per episode – Lost doesn’t even have an opening credit sequence. It maximizes plot development on air within its allotted time. Typically, an episode runs for forty minutes. The hour-length slot is one third advertising, possibly due to heavy competition.

    I’ve recently become more interested in korean dramas (KH, Daniel and I watched Love Story in Harvard earlier this year) and am fascinated by 내 이름은 김삼순 / My Name is Kim Sam-soon. One thing I noticed immediately was that each episode runs for a full hour. Unfortunately, I didn’t watch enough SBS drama while in Korea to see if they had a similar hour-length slot system. If they do, then there is much less time for advertising.

    My hypothesis (and this is completely off the cuff) is that a) the Korean television industry is relatively small and b) the target audience demographic is more or less captured ie Korean dramas are not easily substitutable for say, Battlestar Galactica S2, therefore c) the market is less competitive, less advertising income is necessary, screenwriters have a larger episode length to work with, d) episodes are less tightly constructed and have a slower pace. This would have a significant impact on story structure and presentation.

    Of course I could be completely wrong since I’ve done zero research and this is only the 2nd korean drama I’ve seen.

    Posted in Economics, TV Dramas.