"The camera is waiting. The canvas is blank. And the director, finally, was ready to begin." Do-yeong had spoken the words with the conviction of a visionary, a general before a pivotal battle. But a director, even a solo auteur, needed a blueprint, a master plan. The Handycam sat on his desk, its lens a silent, expectant eye. He picked up his Notebook, the weight of it feeling heavier, more significant, than any textbook. This wasn't just paper; it was the foundation of his first true cinematic statement.
"Story," Do-yeong narrated to his reflection in the dark windowpane, "is rhythm. It's the beating heart of a film, the pulse that keeps the audience hooked. Quentin Tarantino once said that music is tempo—and that's exactly how I write. Like a drummer. Each scene, each line of dialogue, each moment of silence, has to land with precision, building, accelerating, or pausing, just when it needs to." He imagined the sharp, percussive thwack of a snare drum as he pressed his pen to the page.
He began, not with a grand opening scene, but with a feeling. A raw, knotting sensation in his gut that he often felt in the mundane moments of life – the quiet anxiety of being misunderstood, the weight of unexpressed thoughts, the struggle to reconcile his internal cinematic world with the uncooperative reality outside. This wouldn't be a goofy rom-com. It wouldn't be slapstick. It would be truth. His truth. Filtered through the lens of psychological drama.
His script, naturally, would center on himself. Who else could embody the complex, film-obsessed protagonist with the same nuance and depth? He envisioned a character, a slightly exaggerated version of Kim Do-yeong, navigating the drab, uninspired corridors of high school, but seeing them as elaborate, high-concept film sets. A character burdened by genius, or perhaps, by an overactive imagination.
INT. CLASSROOM - DAY (DREAM SEQUENCE), he scrawled, already pushing the boundaries of what a 3-minute school project should be. KIM DO-YEONG (14), sits alone. The room is desolate, stripped of all color, like a monochromatic still from a Bresson film. Sound of a single, slow heartbeat.
He wrote about the loneliness of his unique perspective, the frustration of trying to explain a complex camera movement to someone who only saw a wall. He imagined stark, lingering shots, reflecting the internal world of his protagonist. The narrative unfolded not through grand events, but through the small, intimate moments: a frustrated glance at a clock, a scribbled note in a book, the silent contemplation of a reflection. It was raw, yes. And heavy. He wasn't afraid to confront the melancholic side of his obsession, the way it sometimes isolated him.
He thought of Park Chan-wook's ability to imbue even the most mundane action with a sense of underlying tension, or Fincher's meticulous construction of a character's psychological state. He didn't want a conventional plot; he wanted an experience. A visceral journey into the mind of a young aspiring auteur.
"This isn't just a story," Do-yeong muttered, his pen scratching furiously across the page. "This is an internal monologue brought to life. A single character's struggle to find beauty, meaning, and a flicker of cinematic grandeur in a world that largely prefers bland, unedited reality. It's a psychological landscape, an emotional deep dive. It's... me."
He wrote until his hand cramped, until the words bled into lines on the page, until the first draft of his "solo mission" had taken shape. It was imperfect, undoubtedly. But it was his. And as he leaned back, reviewing the nascent script, a thrilling tremor ran through him. The tempo was there. The beat was strong. And the raw, psychological weight, he felt, was utterly undeniable. This was just the beginning. The story had found its rhythm. Now, it needed its light.