Producer's Notes #2

The Audience Comes First

When I first started K-pop cover dance, I cared about one thing.

Accuracy.

I wanted to recreate the original performance as faithfully as possible.

I watched videos frame by frame.

I paused constantly.

I compared angles, timing, facial expressions, and even the smallest habits that made an idol look like themselves.

Looking back, I probably treated K-pop cover dance almost like cosplay.

That wasn't unusual.

K-pop cover dance in Korea grew out of a culture called fan cosplay (팬코스), where recreating the performer was part of the experience. I'll write more about that in another note.

Even today, MKDC still rehearses this way.

We put the original performance and our rehearsal footage side by side.

We compare them frame by frame.

We take screenshots.

We write notes.

Sometimes hundreds of them.

Then we repeat the process until we're satisfied.

That part never changed.

What changed was what I was trying to accomplish.

I don't know exactly when my thinking started to shift.

It certainly wasn't one dramatic moment.

It probably happened over years.

One rehearsal.

One performance.

One conversation at a time.

Somewhere along the way, something started bothering me.

I felt like I was missing something.

I had spent years looking at dance from only one distance.

Too close.

Frame by frame.

Movement by movement.

I knew exactly where someone's elbow was.

But I wasn't sure whether the performance actually worked.

So I started stepping back.

Sometimes I watched from the very back of the venue.

Sometimes from the side.

Sometimes I tried to ignore the choreography completely and watch it as if I had never seen it before.

Then MKDC started performing at the Mall of America.

That changed the kinds of questions I asked.

In a theater, it's easy to assume the audience is sitting directly in front of the stage.

At the Mall of America, that wasn't reality.

People watched from the second floor.

From the side.

From behind.

Some stayed for the entire performance.

Others watched for twenty seconds before continuing to shop.

The people standing directly in front of the stage were actually a minority.

That bothered me.

For years, I had unconsciously treated the front view as the performance.

It wasn't.

It was only one perspective.

What interested me wasn't just where people stood.

It was what they did.

When did they stop walking?

When did they leave?

Which moments made them stay a little longer?

Which moments lost them?

Without realizing it, I had started thinking about live performances almost like retention.

Not in the YouTube sense.

Not in the social media sense.

In the most human sense.

Every person walking past had a choice.

They could stop.

Or they could keep walking.

Every second they stayed had to be earned.

I found myself watching the audience almost as much as I watched the performers.

Around that time, I started showing our performances to people outside the K-pop community.

Some weren't interested in K-pop at all.

Some had never heard the song before.

I didn't ask whether our synchronization was clean.

I didn't ask whether our angles matched the original.

I only asked one question.

"What do you feel?"

I wasn't looking for technical feedback.

I wasn't looking for explanations.

I wasn't trying to understand why.

I simply wanted to know what the performance made them feel.

The answers were rarely technical.

People would say,

"That looks messy."

"The energy feels low."

"That person stood out to me."

"I kept looking over there."

"That part was boring."

Almost nobody said,

"Their arm angles don't match the original."

They talked about what they noticed.

What distracted them.

What they remembered.

What they genuinely felt.

Those conversations gradually changed the questions I asked myself while producing.

Not,

"Did we do it correctly?"

But,

"What are people actually experiencing?"

Around the same time, we had a conversation within MKDC.

I asked the team what they thought our biggest strength was.

The answer was surprisingly consistent.

Live performance.

Not videos.

Live performances.

That stayed with me.

It didn't mean videos weren't important.

They are.

When we're filming, we absolutely produce for the camera.

A camera has its own language and its own perspective.

Producing for video and producing for a live audience are different skills.

But we realized that what MKDC did best was performing live.

Once we recognized that, a lot of decisions became easier.

We had a clearer priority.

When a decision benefited the camera but weakened the live performance, we knew which direction to lean.

Not because video didn't matter.

But because we knew where our greatest strength was.

I still care about details.

We still compare videos frame by frame.

We still fix tiny mistakes.

That hasn't changed.

What changed was the question I ask while producing.

It used to be,

"Is this accurate?"

Now it's,

"What will people feel?"

I don't always know the answer.

I'm still learning.

And maybe I'll think differently ten years from now.

But today, this is the question that guides almost every decision I make.

What will people feel?