TV Actors’ Union Surveys Its Members

It was surveyed that 84.7 percent of TV actors and actresses experience difficulties in spontaneously memorizing lines on their shooting spots by receiving scripts through fax or hand-over memos.

The Korean Broadcasting Actors’ Union (head, Lee Gyeong-ho) asked a polling institute, Hangil Research, to survey 301 union members from March 8 for one month.

On the question related to the troubles caused by late script delivery, seven percent responded, “I haven’t had those troubles,” and 8.3 percent said, “I don’t want to answer.”

However, the majority of the survey participants agreed that the scripts for modern dramas should be delivered to them at least seven days before for smooth shooting, and for historical dramas, 10 days before. The poll results on proper script issuing show that 36.5 percent of the actors said the scripts for modern dramas should be handed to them seven days before shooting; 26.5 percent said five days, and 16.9 percent said three days. For historical dramas, their answers were 10 days (34.6 percent), five days (32.6 percent) and seven days (14.6 percent).

On the question “Do you think the chance of directing a drama is equally given to competent drama directors?” more than half of the actors (56.1 percent) said, “No, I don’t think so.” This result is interesting because it says that politics of power play a bigger role than directors’ ability in producing dramas.

Nearly half, 49.5 percent, said “yes” to the following question, “I have experience being disadvantaged by outsourcing productions,” and 34.2 percent said “No.” The specific disadvantage lists are the following: “no salary or belated salary transactions,” (68.5 percent) “shooting with strange, imitating actors or start-up actors,” (56.4 percent) “lack of skills in outdoor shooting,” (39.6 percent) and “inferior shooting environments” (26.8 percent).

Administrative Head of the Actors Union Kim Gi-bok said, “Owing to slow script writing, actors are having stress memorizing their lines, and it prevents them from showing their full acting talents.”

Sun-Woo Kim sublime@donga.com