Every Saturday and Sunday, Netflix uploads a new episode of Ask the starsKorean series with an XXL budget. Did the actors really film in weightlessness for the purposes of the fiction? Here is the behind the scenes of these impressive scenes.
It does not (for the moment) have the same success as When the phone rings, the surprise hit at the end of 2024, but Ask the stars has many other arguments to attract Netflix subscribers. This Korean series arrived on the platform on January 4 and is broadcast with two new episodes every weekend. It marks the big return to television of Lee Min-ho, an actor particularly popular in South Korea. For his comeback on the small screen, he chose this ambitious project in preparation for 5 years. He plays Gong Ryong, a gynecologist who ends up in space as a tourist, but actually has a secret mission to complete. The action takes place within an international space station, the characters constantly evolve in an environment with zero gravity. An additional challenge for the team.
Ask the stars : how are the weightless scenes shot in the Netflix series?
As expected, Ask the stars is actually not shot in weightlessness. However, the team took special care to recreate zero gravity thanks to mechanical arms painted greenas we can see in a behind-the-scenes video revealed by the tvN channel which broadcasts the series in South Korea (see at the end of the article). In addition, each of the actors present on the set was surrounded by a team dedicated to them, in order to assist them. Regarding the weightless scenes, director Park Shin-woo said: “We used special effects and cables but it wasn’t enough to make it perfect, so we had a team of six people for each actor“, he confided to Korea Herald. And add with SCMP : “The set was full of people wearing green jumpsuits“.
“Three to four times more effort“: the filming of Ask the stars was trying for the team
Filming this series was therefore not easy for the team. “Even for a simple dialogue scene, it required three to four times more effort than in a typical series, and post-production took five times more time and effort. told the director Korea Herald. “I knew we had an authentic story to tell and approached this project with enthusiasm. Although it took a while to produce, I think it was worth it.” he added. According to Korean media, Ask the stars would have cost the (modest) sum of 50 billion won, or approximately 33.5 million euros, making it one of the most expensive Korean series. A significant investment for this series which is, for the moment, struggling to attract Korean viewers. Episode 3, broadcast this Saturday January 11, recorded an audience share of only 2.2%. On Netflix, fiction was not present in the top of the most popular non-English-speaking series for the week following its release, although Ask the stars ranked in 49 countries around the world. For its second week, it only reached eighth place, behind When the phone rings which ended 15 days ago.
Related News :