Kpopalypse Nugu Alert Episode 10: The Solutions, Dramatics, Underdog

Yes that's right readers, it's the return of:

Kpopalypse returns yet again with more nugus to entertain you all!  Read on and discover more k-pop nugus to enrich your life!

It's the tenth episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Wow, that means that there are now more episodes of Nugu Alert than Star Wars!  Who would have thought that this series could actually last ten episodes?  Certainly not me - Nugu Alert isn't one of the more popular topics for Kpopalypse in terms of hit rates or comments.  Fortunately, I have high determination levels to keep the series running plus not give a shit what anyone thinks about it.  Just as well for nugu fans!  Let's get it started and check out some nugu videos.

This episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is dedicated to freaky cheap-but-effective camera filters and effects.  When you're a group that's a little on the poverty-stricken side, just the mere act of getting filmed by a camera is enough to break the budget, there's no extra cash floating around for much in the way of fancy-pants CGI, flashy box-making shenanigans or visits to the auto rental shop to get some sports cars to pose in front of.  In these situations, the solution to keep the video interesting-looking may well be to go up to the editor and say "hey, the video is in the can but I've got to be honest, it looks kinda boring - can you add some kind of cool image effect to this to spice it up?".  Let's have a look at some nugus and their video directors' creative solutions to tart up their low budget productions.

The Solutions - Love You Dear

On the more popular end of the scale, The Solutions probably aren't that nugu, perhaps due to success in Korea or maybe just Eat Your Kimchi pimping them out a fair bit.  They actually seem to have a bit of a following, and you can tell by the relatively high budget look of their video compared with what you'll see later on in this post.  However they're worthy of a spot on Kpopalypse Nugu Alert anyway due to their choice of camera effects and the fact that most k-pop fans reading this probably don't know them so why the fuck not.  You probably all know that trick that film directors sometimes use where they physically move a camera away from a subject while at the same time zooming in the lens as close as they can?  The resulting effect (and its opposite twin - moving the camera up close while simultaneously zooming out) is one of disorientation as the background warps around the subject, and it's often used in film to make a vista in an outdoor scene seem more pronounced, or to show disorientation - Alfred Hitchcock was the first person to use it in the film "Vertigo" hence it's sometimes referred to as the "vertigo effect".



It's a great effect when used in isolation to highlight a scene, but the video director for The Solutions thought it would be a fantastic idea to utilise this effect for nearly half of the entire goddamn video.  The song is actually pretty solid as far as generic pop-rockers go but the visuals are something else - if you can make it through this entire thing without feeling extreme motion sickness you're doing better than me.  By about the end of the second verse shit does eventually stop moving around so fucking much but by then the damage is done and you're probably well and truly talking on the porcelain telephone.

YouTube views at time of writing: 15113

Notable attribute: erratic camera work bounces around even more than Martina's boobs in Eat Your Kimchi's FAPFAP series

Nugu Alert rating: low

Dramatics - You Win

Everybody loves Instagram, it's the social network that gave us the following life enhancements:

• The eating habits of every female on the planet between the ages of 18 and 30
• K-pop duckface
• Both of the above combined
• Hitomi Tanaka taking a bath

It also gave the world great new photo filtering options, although they're not exactly options in the true sense because if you use Instagram you're kinda stuck with them whether you like it or not.  Or at least you're stuck with them between 3:15pm and 3:30pm every second full moon which is when the website is actually running properly.

If it doesn't meet Hitomi Tanaka's lofty standards, it doesn't meet mine, and that's why I don't have Instagram.  Fortunately for those who can't go a day without looking at photos of things with filters on them, the video team behind Dramatics have gone to great lengths to throw Instagram-style filtering across almost every single shot in their MV.  On top of that you get a cute little story about a young Korean couple meeting and learning how to hold hands and think pure thoughts.  "You Win" indeed!  Unfortunately it's all a little bit too true to the Instagram concept, with the song being about as frustratingly dull as when some cute person you have a crush on posts continual photos of their meals instead of selcas.

YouTube views at time of writing: 389

Notable attribute: k-pop drama video dares to feature two of the only actors left in South Korea who (probably) haven't had (much) plastic surgery (lately)

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

Underdog - Zombie Run

It's difficult to find a male idol-style group that doesn't have twenty gazillions YouTube hits, especially given the international fashionability of such things and the ever expanding fangirl race with new spawnlings hatching every second, ready to sacrifice themselves at the altar of oppa.  The aptly-named Underdog seem to be in struggle-town though, with their debut MV collecting only a thousand hits in its first week of release.  Even sadder is the fate of their teasers, which barely scraped into double-digit territory:

For once I actually feel like watching a teaser, if only just to make the video editor feel like he didn't waste precious hours of his life making them.  So what happened to Underdog's hype machine?  Sure, the song's pretty bad especially with that ill-advised chorus chant that sounds like a walrus with pneumonia, but it's not any worse than the last few absurdly popular BigBang releases so it can't be the music's fault.  I guess their agency just doesn't have the right connections, but what they certainly do have is some wild blur-shadow thing, some other squiggly-lines-across-the-image thing, great colour-matching skills, and groovy gift-shop face masks.  The best detail of all is the dressmaker's dummy inserted behind one scene for no goddamn reason, maybe it's a prop or maybe the wardrobe department just forgot to remove it, but either way it comes off looking less out-of-place than just about everything else here.  The video is worth a look because why the hell not, and I promise you you'll laugh at the awkward stares from the member with the overdone makeup and the massive freeze-dried emo rooster hair.  If nothing else at least watch the teasers and leave an encouraging YouTube comment for their creator, the poor guy who made them is probably on suicide watch and could use your emotional support.

YouTube views at time of writing: 1009

Notable attribute: at 2:04 one guy gets left leg caught on a prickly weed and keeps on dancing because he's a PRO with high determination levels to "make it" in k-pop

Nugu Alert rating: off the chart

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FINAL RANKINGS:

That's it for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  I hope you enjoyed these nugu videos, and thanks to all the folks who have been submitting nugu suggestions!  I often don't reply to those but I do read them all so keep it up!  Kpopalypse will return in the future with more nugus!