Meet Hayoun Kim | Production Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Hayoun Kim and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Hayoun, what principle do you value most?
Not losing curiosity is the most essential value in my career and my life. This curiosity brought me here, and that makes my days colorful. If I hadn’t endeavored to know new people, new spaces, new environments, and new narratives, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy my life and career this much. My life is a series of encounters with new things. I cherish these new encounters, and my curiosity toward this inspires me to create unique spaces and characters visually.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I have had a keen eye for colors and big structures since I was young. But I didn’t expect this trait to lead me to the film industry.

My artistic endeavor started to bloom with fine arts. I was interested in making moving structures using light elements related to creating films in retrospect. Making individual artworks intrigued me, but I felt that there would be a more fitting thing for me. This feeling made me explore diverse realms like theater club, interior design, and animating to explore my interests and strengths during my bachelor’s degree in fine art. My instinct somehow knew I was craving to be part of the narrative. After all the exploration, I figured out during my first feature film, Homeless Kwon Jenny, that all the amalgamation of the elements I was strong and interested in was pointing at the production design.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Very classic, but I would love to take my friends to Griffith Observatory and small bars and restaurants in Los Feliz. These days, I am having fun discovering nice and neat places in Los Feliz. Figaro and the Little Dom’s are my favorite ones among those.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I couldn’t have dived into this film industry without these two people, director Yoojung Hwang and ‘Artrade’ set construction office CEO Sungju Nam.

It was in 2021 that I entered a remarkable new phase in my life. I was just a student in my last semester, applying mechanically for my future occupations like other general students. Along the way, I saw a post on Instagram searching for a production designer for an independent musical film. Not knowing that would be an inflection point, I could not help contacting her who posted it. Afterward, I got to meet the director, Yoojung. And the next thing I knew, I was in the middle of the enormous scale film set I created.
Director Yoojung and I were connected deeply to the script and understood each other profoundly. While analyzing and dissecting characters and spaces with her, I felt like I met ‘the job’ to which I could devote my entire life.
Even though it was our first time making the film, we were ready for it. Our collective experience gathered from our life happened to be the perfect ingredients for us to be filmmakers. And, magically, we met some incredible supporters and crew members for the film. That made the film ‘Homeless Kwon Jenny,’ an independent feature musical film, happen.
This magical journey with extremely talented and ingenious director Yoojung, in pre-production and on-set, made me realize that a new phase of my life would unfold as a filmmaker.

As I said, we had incredible supporters while making Homeless Kwon Jenny. Among them, I can’t emphasize enough how thankful I am to Sungju Nam, the CEO of ‘Artrade,’ a big-set construction office in Korea, who was our incredible supporter and built our set. We couldn’t have made it without him. As he helped us, he said he was returning the help he had received. Not only did I learn a lot about building sets and filmmaking from him, but also his attitude of being extremely respectful to us despite the fact we were a newbie to this film industry and he had been a big hand in the Korean film set industry. If I return to Korea as a production designer at some point, I eagerly look forward to meeting and working with him again and learning more from him.

Website: https://hayounkim.myportfolio.com/

Instagram: _haii._.art_

Image Credits
<Homeless Kwon Jenny>