Filmmaker Q&A | Danny Kim: becoming Zero Waste
(This interview was conducted on behalf of Aotu Doc, a Chinese independent documentary media. The original Chinese version is published on May 14, Beijing local time: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0Ao5GfWW2glOOjAbL42GYQ)
Interviewed & translated by Kathy & Silvia
Preface & English texts by Kathy
One of the earliest realizations Danny Kim had since the pandemic broke out was the increase of plastics at his home. Like most people in South Korea and many others in impacted countries, Danny had started to rely more on food deliveries, surgical masks and other disposables for health and hygiene. Given the startling increase in his personal plastics use, Danny began to wonder: if everyone in Korea was doing the same thing, where did all these plastics go?
Zero Waste, one of the sixteen feature-length documentary films at this year’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF), is the directorial debut feature film of Dong Hyun Danny Kim. The film follows five characters who combat South Korea’s plastics problem, exasperated by the pandemic, in their respective ways — including an artist who made stools out of recycled surgical masks, a diver who organizes coastal cleanups, the founder of a recycled goods store and refill station, an entrepreneur that manages a plastic mill that makes goods out of hard-to-recycle plastics, and the CEO of a social enterprise that seeks to replace disposable table ware at food retailers with recyclables. Although South Korea is widely recognized for its exemplary efforts in recycling and green economy politics, what Danny has found and witness in reality was much less charming.
Zero Waste will world-premiere Saturday, May 13, at 2pm local time at Regal L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles. Aotu（凹凸镜）Doc has caught up with Danny before the premiere to talk about his experiences with creating the film.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:
Dong Hyun Danny Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up traveling between Illinois and New York in the US and Seoul. In 2008, he graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison in Communication Arts, Radio, Films and TV, and then went to Washington Korean Television and began to work at a number of news and entertainment organizations such as ABC News and Busan International Film Festival. As a freelance photographer and videographer, Danny has collaborated with news outlets and platforms such as Netflix, The Wall Street Journal and VICE News. The feature-length documentary Love Child which Danny has produced was selected and nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In 2018, Danny received his MFA degree from Duke’s Experimental and Documentary Arts program. In 2021, Danny founded the boutique documentary production company DOCU+ and has been working on projects ever since.
Can you introduce yourself and your film to the audience?
I’m a documentary filmmaker, and I’m also the founder of this impact production company called DOCU+. I started this company back in 2021 during the pandemic, and it’s been year two since running it. My first feature documentary film, Zero Waste, is premiering at the LAAPFF this weekend. It’s my first project with DOCU+, so I’m really excited. I’m also curious about the response because it’s a film that takes place in South Korea, halfway around the world.
Tell us about the origin of this film.
Funny story. Prior to making this film, I wasn’t really an environmentalist at all. I was doing my fair share of polluting this planet. But during the pandemic, I started to notice that plastic waste was flooding, even at my personal level. I had no choice, I had to order all these delivery food from the apps. During the height of the pandemic and whenever we order stuff in Korea — I don’t know if It’s the same case here in the U.S. — everything is so overpackaged, so even if you order something small, it came with layers of plastic bins, plastic bags, plastic containers, and utensils and all. I’ve seen an exponential increase in the use of all those single-use plastics. So I thought to myself: if I as an individual, am using so much plastic, the population of South Korea is about 52 million. If you multiply [the amount of plastics I personally used] by that [number], where was all that plastic waste going? Korea is not a huge country and I’ve heard that all of our landfills are, you know, pretty much at full capacity. So are we all just dumping [the wastes] in the ocean and burning them? So that was the reasoning behind us making this documentary.
How did you find the characters?
I started doing some research, you know, going to all the news articles about plastic waste in South Korea, and on Instagram, I looked up people under the hashtag such as “#zerowaste,” and clicked on the activist type of people’s accounts. Upon my mind, my eyes were caguht by one of the main characters, Haneul, an artist who recycles plastic mask to make chairs. He was actually big in local media in Korea and got picked up by all these foreign press. I got his contact and called him up. Other characters, such as the urban ecologist and the plastic mill [manager], I also found them through Instagram. A lot of these people are young Millennials and GenZers, so it was easy for me to access them, even though I was a complete stranger.
What was your casting process like?
The casting was done by me personally because, in documentaries, we don’t have separate casting like in fiction films. It was all personally reaching out — like sending DM, emails, and calling — so it was a lot of work. That’s why pre-production took a couple of months to get characters and ironically, one of my main leads, the diver in Jeju island, she was the last character I found. I found her also through Instagram. This woman was “crazy”: she goes under the water and gets all the trash and runs a volunteer organization where they clean up the beaches. She’s a little bit younger than me but I was so impressed and thought, “Oh my god, this woman. Is that my new role model?”
As the director of Zero Waste, I tried to use my tumblers and reduce my waste as much as I can, but at the end of the day, I still use water bottles and plastics here and there. But compared to prior to making this film, I’m more mindful of it. Coming to LA this time, I rented and EV [electrical vehicle] to be eco-friendly. But then I realized it’s too difficult to find chargers in LA. In Korea, we have EV chargers everywhere. I thought California will be the same. But I’m struggling. It’s hard. And you know what’s scary and upsetting is that, even though we Koreans do our job, recycling every day, and we do a pretty good job. I learned while making this film that not every plastic gets recycled. I think our rate is about 30%, which is shocking. The goal for Seoul city was, by last year, 2022, to increase the recycling rate to 70% — which is still not 100%. We’re getting there, but, I guess our system is still not there yet.
Wow these numbers are truly quite a shock. Can you talk more about your research stage and the writing process? How has the film changed over the course of time if any?
I initially envisioned the film as a short — maybe a 5–10-minute portrait piece of the artist who made chairs out of plastic. But after meeting him and filming him, my ambition grew. I started doing more research, and started to add all the other characters. Last year, I had a rough cut screening with a select public audience for free. The purpose of that screening was to get a Bill of my edit because it was more like an assembly called showcasing what kind of footage I had so far. And at the end of the screening, I also had a Q&A and a lot of people gave me some good feedback. A lot of them hated my film, actually. This gave me a new motivation to go back to editing. At that screening, I met one of my former friends from Duke who happened to be in Korea at the time doing some research and she offered to help me map out the story a little bit. So she came to my office several times, and we brainstormed and reworked the script together. That was really helpful for me in getting a better structure of my film, and gave a template based on which I re-edited my film.
Then last summer, I added a new angle. I met with a startup company called It Green, who did a return campaign to push for multi-use containers versus single use plastics. At the time I also got a small grant to make a short documentary about it. So I ended up incorporating that short into the feature. I also had no idea I was going to meet Subin, the diver and coastal trash collector. Those kind of changes occur over time, and I feel like my final version of the film is much stronger than my original vision because it brings together all these activists and environmentalists at their individual levels to address that we as individuals can make an impact.
Could you talk more about how you finance this film and how you get the financial support?
A lot of them were funded with my own savings. When I ran out of money I had to work side jobs. Because I run my own production company now, I tend to have a lot of client projects. Last year, I was so busy working on so many different projects that I had to stop zero waste to focus on money-making to pay bills. And then, my executive producer [came in] and helped me with traveling. For example, whenever we’re going down to Jeju Island [to film], he paid for flights, accommodation and food. Covering those small expenses do help a lot.
But for my next project, I do want to have some sort of funding attached before jumping in because I don’t want to keep spending my own money. It’s not sustainable. I was so stressed everyday because of that.
At what stage of the process did you start to think about incorporating your voiceover?
That’s actually new. At the beginning of the development, I hate doing voiceovers, but during the writing and research stage, [my producer] was saying, “Danny. You have such a good voice, you should try to use it.” I said “no, I don’t. I hate my voice.” We did a lot of rewriting of the script and the voice-over script [regardless]. I took a lot of advice because I’m not a professional voice actor. But it was a fun process. I think I’m going to do that more often moving forward.
When you were writing, what was the primary audience you were thinking of? Did you write the voice-over initially in English?
Yeah, that’s always my dilemma. Initially, I didn’t have voice-over plan. When I was writing, I just thought I’ll just do it in English because I’m going to submit it to a bunch of international film festivals — they prefer English audios without subtitles. But when I was recording, I actually have recorded a Korean voice-over track, too.
I feel like because I’m a 1.5-generation Korean [American]. I have no issue working in English, but in retrospect, maybe I should do it in Korean. I don’t know. But my goal is to attract wider audience. I’m not making this film just for the Korean audience per se. As a director, I’m more interested in how people outside of Korea view my film, how they interpret and understand it, and how I can learn from their experiences of recycling versus how we are doing in Korea.
You said earlier that since you arrived here, you rented an electrical vehicle as part of your zero-waste, environmental practice. What else did you do as part of this effort?
I think at a filmmaking level, a lot of the productions are now striving to be more eco-friendly. There’s a whole production guideline on being more mindful of producing plastic wastes. For instance, you use a lot of batteries for production equipment. I [personally] try to replace those double or triple A batteries into rechargeable ones. I also try to print out less paper because you can use Google Drive for everything. I tried to drive less in Korea, but I’m guilty. I have a gasoline car — an SUV. Because I have a lot of equipment, [driving a car] is [more] convenient. But when I’m shooting, I try to use more public transportation, like subway and buses. I try to eat less red meat because I heard that cows produce a lot of waste, but I’m not vegan.
What do you hope the audience will take away from your film at your world premiere in the US?
Korea is like the number three polluter [of plastic wastes generator per capita], and I was also so shocked to learn that making this film. It’s the US, the UK, and then Korea. So my universal message is for all of us, the heavy polluters, to be more mindful and do our jobs in daily recycling. Overconsumption is bad.
This is a great segue into our last question. What are your researching about now? What can you tell us about your next project?
I mean, I can’t tell you too many details because they are confidential, but I have 4 or 5 projects in development — not everything is related to the environment. One is about B-Boys and the upcoming Olympics in Paris in France. When they officially announced that BBoy competition will be included, one of my friends was like “we have to do this documentary!”
The other one I’m trying to work on is about Korea’s uptick in single-owned households. It has become become a social issue where people are dying of loneliness. So I’m trying to address that by making a documentary.
The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Zero Waste world premiere info and ticketing: https://festival.vcmedia.org/2023/movies/zero-waste/
