K-Pop CG Artist Reveals How Much Editing Really Goes Into Creating K-Pop Music Videos

A lot of work goes into creating music videos, including planning the storyboard, filming the shots, and then editing them together. In a recent video for Doyouram, a Korean CG artist, who has worked with BTS, TWICE, and SEVENTEEN, sat down for an interview.

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During the video, he explained the edits he had done during BTS’s performance of “Butter. He also added how much he enjoyed the editing for videos such as aespa‘s “Black Mamba” and tVN‘s Vincenzo because of their over-the-top editing to fit with the concept.

He also revealed what other roles he has when putting the finishing touches on a music video. Alongside taking care of many background details, he was asked whether he edits the faces of the idols and actors in the videos.

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The editor explained that they do sometimes do it, but how the video has been filmed impacts how much editing they can do!

We edit their faces too, but if an idol’s entire body is in the video, we don’t put graphics in it. But for the scenes where an idol’s face is very closely zoomed in, we delete all the blemishes on their face.

— CG artist

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With such high expectations from fans for K-Pop idols to look perfect all the time, it wasn’t surprising to see just how much work and editing sometimes went into music videos.

We delete wrinkles, blemishes, and the facial hair too of male idols. Also, this was somewhat known on Instagram recently, but we sometimes delete armpit hair too. We sometimes need to take care of such tiny body hair.

— CG Artist

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Although he explained that he’s edited blemishes for many music videos, he was asked whether there was a specific idol he saw in an unedited original video and thought, “Wow, this idol looks stunning.“

Alongside BTS, Editor A revealed that he had also worked with TXT on several music videos. Although he explained that all the members are good-looking, he pointed to Soobin.

In TXT, there are some really good-looking members. There are few people who clearly look very handsome or pretty on the screen. Out of the TXT members, Soobin was one of those people.

— CG artist

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It proves that it takes a lot of work to ensure that a music video is ready to be released. Despite all the edits, the editor reiterated the idea that most of these idols are stunning without all the edits! You can watch the whole video before.