Special Effects Process in "The Girl Who Sees Smells" Revealed

The computer graphics (CG) secrets to the visual smells in “The Girl Who Sees Smells” is finally revealed.

The drama depicts a story of a girl, Oh Cho Rim (Shin Se Kyung), who can literally see smells. In order to make that story line come to life, various CG effects were introduced in this drama.

SBS‘s Special Effects Director Lee Joon Suk revealed the secrets to the computer graphics in this drama, created with the help of over 30 professional designers.

The director tells, “There are three teams involved in creating this smell CG. First, the team in charge of the step called MatchMove, a process where you transform the video into a 3-D design, transfers the clip that involves the smell CG to the computer and matches the smell particles with the camera.”

“There’s a second team, called the FX team, in charge of making the smell particles actually move after the MatchMoving process, and then a third team in charge of putting the smell particles and the actual footage together.

Cho Rim is able to see these smells because of a malfunction of her senses, not because she has superpowers. Thanks to the computer graphics team maintaining an interesting yet not too overpowering tone of the character’s special ability, it enables this drama to be categorized as a romantic-comedy and not as a fantasy drama.

The CG director reminisces back to one of his memorable times and says, “I remember putting a lot of effort into the first episode where Cho Rim opens her eyes in the hospital and various smells are coming from the medicines and flowers. That was the first time the viewers ever saw these special effects so I was really hoping for it to be pleasing to the viewers’ eyes. Thankfully, the viewers liked it and I was able to smoothly move on to my next task.”

After the first episode, various special effects for smells appeared in many parts of the drama. For example, Detective Ki (Jo Hee Bong) mentions an exotic smell in episode four, which is expressed by images of the Russian alphabet and the Russian Matryoshka doll.

Lastly, director Lee Joon Suk says, “We have compiled lots of CG data as the drama progressed to create more smell particles. Please look out for different smell CGs for upcoming episodes to make the watching experience more enjoyable.”

Don’t forget to catch “The Girl Who Sees Smells” airing every Wednesday and Thursday!

First time special effects are seen is at 12:09 minute in episode 1:

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See also:

Park Yoochun: The Boy Who Trollfaces in “The Girl Who Sees Smells”