Star Wars Posters/ Restaurant Stickers

Text: We got back from Independence Hall in time for the 3:30 showing of Star Wars at the Myoung Bo Art Hall downtown. All three films (the re-mastered versions) were released in Korea within about two months of each other. We enjoyed seeing these and a few other movies while we were there. American films are shown in English with Korean subtitles down the side. We collected several complete sets of these movie posters. The theaters gave them to us free.

(Page 2) Ja Jang Town was a small, family-run restuarant a couple of blocks from our house. Most of the little restaurants deliver (usually by motor scooter). They print stickers to advertise and distribute them through the neighborhood. All of these stickers (and many more) appeared on our doorstep, except for Ja Jang Town?s, which we asked for.

Pens: Zig Writer red, purple, blue; Micron black (01)

I took the posters outside on a sunny day and photographed them in the shade. I taped them to my big masonite board and propped them up against the wall of the house. Each poster has a white strip at the bottom for writing in dates and times, so I turned them upside-down and taped them to the board by the white part (which doesn't show up in the picture, thereby eliminating the tape). They didn't all turn out exactly the same size in the photos, but close enough for me. The hardest part was that it was a little windy, and the posters kept trying to flap around. The mat for the photos is just one big strip with notches cut out by hand.

The newspaper clipping was getting old and yucky, but when I scanned it I pumped up the contrast and got a nice sharp image (I had to clean up the water stains a bit).

I have no idea what might be in the stickers, so I just stuck them directly to the page and trusted to the buffering to do its stuff. The sticker page was definitely the quickest page I have ever done--I just had to decide which ones to use and how to arrange them.

This is the point at which I split the album because it was becoming too heavy--the posters end one volume and the stickers begin the next.

Movie theaters in Korea have big signboards above them on which they paint advertisements (directly from the posters or not). Sometimes they do a really good job and sometimes you can't tell who the people are supposed to be.

When I was in Seoul (on a BYU internship) I went to a couple of movies. There you had to get a ticket well in advance and were assigned a specific seat. The theaters were huge (they had balconies) and crowded. They showed a lot of advertisements before the movie started.

When we went to the movies in Chonan the experience was totally different. Tickets were not for specific seats or even specific times--you just got your ticket and went in whenever you wanted to. If the previous showing hadn't ended yet, you could go in and sit down and wait for it to start over. When we went to see The Lost World we were trying to get out of our aisle as the next wave was simultaneously trying to get in--very bad traffic control and probably a fire hazard. At the Chonan theaters they also showed advertisements, but the qualtity was quite different. We had fun making up additional dialogue for them while we waited for the movie to start ("Tell me the location of the rebel base or I'll put these glasses on you!").

The little restaurants are wonderful. The family usually lives right behind, and the restaurant area frequently functions as just another room of the house. Kids will have their meals there or sit and watch TV. We frequented a few places in our neighborhood, but Ja Jang Town was our favorite. Sometimes we'd swing by on the way home and ask them to bring us some food. One time they forgot what we'd ordered and had to send one of the boys to ask.