Right from the outset, NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN, which documents the boy group’s excursion through Italy with producer Na Young-seok, is anything but a typical trip. The group trip was announced on YouTube via Channel Fullmoon and was aired in two versions: a 60-minute broadcast on tvN and in 120-minute installments on Weverse. We sat down with Egg Is Coming director Shin Hyo Jung, who directed the series, to take a deep dive into everything that took place over the long and never straightforward NANA TOUR with “CommuniTEEN.” As Shin graciously walked us through each step of how the show was made, it became clear how she’s been able to keep connecting with people through her work on shows like 2 Days & 1 Night, Youth Over Flowers, Three Meals a Day, New Journey to the West, and the YouTube series The Game Caterers.

The six-part NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN has come to a close. It all started with SEVENTEEN’s episodes of The Game Caterers, when the members’ wish to appear on Youth Over Flowers was selected by raffle. [Note: This interview took place on February 20.]
Shin Hyo-jung: I talked things over quite a bit with Na Young-seok before putting that episode up on YouTube. We were worried we might be making a promise we couldn’t keep by making that public on the show, so we said, “Maybe we should just keep this a fun little memory between ourselves?” (laughs) We never expected to actually do it, of course, but we still asked ourselves how we could shoot it. In the end, we decided to go through with it because the SEVENTEEN boys were so enthusiastic about it and we had already promised to.

Why did it feel like it couldn’t be done?
Shin Hyo-jung: It felt like there were too many practical considerations standing in the way to follow all 13 members of the group around on a trip in the free-form format of Youth Over Flowers. Even when we take trips in a group, we usually never have more than seven people with us. And even after S.COUPS had to sit out due to an injury, finding a place on short notice for 12 of them like in Youth Over Flowers (tvN) would’ve been nearly impossible in any country. It was basically impossible to book somewhere to stay for the 12 of them alone, never mind the whole crew, so we thought up a different approach: We put them all on a bus together, then split them up to tour different tourist attractions and got them back together at their lodgings at night. It felt like a school field trip. But since the boys in SEVENTEEN are in their 20s (laughs) it was less like a field trip and more like a package tour, so we called it NANA TOUR.

So the whole show was essentially guided by the idea of a field trip.
Shin Hyo-jung: Unlike the Over Flowers series, where we did a lot of interviews after the trips, we decided to have as few clips of them talking to the camera as we could and give the SEVENTEEN members as much time together as possible. When you take a field trip, everything from where you’re staying to where you’re going is planned out for you, and it’s about creating memories together within that framework. Our goal was to create a comfy atmosphere that would convey that vibe of close friends traveling together. There’s already GOING SEVENTEEN for having fun and In the SOOP for cozy watching, so we asked ourselves what we could say about SEVENTEEN with this show. So, even though it’s a travel show, we thought it would be best to focus on the people. We knew that the first video in the SEVENTEEN Game Caterers episodes was already essential viewing for new fans learning about SEVENTEEN and memorizing their names. As an extension of that, we wanted to make a show that would still be helping people who are first taking an interest in or feeling curious about SEVENTEEN to get to know them better, whether that’s a year or two later or more.

What influence did that approach have on the format of the show?
Shin Hyo-jung: We decided to first introduce each SEVENTEEN member in detail and show their relationship with the group later on. For example, the talent show segment later on was meant to show a different side of them from what you see when they’re following the crew and the course set out for them—how serious they are when they set their minds to something and what it ends up looking like in the end. You can see in the Weverse version especially how they get themselves ready and how, after SEUNGKWAN sings, the members all comfort him, for example. And since they’re all really good, professional singers, they wrapped it up with “Circles.”

I imagine you made it a priority to capture the distinct personalities of all 13 members of the group, including S.COUPS, despite his absence.
Shin Hyo-jung: First we went through all the footage that fans would definitely want to see and then proceeded to do our best and try to really understand what makes each of them special. Without that kind of forethought, fans might find the content reductive, and it would give the wrong impression to SEVENTEEN newcomers, too. We were observing all throughout the trip—on things like how the group portrayed themselves in the situations set up by the crew, their relationships between one another, their group discussions, and so on. Anytime we noticed something new, we casually asked them then and there, “Why did you do that?” And they would tell us. If we noticed anything about them while reviewing the footage that we missed in the moment, we took notes and figured out what we wanted to show about them beyond what they already typically show.

It seems to reflect your point of view and angle as well.
Shin Hyo-jung: I’ve had the experience of being a longtime fan of someone myself. When I worked on New Journey to the West and Three Meals a Day, I looked at the stars from the perspective of a fan and a viewer and wondered what it is about them that people like. I wanted to feel that same kind of connection to them. From there, I can see them from the same perspective as the people who love them, and I become more interested in them after that.

It was impressive the way you edited the “what are you doing right now” game, where every member was given their own goal, together into one segment to give them one cohesive arc.
Shin Hyo-jung: We talked about that a lot during the editing process. We aimed to show how each member handled their mission to really showcase who they are as individuals. For instance, with MINGYU, he kept beating the meringue, even while being distracted, perfectly illustrating his motto, “I’m saying, let’s go there.” We made sure to show how every member of the group was determined not to give up and to stay positive throughout each of their missions.

You said you strongly recommended going to Italy for NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN because you wanted to reward the group for all their hard work throughout their 20s.
Shin Hyo-jung: SEVENTEEN won this as a prize, after all. I wanted to take them somewhere they hadn’t been before to give them the chance to have a truly enjoyable experience. I didn’t recommend Italy right from the start—I just wanted to take them somewhere they hadn’t been, and it turned out the members had never been on a trip to Europe. Now that they’re at the height of their career, I hoped the trip would also serve as a boost to them. When we brought SEVENTEEN from Japan to Italy, about half of them had no idea what was going on, and the other half loved it. But the mood changed completely as we got to a village called Panzano. They really started to relax once they were surrounded by the Panzano landscape.

How exactly did things change?
Shin Hyo-jung: We were worried when we were first planning the trip out and looking at the members’ different personalities because we heard WOOZI doesn’t spend a lot of time outdoors. But he kept going around, taking in all the sights. He was practically wearing a path out under him. (laughs) He’s usually pretty rigid about not drinking, too, but he even had some wine on the trip. When I looked into WONWOO, he came across as really quiet and reserved, but he showed a whole different side of himself once he was in that comfortable space. JUN turned out to be quite the talker once he warmed up, too. Seeing as they even said they really enjoyed the trip, which probably came from learning how fun it can be to take a vacation, it feels like it really was a gift to them. We thought we should show and demonstrate that feeling as much as we could.

It must have felt good witnessing that change.
Shin Hyo-jung: I didn’t expect HOSHI to be so moved by the vineyards. I told the SEVENTEEN members when we were there, “You know how great it feels when you’ve worked hard on a performance and reveal it with a ‘ta-da’ and the audience goes ‘wow’? It’s the same for us.” You can’t see it in the video footage, but Italy was incredibly hot. Still, seeing the boys enjoying themselves in the moment and being happy made it fun for us too. They were quick to open up to the crew and we all talked about how we have a job that’s actually enjoyable. (laughs)

That makes me think of how happy the SEVENTEEN members and the crew look together during the credits for episode six.
Shin Hyo-jung: I wanted to convey how the SEVENTEEN members opened up to and interacted with the crew. It would’ve interrupted the flow of the show if we stuck it somewhere in the middle, but what was captured on camera was all possible thanks to SEVENTEEN trusting us and opening up about themselves, and I wanted to show that at the end. When Young-seok told them, “We have to hike for about 20 minutes—sorry,” the boys just said okay and kept walking. That was the general atmosphere of the whole trip.

It sounds like a story about the changing relationship between cast and crew. That gradual warming up seems to happen in other shows you’ve directed as well.
Shin Hyo-jung: Now that I think about it, that’s true.

During a stream on YouTube with CEO Lee Myung Han and producer Na Young-seok, they said you’ve established a new kind of reality show thanks to your ability to see value in the type of scenes that wouldn’t have previously been kept in.
Shin Hyo-jung: It wasn’t like I specifically set out to do something new. During the Happy Sunday segment Are You Ready, the precursor to the first 2 Days & 1 Night segment, it was three of us: Lee Myung Han, Na Young-seok, and me. Those two are legends at KBS. My concern was what I’d be able to contribute with such outstanding people around. I saw it as literally a matter of survival. (laughs) While the two of them did the editing of the main footage from when the clapperboard was snapped, I handled the rest. Not all directors stop rolling right after the clap. To a newcomer to the world of broadcasting like me, even the small talk the cast engaged in after rolling and how laid-back they were was fascinating and fun to me. So I tried editing together those leftover parts and showed it to others.

What was their reaction like?
Shin Hyo-jung: I was lucky because they found it interesting and said, “Let’s do something with this. Let’s do more of it.” They said I was good at capturing people on camera and started entrusted me with the time after games, when they go to bed, and the mornings before playing games. Initially I was using a few cameras that continued rolling even after the clapper, but later on I bought cameras with my own money to shoot longer footage and left them rolling. Viewers liked it, too, because it was something they’d never seen before. It became a habit to take all the footage, watch through it, and edit it, and I still sit through everything we shoot even now. You could say it’s a bad habit. (laughs)

How can you still edit that way?
Shin Hyo-jung: I genuinely like the people who appear on my shows. That’s all there is to it. I like them, so I watch everything we shoot, hoping the things I saw in person were properly captured on film and doing my best to show that in my edits. I think it would be wrong if something didn’t make the cut after those people give it their all just because I was being lazy with the editing.

It feels like the way you focus on each group member in NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN stems from that love of your subjects.
Shin Hyo-jung: When we were finishing up the final episode, both me and the junior producers all said, “We never could’ve finished this if we didn’t love SEVENTEEN. It’s too exhausting otherwise.” You can’t work through the night like that without liking them. We kept saying how we shouldn’t use the phrase “all 12 of them” in the captions and instead write “all of them.” SEVENTEEN is a group of 13, so saying “all 12 of them are there” just because S.COUPS couldn’t join wouldn’t be right. And we tried to take care to highlight the personality traits of each and every member that stem from S.COUPS too, and to show sides of them beyond what everyone already knows about. People love the stars who appear in our shows, so we strive to look at what makes them so appealing, why they have so many fans, and what people might be curious about them.

You distributed this carefully crafted show in a novel way, releasing it across tvN, Weverse, YouTube, and more. What was that experience like?
Shin Hyo-jung: NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN was planned from the start with streaming services in mind, with plans to show it on TV actually coming later. It was the first time our company targeted a global platform like Weverse. We expected it would take around three months, but once we got into the fourth month we realized that would’ve been impossible. We had to make a different cut for different platforms, and we had to look over some parts for international viewers. It’s not like this anymore, but back when it was only TV, sometimes we edited up until the day of airing and sent it to the network, but with this new system, the final version had to be ready at least three weeks in advance. I used to wonder why places like Netflix would wait so long to release something after shooting it, but now I understand.

What did you observe after releasing it on those different platforms?
Shin Hyo-jung: I heard that, after the director’s cut of NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN came out on Weverse, the number of users purchasing SEVENTEEN content shot up 150%. About 10% were people who installed the Weverse app for the first time just to purchase the show, meaning there were new SEVENTEEN fans and people just finding out about Weverse. This was after first broadcasting on tvN, and the sales were 2.5 times higher than what we projected using all our data. That means there’s people who were interested after seeing it on tvN, installed Weverse, and bought the Weverse version. I think that’s the most telling part. Both Egg Is Coming and I consider NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN to have pioneered a new format. I think there’s plenty of variation to be found within the format and that we can go anywhere with it.

Your journey so far could be described as a long trip in itself. Where do you feel you’re headed to next?
Shin Hyo-jung: The most important part about a show, from start to finish, is the people. Na Young-seok must have learned that from Lee Myung Han, and I still have it drilled into me how the most important thing at the end of the day is the people. The people always come first even when we’re filming. I think this can be attributed to how the whole atmosphere at Egg Is Coming is about putting people first. And, whenever a new platform pops up, it makes me want to try it out. The market is branching out in various directions, and no one can predict what will take the lead in the future. Just like with this show, I want to keep challenging myself by thinking about which platform would make the best fit for the content I produce and keep my options open with a wide variety of different platforms. I want to keep my options open and listen for opportunity knocking whenever a new platform comes along. But the people always have to come first. NANA TOUR with SEVENTEEN was created with that in mind, and I see it as a starting point that’s opened up a host of possibilities.