Hey guys, I’ve now moved onto another section of my posts, TEASER VIDEOS! Yay! I have to say, teaser videos are one of my favourite things about the KPOP industry (aside from the cute boys of course hehe), it’s yet another thing that the Koreans bring to the table that’s appealing and completely different from what the Americans do. Many international fans get into KPOP because it’s new and different to the music we’re used to and a lot of us are looking for something to shake things up little and get us excited.
Teasers do exactly that, they were created to get people excited about a new group or song and while it is very commercial and geared towards making the most money they can, it’s also really fun and gives us fans a glimpse at what’s to come from these people who have worked their asses off in order to debut. It’s like a cliff-hanger at the end of a book or movie, all they really want you to do is make them money by buying the next instalment, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting for most people.
To explain for those of you who don’t know about KPOP, there are a lot of entertainment companies in South Korea and each one of them has people (usually teenagers) called trainees, who learn how to dance and sing/rap to the best of their ability so that they can be a part of the next new group to debut from the company. These trainees stay with the company for anywhere from many years to only a few months. EXO’s longest running trainee is their leader Suho who trained for 7 years and their shortest is one of the main vocalists, Baekhyun, who only trained for 8 months. All of Seventeen have been with their company, Pledis, for at least 3 years now since they’ve been preparing to debut since 2012. Teasers are a way to show off all this hard work before the MVs and albums are released and are not only used as a precursor to a group’s debut, but also as a way to show the fans parts of new MV that the groups release. I’ve only used pre-debut teasers as examples for this post, but if you guys want me to I can also talk about pre-comeback teasers at another time since they’re not exactly the same thing.
Teaser videos are usually between 20 or 30 seconds, but can be up to almost 2 minutes long (I’m looking at you SM, it takes me ages to watch the 23, 1-2 minute teaser videos you did for EXO!) and often feature single members at a time, with one whole group video at the end. Many groups just have one per member, but in the case of EXO, their main dancer Kai has six fully solo teasers, two where he’s the main focus (including the final group teaser) and four where he shares the focus with other members. I’m not sure why this happened, but it’s pretty unfair to other members like Xiumin, D.O and Suho who only have one teaser that’s not even a solo one. As much as I love and admire Kai, I still think it was a little weird for SM to do it that way. On the other hand, Seventeen has completely equal teasers. There was thirteen, 35 second videos (one for each member), one all group focused video and all of them were all done in the same format, but still allowed them to show off their individuality. I liked this way better, because I think it gives each member the opportunity to show off to their fans and it gives us fans more of an opportunity to see how different the members are, without seeing one member all the time.
Overall, I think teasers are a really interesting thing about KPOP and, even though I didn’t like the clear favouritism in EXO’s teasers, I really enjoy watching both of these groups’ teaser videos and I reckon I’ll always find the time to go back and watch them. EXO and Seventeen are in my (unofficial) Top 5, along with BTS, VIXX and GOT7, so I really do love them and I hope that I’ve created some new fans for both of these amazing groups :)
Teasers do exactly that, they were created to get people excited about a new group or song and while it is very commercial and geared towards making the most money they can, it’s also really fun and gives us fans a glimpse at what’s to come from these people who have worked their asses off in order to debut. It’s like a cliff-hanger at the end of a book or movie, all they really want you to do is make them money by buying the next instalment, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting for most people.
To explain for those of you who don’t know about KPOP, there are a lot of entertainment companies in South Korea and each one of them has people (usually teenagers) called trainees, who learn how to dance and sing/rap to the best of their ability so that they can be a part of the next new group to debut from the company. These trainees stay with the company for anywhere from many years to only a few months. EXO’s longest running trainee is their leader Suho who trained for 7 years and their shortest is one of the main vocalists, Baekhyun, who only trained for 8 months. All of Seventeen have been with their company, Pledis, for at least 3 years now since they’ve been preparing to debut since 2012. Teasers are a way to show off all this hard work before the MVs and albums are released and are not only used as a precursor to a group’s debut, but also as a way to show the fans parts of new MV that the groups release. I’ve only used pre-debut teasers as examples for this post, but if you guys want me to I can also talk about pre-comeback teasers at another time since they’re not exactly the same thing.
Teaser videos are usually between 20 or 30 seconds, but can be up to almost 2 minutes long (I’m looking at you SM, it takes me ages to watch the 23, 1-2 minute teaser videos you did for EXO!) and often feature single members at a time, with one whole group video at the end. Many groups just have one per member, but in the case of EXO, their main dancer Kai has six fully solo teasers, two where he’s the main focus (including the final group teaser) and four where he shares the focus with other members. I’m not sure why this happened, but it’s pretty unfair to other members like Xiumin, D.O and Suho who only have one teaser that’s not even a solo one. As much as I love and admire Kai, I still think it was a little weird for SM to do it that way. On the other hand, Seventeen has completely equal teasers. There was thirteen, 35 second videos (one for each member), one all group focused video and all of them were all done in the same format, but still allowed them to show off their individuality. I liked this way better, because I think it gives each member the opportunity to show off to their fans and it gives us fans more of an opportunity to see how different the members are, without seeing one member all the time.
Overall, I think teasers are a really interesting thing about KPOP and, even though I didn’t like the clear favouritism in EXO’s teasers, I really enjoy watching both of these groups’ teaser videos and I reckon I’ll always find the time to go back and watch them. EXO and Seventeen are in my (unofficial) Top 5, along with BTS, VIXX and GOT7, so I really do love them and I hope that I’ve created some new fans for both of these amazing groups :)