Researching on Narrative Techniques, Plant & Payoff - OTT Movie Focuing on 「Uprising」

The film 「Uprising」, released on October 11, 2024 through the global OTT platform Netflix, was selected as the opening film for the 29th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), becoming a hot topic. The film is significant in that Director Park Chan-wook was in charge of the screenplay and production, and it is the first OTT film to be selected as the opening film for a film festival as a Korean film. This study attempted a text analysis of the narrative technique called ‘plant and payoff’, which is an essential element in establishing the plausibility and completeness of the events in terms of the composition of the film 「전,란」. The analysis results showed that the film successfully delivered the thematic messages of ‘an equal world without class discrimination’ and ‘the friendship of the two main characters that transcends class’, but the overuse of the narrative device called ‘plant and payoff’ caused the story to fall into the trap of the ‘cliche’ of ‘predictable development’, and the fact that the distribution of information that was not arranged in a timely manner according to the narrative flow did not match the plausibility of the characters’ psychological and behavioral changes in the play. ‘Plant & Payoff’ is not a device that is intuitively visible to the audience, but rather it builds the context of the narrative as invisible, incomprehensible core information. Therefore, priority should be given to considering the quantitative and qualitative aspects of planting and harvesting necessary and valid information at the appropriate time so that the audience can immerse themselves in the theme and story of the movie itself. This article examines one aspect of the perfection of a movie through the dramatic narrative device of ‘plant& payoff.’ Based on this, it is judged that it can be practically applied in the movie content production stage to ensure the narrative perfection of the story, and we plan to continue our research by applying it as a theoretical methodology for analyzing various contents in the future.