Swing Girls

Swing Girls (2004), by director Shinobu Yaguchi, which was widely loved in Korea as a coming-of-age music film, is a masterpiece that depicts the delightful jazz challenge of underachieving high school girls who coincidentally start playing jazz to fill in for an ensemble that got food poisoning. The most impressive scene in the movie is undoubtedly the exciting stage performance where the protagonists enthusiastically play their instruments. Surprisingly, all the instrument performances in the film are 100% live recordings, played by the actors themselves after four months of grueling practice, with no stand-ins or lip-syncing. Initially, the production team planned to have the actors pretend to play while using professional recordings. However, the actors' practice was so intense that their actual playing skills improved dramatically. As a result, they changed their plan and used the music from the actors' direct performances for the entire playing scene. The passionate energy of the performances in the movie was truly 100% genuine.