| Guo Ji'an
There are more and more pathfinders in the film and television industry in the field of high-quality short dramas.
In the previous year, with the help of platforms represented by Douyin, more and more leading film and television companies joined the ranks of micro-short drama production. "Quality" has become a new trend in the industry. Especially before the Spring Festival, a Spring Festival film list including creators from several professional film and television companies and the "Chenxing Project" for short drama creators have once again added fuel to the trend of high-quality products.
However, in the process of communicating with many practitioners, Xiaoyu can feel that the industry is cautious about the concept of quality.
First, what is the "high-quality short drama" that users love? Can traditional film and television companies that have adapted to the logic of long narratives produce content that has both reputation and traffic? Industry success stories are not enough.
Second, what is the difference between Douyin’s high-quality short dramas and content on other platforms? What specific help will the platform provide?
Thirdly, compared with the popular "mini program dramas", how do high-quality short dramas make money, and how much money can they make?
Three big problems have stopped many professional traditional film and television creators from moving forward.
To a certain extent, this year’s lively short drama on Douyin during the Spring Festival has allowed cases to appear in batches, which has dispelled this fog.
Some companies have reached the positive cycle through trial and error: the Spring Festival short drama "New Year's Eve" produced by Perfect World Film and Television's Perfect Declaration Studio became a hit at the beginning of the year, with a total broadcast volume of over 1 billion and Still on the rise, the topic of the series has repeatedly appeared on Douyin hot lists and Weibo hot searches;
Some companies have achieved effective expansion of the IP universe : The short drama "Beyond It!" produced brilliantly in Beijing! "A Juan", as a live-action derivative short drama of "The Young Lion", has gained a very high reputation and has a current broadcast volume of 110 million;
Some companies are trying to explore c-side business : "The Hidden World" created by Dengfeng International "Autumn Cicada" is about to be released, aiming at the suspense theme of the era that is missing in the industry, and plans to adopt a c-end payment model...
In addition, "Auntie's World New Year" produced by Mango TV and "My Return is Windy" produced by Huace Film and Television The views reached 202 million and 183 million respectively, both of which are among the top 5 popular short dramas on Douyin.
Recently, Entertainment Capital and "New Year's Day" and "Beyond It!" Qian Lili, the main creator of the three short dramas "A Juan" and "The Hidden World of Autumn Cicada" and the person in charge of Douyin's premium short dramas, Qian Lili, tried to use the creative process and exploration experience of these pioneers to provide reference for more latecomers.
talks about creation: fine short plays, where is the "fine" more effective ?
Creators in the traditional film and television industry are most afraid of a "looking down" mentality when entering short dramas. Looking at the industry with a sense of superiority and self-righteousness to "reduce dimensionality and attack" is actually the most likely to lead to acclimatization.
However, being too conservative is not enough. It blindly refers to existing popular projects, but lacks the topic sensitivity of mcn and experts who have been rooted in the short video field for several years. Instead, it is constrained and unable to use its existing strengths.
In conversations with many project creators, the creators more or less mentioned "Twenty-Nine" produced by Ningmeng Film and Television short drama label Haoyoujian in early 2023, and used it as a certain reference. The core keywords extracted by are to respect the existing viewing habits of the short drama industry and the audience, but must make innovations in content, emotion, or production.
It is reported that "New Year's Eve" "Beyond It!" The shooting processes of the three projects "A Juan" and "The Hidden World of Autumn Cicada" were in accordance with the creation standards of micro-short dramas. The shooting period was controlled within two weeks, and the budget was strictly controlled. Beijing Wonderful and Dengfeng International, which entered the short drama industry for the first time, have been preparing for a long time in the project preparation stage, which lasted for more than half a year. They have already launched the Perfect Declaration Studio of six works on Douyin. The total period of operating "New Year's Eve" is three within the month.
"To be honest, we didn't expect the number of views to be so impressive when we started it. The number of views for the first episode exceeded 100 million within 24 hours after it was launched. This result is a big surprise." Chen Xuan, the chief producer of "New Year's Eve" told Xiaoyu.According to her, after an internal review, they believed that the core hot spots were firstly the high traffic volume of the Douyin platform during the Spring Festival, and secondly, the story content with strong conflicts and strong settings attracted users. On the plot side of
, "New Year's Day" tells the story of Xiao Mei and He Quan who are in the cooling-off period of divorce and still pretend to be husband and wife and return to their hometown during the Chinese New Year and live under the same roof. A girl filed for divorce when she was pregnant, and the two concealed it from their parents. During the cooling-off period, they reunited with the person they pursued when they were students. The contradictions and conflicts were reversed layer by layer. The fast-paced narrative captured the flow of traffic.
But I have to admit that in the field of marriage, especially the emotional field of urban women, whether it is the theme of divorce or the more troubling emotional relationships, they are often seen in the creation of previous short dramas. "New Year's Eve" is truly out of the circle. , precisely because it did not choose more catchy aspects such as the mistress's affair and the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, but instead used delicate life strokes to describe the emotional dilemmas that women really face in marriage.
"There is already a lot of content on the ethics of family conflicts. We have found a smaller aspect to dig deeper into. In marriage, when two people do not have major conflicts in core principles, will they eventually part ways due to various hidden issues? " Chen Xuan said.
According to her, the script writing team of "Perfect Declaration" are all women, and they realize that this problem is actually the core of the collapse of more and more urban women's marriages. In the script stage of "New Year's Day", in order to make the content more realistic and give users a sense of involvement, the team made the user interviews and female emotional surveys that were conducted before each creation more detailed and sufficient, and also collided with many characters in the drama. "exploding point".
"For example, the male protagonist always deducted 1 to indicate receipt. This is because many respondents in the survey were very dissatisfied with their partner's perfunctory attitude in answering. They always responded with a simple 'um' or an emoticon, so we investigated this. Refining and processing. Another example is the part where the two sides dumped each other's physical examination reports, which also stemmed from the occupational diseases mentioned by many people during the interview, which added to the sentiment of beating workers." Chen Xuan said.
At the same time, women's neglected contribution in housework and the unequal demand for emotional value caused by the differences in thinking between men and women, a series of core emotional points are also output with detailed and specific plots. It is these contents that give a large number of viewers in front of the screen a strong sense of immersion.
"This is something we didn't expect. We have also created 'imperfect growth' male protagonists before, but there has never been such a unified feedback in the comment area. Countless users of the "New Year" drama strongly expressed that they must get divorced. , and have a deep resonance with the heroine." Chen Xuan said.
《Beyond it! "A Juan" also relied on the innovation of the plot and the "conscience" of filming and production to gain a deep sense of involvement from the audience. "The thing that moved me the most was actually the message I received from a middle-aged father in the background of the account. He said, 'After watching this drama, it deeply touched me who lives at the bottom.' The audience can get emotional stimulation through the work, which is me The best feedback I've ever received." "Beyond It! "A Juan" director Wang Hao told Xiaoyu.
is the first film IP derivative work launched by Beijing Wonderful in the short drama track, "Beyond!" "A Juan" inherits the elements of youth growth, excitement and comedy from the original IP "Lion Boys". Even because of the real-life interpretation and nonsensical style, focusing on the little characters, many viewers shouted "It has the taste of Star Master" Son."
To a certain extent, this is indeed a bolder and more "big screen" narrative logic. The camera focuses on a young lion dancer from a small place. He did not go towards the well-known "promotion, salary increase, marriage to Bai Fumei". "The pinnacle of life" is a refreshing narrative, but he is struggling in a corner of a bustling urban area, holding a dream but being hit by reality time and time again, but "what is the difference between a person without a dream and a salted fish"? Time and time again, the boy fell Get up again, like a lion dancing, and rush to the highest "green", even if you can never fly up.
“Short plays don’t always have to be enjoyable. Sometimes, it’s not that the audience only likes to watch cool dramas with strong twists, but that content is only provided to them. I want to do it while complying with the rules of short plays. Fast food. In every episode, we want to talk about the pull between reality and dreams. We hope that the discussion will touch the audience and give people strength. "Wang Hao told Xiaoyu. This also coincides with the statement put forward by Beijing Wonderful, the producer and producer of "Beyond! A Juan", in its overall creative principles of "paying attention to the voices of the public and keeping up with the pulse of the times." Together.
"The Hidden World of Autumn Cicada" puts the core innovation in the story theme and shooting techniques. It has previously produced the "Wolf Warrior" series, "The Wandering Earth" series, "Changjin Lake", "Water Gate Bridge", etc. The film, Dengfeng International, tried its hand at short dramas for the first time, aiming at the hard nut of chronological suspense that has never been tackled before, and also directly adopted the vertical screen format.
"Of course there are also big challenges. The first is that none of us have ever taken pictures and don’t know how to take pictures. The second is that the suspense theme is quite special, and I am worried that the amount of information in the vertical screen is not enough. "Wang Yan, the director of "The Hidden World: Autumn Cicada" said.
In the end, the solution to the first difficulty was to still use "horizontal shooting" but retain the vertical screen material. "We drew in the middle of the viewfinder of the ISA camera. A 9:16 frame was created, and finally the middle piece of the horizontal screen was selected during the editing stage. "The core of solving the second point lies in a sudden inspiration. Wang Yan, a fan of the second dimension, thought of the common "comic storyboard" and decided to try to use split screen to add details.
"Vertical screen has the advantage of action scenes, impact The feeling will be stronger, and combined with the comic-style split-screen effect, the atmosphere will be better. It has the feeling of a passionate comic and can also supplement the information content of the suspense drama. Vertical screen creation is actually a new opportunity that can break the original audio-visual and editing logic. " Wang Yan said.
Driven by this fresh idea, Wang Yan's mobile phone is filled with various comic storyboard compositions, how to make the appearance of group portraits in a vertical screen, and how to create a coherent drama. , how to describe a large scene, as long as he sees something that can be used as a reference, he will immediately save it. During the filming process, he would draw the vertical screen shot of the next day every night to ensure that the filming goes smoothly and does not exceed the deadline.
"Come to shoot the short play, I just hope to do something different. "Wang Yan said.
Chat platform: Joint production or traffic support, how does Douyin help partners make good content?
Communication Small and Medium Entertainment learned that among the current three short dramas, "Beyond! A Juan" and "Hidden" Douyin participated in the early investment and provided financial support for the two works "Autumn Cicada of the World". Both platforms began to intervene in the project when it had the initial idea stage, and were quite interested in the concept and theme of the work. Among them, "Beyond!" "A Juan" movie IP has outstanding attributes and novel themes; "Autumn Cicada" is a rare suspense genre of the era, and the team has proposed a bold "split-screen" concept innovation.
This also reflects the relationship between Douyin and tradition to a certain extent The logic of cooperation with film and television companies: For companies that are new to the game and whose stories and themes are attractive enough, the platform is willing to make cash investments and share the initial costs. As the creative team matures and the business model becomes more mature, it will be more inclined to the traffic side. Cooperation.
Whether it is joint production or joint operation, Douyin will provide experience support on the creative side.
The main control of casting lies with the production team, and Douyin will give appropriate suggestions. For example, you can join Douyin celebrities Increase popularity and marketing topics. Douyin will also recommend experts to the producers according to different characters in the film. For example, in "The Hidden World: Autumn Cicada", Dengfeng International finally chose the food blogger Mala De recommended by the platform Zi played the role of the chef in the play, which also created more topic spreading points for the short play.
However, such candidates are only a reference. During the casting stage of "Beyond! A Juan", we also tried to use more topical candidates. Idol or celebrity, but the effect presented during the audition stage could not perfectly fit the role. "We wanted to shoot a real life-like and amateur feeling, so in the end, all the leading actors were new actors, and there were no actors who were particularly familiar to the audience. face. We even sometimes find passers-by at the filming site for some extras, and find staff members with matching temperaments to make guest appearances. In short, the requirement is that they must be natural and not appear dramatic. "Wang Hao said.
At the same time, although the two leading actors, Ajuan and Ale, are from China National Theater and Nortel respectively and have a professional background, they do not have enough shooting experience before. In order to ensure the emotional coherence of the new actors in the performance, Wang Hao will ask the actors to perform the entire scene Play, and then look for suitable shots in it, rather than acting out the segments individually. This is also the result of discussions between the team and Douyin during the filming process.
So, in the end, judging from the presentation effect, "Beyond! The characters in "A Juan" are highly life-like, and the tragicomedy of urban life composed of unfamiliar faces never makes people feel out of control because of the performance. A few days ago, Douyin held a short play viewing party in the cinema, "Beyond!" The newcomer's acting skills in "A Juan" have withstood the test of the big screen and were highly recognized by the audience.
In terms of content creation, Douyin focuses on scripts and editing. "There is a lot of content on Douyin, and the investment for relatively high-quality content is higher. However, short dramas are developing very fast, and the homogeneous competition in the entire market will become stronger and stronger. So first of all, in the early development, script planning and theme selection At this stage, we will give overall suggestions, whether it is character setting, story mode, story prototype, we must make some innovations. Then at the editing level, because the rhythm, BGM, dubbing and other aspects of the short drama may be difficult for the new team. We need to adapt, and we will also communicate more with you in this area." Qian Lili, the person in charge of Douyin's premium short dramas, said.
"In the early stage of project development, the Douyin platform gave us detailed feedback on the content of our scripts. For example, can the characters be optimized? Who would have a better perspective in the opening? Is the emotional point at the end of each episode the best? Isn’t it perfect enough? After the platform gives the evaluation opinions, our script creation team will make targeted adjustments to make the details more perfect," Chen Xuan said.
"The Hidden World: Autumn Cicada" producer Liu Kailuo also told Xiaoyu: "Douyin will provide many past successful cases and data analysis, clearly presenting users' needs for rhythm points, and also allowing us to understand traditional long content and short video content. There are creative differences. For example, in short videos, the foreshadowing of the character's plot should not be too long, and narration may be more effective in conveying information than lines, etc. What is more interesting is the editing process. Originally, we wanted to do a chess game before each episode. It started with a metaphor about the art of war. But Douyin suggested that we should not make it too complicated and be more direct in order to be more in line with the viewing habits of short video users, so in the end we changed the method."
To some extent, such advice And adjustment is the process of "neutralizing" the platform logic and the creator's thinking. Although it is quite painful for a large number of new players, they all said that "Douyin still respects the creator's ideas very much."
"Some We have our own persistence in some places. For example, in the scene where Ajuan gives Amei the drumstick, I deliberately slowed it down because I felt it was too fast and the emotions could not come out. Douyin would respect our ideas. I am still very grateful to the platform. To put it bluntly, if the platform doesn’t care about it, we won’t be able to understand users’ drama viewing habits from the data side. If it cares too much, it will stifle the creators’ ideas, which will lead to bad things. The current cooperation with Douyin has achieved a just right balance.” Wang Hao said.
Talk about business: brand customization, C-segment payment, how to formulate a business model for high-quality micro-short dramas?
It is worth noting that these three short dramas currently adopt different business profit models. "Beyond!" "A Juan" will be released for free in its entirety, "The Hidden World of Autumn Cicada" plans to adopt a c-side payment model on Douyin, and "New Year's Eve" will be a brand cooperation model.
These different business feedback options are precisely related to the original intentions and content production stages of each film and television company.
In a previous interview, Zeng Yingxue, director of "New Year's Day", senior vice president of Perfect World, and head of Perfect World's film and television business, told Entertainment Capital that 's involvement in micro-short dramas represents an attempt and compatibility between content companies and short videos. Track space.
For this reason, Perfect World Film and Television hopes to achieve the continuous output of short content with high impact. Currently, the Perfect Declaration "Her World" short drama label has accumulated a relatively clear audience after the exploration of 6 short dramas."Among the official Douyin accounts, women account for more than 75%, and users aged 30-40 account for the highest proportion. Young women, urban white-collar workers, and exquisite mothers are our core audiences." Chen Xuan introduced.
's relatively clear user portraits and stable content quality have also allowed the "Her World" short drama label to have relatively stable brand business cooperation. Currently, "Full-time Househusband Training Plan" and "Awakening!" The three urban emotional short dramas "Love Brain" and "New Year's Eve" all cooperate with brands. Among them, the beauty brand Proya has cooperated with two in a row.
"At present, we have indeed opened up the commercial model of brand cooperation. At this moment, we are still exploring more diversified commercial realization channels, and the short drama business is in a healthy state. Why should brands come to you? Because you can Continuous and stable output can combine the content of short plays with the appeal of the brand. Maybe we have got some clues through these dramas. In the future, we need to further explore and explore how to realize the value of customers and users, and do more So many things." Zeng Yingxue told Xiaoyu during the interview. In comparison with
, "Beyond!" The birth of "A Juan" was due to the logic of the production company Beijing's wonderful operation of the "Lion Youth" IP. The content of the short play is all updated on the official Douyin account of "The Young Lion" and promoted among IP audiences on all platforms. The core purpose is to ensure the continuity and continued influence of the IP content.
"The contact time between movies and users is very long. It may only take two or three years for a film to be released, and it will be released in one month. If the long and short periods are combined, a continuous communication channel with users can be directly established, so from the perspective of IP operation, If you want to reach more users and keep IP popular and fresh, a completely free model is the most suitable," Qian Lili said.
Xiaoyu has learned that during the Spring Festival this year, the short drama "Game in Disguise", a spin-off of "All or Nothing" produced by Bad Monkey Pictures, also has the purpose of IP operation and maintenance. Once this new short + long gameplay is successfully implemented, it is also expected to create more possibilities for the film industry to create an IP universe.
The reason why "The Hidden World of Autumn Cicada" adopts payment logic lies in Dengfeng International's need to explore the field of C-end commercial realization. "For Dengfeng, we will gradually develop our toc business, and we hope to communicate more directly with users. Currently, users are very aware of paying for C-side short dramas, so we hope to try this model." Dengfeng International Pictures CEO Liu Kailuo said.
It is reported that after clarifying the willingness to pay on the C-side, Douyin also provided more detailed opinions for "Autumn Cicada". A large amount of information is given for reference in terms of the specific setting of paid episode points, the amount of a single episode, updates and limited-time free rhythms. "Content like suspense is a vertical payment type that has been proven in long format and global fields. We will determine specific models and strategies based on the different characteristics of each institution and the goals of doing this." Qian Li Li said.
Author's Notes:
"New Year's Day" "Beyond! Behind the three Spring Festival short films "A Juan" and "The Hidden World: Autumn Cicada" are three traditional film and television companies at different stages and with different starting points in the field of short dramas. They are also the ones who hope and short dramas in the current industry The epitome of practitioners colliding. During the interview with
, I could clearly feel the "creative passion" of these film and television veterans.Wang Hao had previously taken over a lot of mini-program short dramas "due to livelihood", but he said that this was the first time that he was happy to be in "Beyond!" "A Juan" signed his name; Wang Yan talked about actors, storyboards and shooting, like a child, dancing excitedly, showing a pile of storyboard manuscripts on his mobile phone, while talking and gesturing with Liu Kailuo, "Next time we will shoot vertically You can play with a bigger screen!"; When Chen Xuan was interviewed, she rushed to the set to start filming the next short play. The project schedule for 2024 is full, but she is still planning to create "Her World" "Develop new sub-series, "make some younger content"...
For them, short plays are not only a business, a way of making a living, a popular trend, but also a way to fulfill their dreams and realize their imagination. , a base and testing ground for close contact and interaction with current users. The works that these creators poured out their hard work and creativity may be the clarion call for "quality products".
