Author | Wei Jie
Variety shows are gathering to go to the countryside.
"Ten days of hard work" farming, the Lehua girl group raising pigs, 0713 catching chickens, the Times Youth League building toilets, island teenagers building islands... Three generations of old, middle and young people in the entertainment industry are gathered around the edge of the city, regardless of amateurs, Lu Ka is still a big star.
In fact, going to the countryside is not new in variety shows.
In the early years, the countryside that appeared in variety shows always had the attribute of "making people suffer". "囍dropsfromthesky" allows female celebrities to become mothers and hike over mountains without pain. "Celebrity Comes to My House" allows female stars to marry into the countryside, feed pigs and shovel shit, and experience typical conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, sister-in-law fights, and verbal violence. "Transfiguration" contributes a number of famous scenes represented by Wang Jingze's "True Fragrance", "Li Xiaojuan's Encourage to Study", and Prince Lehua's transformation.
An interesting point is that such attributes have become incidental panels in today's rural variety shows. "Emotional value" has taken over, and the theme of variety shows, and even all entertainment works, has changed. The countryside carries the migrant workers’ imagination of lying down, being natural, and being free. It brings joy and hardship through variety shows and escapes the core of “suffering”. Today's rural trips are more about growth and harvest, a sense of accomplishment and companionship, unifying cultural tourism and entertainment products at their core.
This kind of de-suffering is highly consistent with young people’s pursuit of relaxation, lying down, and resting in variety shows, as well as the pursuit of emotional value. It is also more suitable for in-depth cooperation and implantation with lifestyle brands. Regardless of the core, style, theme, location and even commercialization, "going to the countryside" has shown a new trend.
Behind this is the demand for content from the public and the creative side, and the ambition of the variety show market to truly return.
variety show, we really need new maps.
Going to the Countryside Variety Show, Breaking Out of "Sufferings"
Going to the Countryside is actually not new to variety shows.
Around 2015, most of the outdoor and travel variety shows represented by "Where Are We Going, Dad ", " Let's Run " and " Extreme Challenge " have chosen their destinations in rural areas or towns, and thus a series of Famous scene - in front of there are children pulling out of the tiankeng mire, in the back there is Zhang Yixing letting sheep graze on the ground, Huang Lei cooking to feed the whole family.
A series of novel experiences, coupled with the family-friendly nature and high popularity of variety shows at that time, once caused a rare cultural and tourism long-tail effect, and a series of non-urban attractions quickly became popular.
Before this, the villages that appeared in variety shows always appeared as a control group, with stereotyped abjection and "making people suffer" attributes. Occasionally, they could achieve childhood memories with slap-in-the-face jokes, but most of them It seems that it is always being accused of forced sensationalism, feudal dross, and deliberate scripts.
"The Legend of Heaven", co-produced by China and South Korea, allows thirteen women including Ma Li, Jia Ling, and Lin Chiling to "marry" into different ordinary rural families to become mothers without pain. Zhu Dan also hiked over the mountains with a teaching mission, being a mother and a teacher at the same time.
was recently on the hot search "Celebrity Comes to My House", which made Li Jinming marry into the countryside, feed pigs and shovel shit, experience the typical conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, sister-in-law wars, verbal violence, and eat the unusable "Remembering the Bitter and Thinking of the Sweet" Rice", and the scene was cut out.
"Metamorphosis", as a rare longevity variety show, has contributed many famous scenes represented by Wang Jingze's "True Fragrance". A few years ago, Du Hua sent his son Zhao Xiaoguo to have a transformation. Last year, "Li Xiaojuan's Encouragement to Study" became a hit, adding another level of entertainment popularity to the show.
In today’s rural variety shows, hardships are not without them, but they are no longer the core.
A very important reason is the change in theme of variety shows and even all entertainment works. "Emotional value" prevails, and it is difficult for any active education and educational content to be widely recognized by the public. Only with moderate relaxation and real interaction that fits the audience's psychology and emotions can we have a chance to gain sufficient mapping and resonance.
At the same time, villages and counties are increasingly appearing in film and television dramas. Local scenery, bloggers and county literature are becoming popular on short video platforms. Returning to hometowns and taking off long gowns have become micro-mainstream emotions among migrant workers. Rural areas seem to have become It creates a spiritual utopia that the public both fears and longs for. The countryside carries the migrant workers' imagination of lying down, nature, and freedom, and with variety shows, they can escape the core of "suffering" through hardships and joys. Going to the countryside today is more about growth and harvest, a sense of accomplishment and companionship.
Therefore, "Stay" has become a more mainstream choice in content production. "Farming", "Haha Farmer", " This is My Island ", "Island Boy" and other rural variety shows are all conducted in a fixed scene + long-term recording mode.
"According to conventional practices, long-term recording in the same scene may indeed affect the freshness of the audience, but we wanted to change from the very beginning and wanted to tell a story about the growth of a teenager and build a relatively complete story. and variety show landscape," said Yang Changling, chief director of "Farming".
Map of going to the countryside, the change of theme from south to north
corresponds to the change of destination.
In the early years, Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan were always favored when selecting locations for variety shows to go to the countryside. "Where Are We Going, Dad" went to Puzhehei, Yunnan Province and Lianhe Village, Hongkou Township, Dujiangyan, Sichuan, and "Metamorphosis" went to Biejiu Village, Jiamian Township, Guizhou.
The special terrain and features of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan carry the imagination of the outside world and become the basis for variety show storytelling, opening up a number of new maps for variety show production.
Now, content begins to grow with the help of maps. When it comes to location selection, the production team often needs to consider more.
First, the recording time limit.
html In August and September of 2022, "Farming Bar" began to select locations. The program team looked at Miyun, Huairou, Sanhe and Langfang at the junction of Beijing and Hebei, and found several good places.
"We thought it was relatively simple at first, but later we found out that the program would be quite large, involving manpower and resources from all aspects, so it wasn't so fast." Yang Changling revealed that winter wheat planting here in Beijing has to start on October 20 Only if you plant it before can it germinate normally. However, in October, many aspects of investment recruitment and selection work were not completely settled, and there was no way to guarantee that the production would start in October.
Finally, the recording time was set in winter, and the shooting location was moved to Houdoumen in Hangzhou, which is the last piece of farmland in the West Lake District.
"It's quite a coincidence, but the result is very good. In fact, this program has some commercial activities at the beginning. For example, in the future, it may sell vegetables and e-commerce live broadcast. It happens that the e-commerce live broadcast in Hangzhou is developing very well. Our blue sky The headquarters is also in Hangzhou, and the Xihu District Government has also given us great support and help. "
The same is true for "This is My Island".
At first, the chief producer Gu Chaofeng searched for many places based on the concept of "island", from the Zhoushan Islands in Zhejiang, to Pingtan Island, Dongshan Island, and Sijing Islands in Fujian, to Weizhou Island and the Jingzu Islands in Guangxi. .
finally chose Hainan because the program was recorded during the Chinese New Year. "Although the weather is very cold, we still hope that artists can have contact with the ocean and interact with nature, so we set the scope in Hainan."
When developing the map, a more important point is the "tonality" of the variety show.
While Gu Chaofeng wanted to meet his "experience" expectations, he also wanted to maintain the connection and chemical reaction between variety shows and humanities, and at the same time he also wanted to ensure the safety of the recording.
"Just like buying a house, we want to buy a house that is quiet and quiet." The filming location was decided on a desert island without any inhabitants. It takes 10 minutes by boat or half an hour to climb a mountain to get to the island. " Address", but it only takes 15 minutes to drive from the urban area of Wanning Shenzhou Peninsula to reach the island.
"We are really satisfied with this isolated island 15 minutes away from the downtown area." Gu Chaofeng said with emotion.
At a time when variety shows want to expand their territory, the core of "Going to the Countryside" is to provide fresh emotional value and content value, which means that it needs to be the interface between fantasy and reality, and needs to have a sense of freshness and foreignness, but it cannot Out of reach.
Natural loss of control and the questioned reality
Of course, for the variety show production team, going to the countryside itself may not be an easy thing.
Countryside and wilderness often mean that the sky is high and the sky is far away, which means long outdoor activities and more uncertain weather factors. During the filming of "Farming", Yang Changling downloaded several weather forecast software on his mobile phone, just to compare products and check for omissions. Despite this, a sudden downpour will still happen to everyone unexpectedly, and "everyone will get soaked in the water." Eighty or ninety cameras were set up throughout the venue to facilitate shooting of the entire scene.
Sometimes, this choice also means a shortage of supplies. During the recording of "This is My Island", the required daily necessities, shooting equipment, water and food all needed to be transported manually by the staff themselves, and the recording was also conducted 24 hours a day.
But perhaps the most difficult thing is that there are almost no alternatives to the recording of this type of program.
The first recording of "This is My Island" encountered a typhoon. "Everyone went there wearing short-sleeves and shorts." Suddenly it rained heavily, the temperature dropped sharply, and the ships stopped sailing, making it impossible to carry out any projects at sea. "Interactive game programs can be easily switched between outdoor and indoor settings. They often make such preparations and prepare a set of indoor games when the weather may be bad. But we have to go there in any situation. Recording." Gu Chaofeng explained.
The operational difficulty is high, but it cannot prevent the variety show Going to the Countryside from being repeatedly questioned. Several common questions focus on the authenticity-is it a script? Are you putting on a show? How to prove that you are real? During the preparation stage of
, Yang Changling expected that he might face a lot of doubts. After all, no one would believe that a group of boys in their 20s could spend 190 days cultivating 142.8 acres of land. "When I made the vlog, I just wanted to prove that these teenagers really start working every morning and don't just go back to the hotel to sleep at night."
After that, the long and short straight pattern followed "Farming Bar" for two seasons. I don’t know when vlogs and live broadcasts began to transform from tools for self-certification to windows for cross-screen communication between the public and the program and a sense of companionship. In the back door, the scene of Jiang Dunhao holding a mobile phone, Zhao Xiaotong cooking, and the remaining people fighting changed "The Truman Show" into "Can I Follow You to Your House?"
fans have completely recorded 34 check-in live broadcasts and 7 live broadcasts in the second season. The video blogger organized all the materials and edited them according to time to piece together a relatively complete 190 days and "ten diligent days".
makes the audience believe that variety shows take time.
"Many variety shows on the market, perhaps in order to explain diversity and enrich their plots, are like a 100-meter race. But the show Farming is like a marathon.It requires a long period of operation to show the value, story, and growth of 'people', and then impress the audience through the concentration and persistence of emotions. "
ai Illustration by Entertainment Capitalism
When the variety show is not too "prime", it has become the goal of the program team to restore the reality as much as possible. "This is My Island" has made the greatest compromises and concessions in terms of time. . Gu Chaofeng revealed that the recording of the program was divided into four times, each lasting five days. Such a centralized recording can ensure that the emotions of the teenagers on the island are continuous, and the feelings of embarrassment, fatigue, and healing are all based on the moment. It breaks out naturally in the environment.
"We will not interfere with their self-growth. Although Teacher Cai was not notified, he did sleep on the island. Perhaps this kind of reality seems like fun and a joke at the moment, but if it accumulates to a sufficient extent, the audience may be able to truly believe in the power of the island. "Gu Chaofeng said with emotion.
Variety shows go to the countryside, who will pay?
From broadcasting first and recruiting later, to fans soliciting sponsorships, to 15 brands sponsoring "Farming Bar 2", before this wave of variety shows going to the countryside started, perhaps there was no One can imagine that this type of variety show can become popular in the market.
One of the big reasons is that in the past, the usage scenarios that rural areas can provide for brands are limited. It is difficult for brands to ask the variety show production team to find a natural insertion point, an opportunity to subtly influence the audience. Naturally, the rural atmosphere also scares many elite and petty bourgeoisie brands. Bar" There are fewer and fewer variety shows that "broadcast first and recruit later". Such variety shows often face the requirements of "being preset" and "to be customized".
Gu Chaofeng said frankly, "This is. The usage scenes of Meituan, the chief sponsor of "My Island", are rarely intertwined with the filming scenes of the variety show. "His business scenes are in the city. Everyone uses this app to search and experience hairdressing, food, entertainment and other items. Customers trust us and hope that the implantation will not destroy the content, but we should also maximize the rights and interests of customers and realize their consumption scenarios. "
" And compared to our desert island, Meituan's consumption scene is actually more popular. "Gu Chaofeng said with a smile.
"We finally solved the problem through content. In order to fit the usage scenario, we put the content at the beginning of the film and reflected it outside the island. For example, when departing from the hotel, a group purchasing link was set up at the hotel, and everyone had a seafood feast, and everything went smoothly. "
"Landscape" for business may be a path that newcomers to the rural variety shows have to take, and it can also bring about unexpected deep connections. However, today's rural variety shows can often find connections with cities, daily life, and young people. The intersection of them provides a more appropriate atmosphere.
The good news is that as more and more content IPs mature, brands seem to have more concrete imaginations about going to the countryside for variety shows, such as Target Co-Building an Island. In "Island Boy", the Xiaodao electric car appeared in time and became a means of transportation for teenagers, solving the travel problem.
From a certain point of view, the "Going to the Countryside" variety show has allowed investment to shift from milk, wine, snacks, and electronics that have always been preferred to variety shows. The products have been extended to a wider dimension, giving more and more space for daily necessities to grow from content.
Why do we need to go to the countryside and go to the island?
Back to the original point, we still need to see what’s behind “going to the countryside and going to the island”. The dilemma and direction of variety shows.
More than one practitioner has told Xiaoyu that variety shows have entered a topic selection shortage in the past two years, and the topic selection is concentrated in the two frameworks of games and stages. Everyone is also confused about the content. Go do something.Creators are forced to move forward and "innovate", but they are confused by self-doubt in the "new" direction.
A common situation is that many programs are labeled as "new" and "only", but they fail to make the audience feel fresh.
There are more and more "track+" in variety shows. Some people are doing variety shows while doing romance variety shows, and some are focusing on confusing "slow music variety shows". The program always talks about the new competition system, with all kinds of high concepts, universes, labels, and teams mixed together, which dazzles the audience. tried more and more, but still could not produce a show " The Voice of China " or "Idol Producer".
Are audiences no longer enthusiastic about reality shows?
It is true that short videos and offline entertainment have eliminated the functionality of variety shows to some extent, but this does not become an excuse for the lack of success in variety shows’ “pseudo-innovation”.
4 In the past six months, we have seen that the models of the n generations have not changed significantly, but their popularity and reputation have increased. Although some programs provide exquisite packaging through competition system, positioning, and casting, their innovations are ineffective, and they do not touch the core and bring up the "spirit" of variety shows. At the end, you will always get the sentence, "This kind of change" What’s the point?” The reality shows among them are often not real enough or interesting enough. The richness of the content is extremely limited, and there is no way to provide the audience with the motivation to "look through the microscope". Post-production and editing were also coerced by the so-called "style" and entered a whirlpool of self-pleasure.
We can also see a lot of variety show bastards. In the program, people are as pale as chrysanthemums, and their behavior is as pale as water. They put themselves on the edge of the program, do not release or communicate, come with the idea of "rest", and come with " The results of "showing off" are gone.
Some variety show participants, living in their own behavioral logic, used "immature innovation" candy wrappers to wrap the fragments of content to form a beautiful handicraft.
From this perspective, the environmental changes caused by going to the island and the countryside provide a sense of freshness in experience, stimulating the inspiration of creators and the enthusiasm of artists, giving more possibilities to content and giving more reality shows A sense of being alive.
But bringing variety shows to the countryside is not a backwards logic. Often, creators determine the theme first and then extend it as the core point. For example, "This is My Island" was originally motivated by the desire to "survive on a deserted island", and "Farm" wanted to show the power of the land.
For variety shows, going to the countryside is not a mechanical move, but a channel to achieve content breakthroughs. The important thing is to create a new story through a brand new map.
