Domestic online dramas: make excellent products according to the "drama"
With the mysterious drama "Secret Corner" and industry dramas "Rebirth" and "blame you too beautiful" and the low-cost but novel content of the costume network drama "Rumored Chen Qianqian" and so on, it has become popular recently. It's time for the domestic online drama to gradually move from a barbarous growth period of rough production into a period of adjustment for rapid development.
In particular, the 12-episode online drama "Secret Corner" aired recently in the "Misty Theater" of iQiyi won a double harvest of traffic and word of mouth. The current network score is as high as 8.9 points. During the broadcast period, the play became the top of the word-of-mouth list of the domestically produced dramas in 2020, and many viewers locked the play as "Best of the Year" in advance. It can be seen that after the precipitation of the big waves, a series of domestic dramas with diverse themes and rich contents are moving towards the development of boutique creation.
1. Suspense drama: short drama creation and production ushered in a new outlet
For a long time, many domestic suspense dramas have been criticized by the audience because of the procrastination of the plot and the reasoning and anti-intelligence. From the explosions of "Unlicensed Crime" and "Chaser of the White Nights" in previous years to the "Ten-Day Game" and "The Secret Corner" that attracted much attention this summer, the suspense dramas are all due to their excellent production, meticulous story logic and high Quality content has attracted many viewers.
In particular, the recently popular suspense drama "The Secret Corner", as one of iQiyi's "Mist Theatre" family growth theme short drama, continues the previous boutique style of creation. In addition to emphasizing the texture of the film in narrative, photography, and fine arts, the play is also remarkable in performance. Each character is three-dimensional and full, ensuring the quality of the work and enhancing the appeal of the plot. After watching the show, an audience member said, "Seeing this lineup makes people miss the cinema." The play innovatively examines the influence of the family and the adult world through the perspective of three children. In the storytelling, each episode corresponds to a subtitle, and uses a fast-paced narrative method and high-density plot arrangement. , So that each episode of the play can complete a complete story process from the beginning to the end, so that suspense and drama can be filled, meeting people's expectations for suspense.
Not only that, the play also carried out realism excavation and deep cultivation under the cloak of the suspense play, with "love" as the core concept, embedding a deep view of social and family issues, which triggered the audience's questions about the original family and youth education. In-depth thinking, such as the protagonist Zhu Chaoyang's desire for friendship, parents' emphasis on learning and ignoring children's mental health and other behaviors. According to Yin Hong, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University: "The Secret Corner" injects deep sociological and psychological connotations into the suspense genre and produces a real tragedy. It also reminds the audience and cares Good kindness and honesty is to take care of the growth of children." The hidden corner of the screenwriter team also said when talking about the original intention of the play: "We want to bring all kinds of thinking to the audience and inspire them to find the right love the way."
In the "China Internet Drama Development Summit Forum" held in previous years, Wang Xiaohui, the chief content officer of iQiyi and the president of the professional content business group, proposed that "to create a short episode era, we must make the plot shorter in form, More exciting". According to Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, "'Short' is of course a restriction and a constraint, but the more there are such constraints and restrictions, the greater the space for the pursuit of'fine'."
The emergence of a number of high-quality short plays, such as "Ten Day Games" and "Hidden Corner" by Iqiyi's "Mist Theatre", not only fits the current background of the film and television industry's capacity reduction, quality improvement and volume reduction, but also allows The industry and the audience have seen the potential of short-episode models and genre theaters, which also marks the arrival of the mainstream era of quality short-play.
2. Industry drama: return to the industry itself to attract attention
In recent years, domestic industry dramas have emerged frequently, but many industry dramas such as "Dear Translators" and "Perfect Relationships" have been out of focus. They have not described the current status of the industry and the characteristics of the workplace in depth, and even have many common sense errors. "I was in love with the outerwear of the industry drama", which was disgusted by the audience. And this year, industry dramas such as "Rebirth" and "blame you for being too beautiful" jumped away from the superficial and exaggerated colors of previous industry dramas, returning to the industry itself and professional characteristics, and becoming an eye-catching work with a realistic plot.
The criminal investigation drama "Rebirth" tells the story of the police Qin Chi after being hit hard, in the process of searching for his memory through the clues to find the true murderer, and in the choice of the underlying case gradually stripping and superficial cases, echoes the current domestic violence phenomenon , The lack of family education and other social hot topics, caused the audience to think about reality. Dun Qi, the film's chief producer, said, "In order to ensure the professionalism and authenticity of this drama, as well as the expression of details can be handled well, we arranged all the main creators of the drama to the police team before the shooting. To experience life, not only to learn professional skills such as holding a gun, but also to be familiar with the police system, police laws and other regulations."
Focusing on the film and television industry, "blame you too beautiful" from the unique perspective of the gold female agent, restore the real entertainment industry workplace, and extend the entertainment circle ecology to the real workplace, showing the current status of women in the workplace and the new era Women's values. Su Peng, the editor-in-chief of the play, said, "We want to present a true film and television industry, which not only exposes the industry, but also reminds practitioners not to forget their original intentions." Although the show also shows the protagonist's emotions, the ratio of the industry and the emotional elements is quite appropriate, thus avoiding the shortcomings of many exaggerated industry dramas "inadequate professionalism and emotions". Regarding how to make a "de-suspending and sinking" industry drama, Liang Zhenhua, the chief producer and art director of "blame you for being too beautiful", said, "When the work is created, the element of "low age" should be removed. ; Emotional storytelling should give way to industry expression; from the overall aesthetic tone and visual presentation of TV series, luxury should be kept as low-key as possible.
"Many people say that it is a cold winter in the industry, and many companies have withdrawn from the market, and the development of online dramas will definitely be affected. But this has also brought a cooling-off period to the industry and urged the industry to think about what kind of content the audience likes." Dai Ying, vice president of iQiyi and general manager of the self-made drama development center, believes that for domestic online dramas to develop, they must constantly break the mindset, tap new stories, and innovate narrative methods. Liang Zhenhua also believes that "no matter how cold this'winter' is, as long as we treat our'craftsmanship' with sincerity, effort, and heart, this industry still has the right and space for us to survive."
3. Costume drama: small cost good story also has spring
With the continuous efforts of the online audiovisual platform of the head on the quality of online dramas, in recent years, many themes of ancient costumes have gradually tilted towards the online platform. A lot of "big themes" about family affairs, powerful production crews, large cassettes, and even the late stage and the service road are the big productions of top teams. Ancient costumes such as "The World of the Great Qin Empire" and "Yanyuntai" "Wait for the expectation of many viewers before it is broadcast."
However, there are a lot of large-scale costume dramas that are currently produced. Even if they have top-notch director producers, they have "flipped the street" because of the quality of the content. Some of the works were originally adapted from IP and have fans. However, Regardless of the role, shape or content of the episode, there is no good at all, which makes many audiences spit out or even abandon the drama. On the contrary, more and more low-cost, low-produced costume dramas have gradually benefited from high-quality content and stories.
For example, the already-played costume online drama "Chen Qianqian in the Rumor", through the background setting of two city states with very different gender concepts, tells the protagonist of the city-state heir from tit-for-tat to hand in hand to resolve the conflict between the two cities. Finally, the story of comprehending the true meaning of love not only pokes out the real pain points of differences in gender concepts, but also explains the expectation of gender equality in real society. In addition, the show's continuous reversal of routines and anti-repertoires and fast-paced, non-sloppy plots, coupled with sharp and ironic lines and excellent performances by young actors, made the episodes laugh more frequently, and also made the audience not tired of watching the drama. The relaxation of body and mind is very suitable for the current psychology of the audience, making it a "black horse" in the costume drama. According to Huang Dianlin, associate professor of the Communication Research Institute of the Communication University of China, "As long as the content of the story is good and the characters are reliable, low-cost costume dramas can also make a circle."
In this summer period, the types of domestic online dramas are still expanding, and the content production shows a trend of refined development. It is not difficult to see from the recent niche theme online dramas that the creators must not only innovate and "finely sculpt" in the subject matter, content, production, etc., but also inadvertently touch the humane care and real temperature. Infused into it, only in this way can we truly produce more stunning masterpieces.
(Reporter Niu Mengdi correspondent You Huan)