Right now, mini-series seems to be developing faster than expected.
Relevant data shows that in the first half of this year, 2,859 mini-series were planned and filed in the SARFT system, with a total of 69,234 episodes.
Among them, in May and June, more than 400 mini-series were filed in a single month, while in 2021, the number of mini-series filed in the whole year was only 398.
In terms of revenue, Tencent Video's micro-short drama "Please!
Don't Pamper Me" refreshed the micro-mini-drama accounting record with a total of 3,000+ ten thousand yuan per account... All kinds of data seem to show that micro-mini-drama is becoming another outlet in the cold winter of film and television.
However, there are also many problems behind the seemingly thriving mini-series.
The Chengdu Business Daily-Red Star News reporter noticed that the popularity of the Internet, broadcast data and constantly refreshed accounts have stimulated the surge in the production of online mini-series, and also breeds some creators.
The short and simple creation and the homogeneous content also hinder the development of high-quality mini-dramas.
beginning
Born around 2013, Diaosi Men and Never Expected are two short dramas that everyone is familiar with.
In August 2020, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television defined online film and television dramas with a single episode of less than 10 minutes as "mini-series" and officially included them in supervision.
For a while, various video creation companies such as platforms, film and television companies, MCN agencies, and advertising companies have entered the game.
has long been brilliant
Today's development of micro-sketches is inevitably reminiscent of those years when micro-series grew savagely.
After all, mini-series has ebb and flow once again.
Born around 2013, Diaosi Men and Never Expected are two short dramas that everyone is familiar with.
In 2013, Wan He Tianyi's 5-minute short drama "Unexpectedly", is considered to be the earliest prototype of today's micro-short dramas, and achieved a miracle of 2 billion views that year.
In 2018, iQIYI took the lead in laying out the vertical-screen micro-drama "Life Has Got My Hands". Although this short-drama was not a big hit, it made the "vertical-screen" attribute well known to the public.
The reporter noticed that "Unexpectedly", "The Diaosi Man" and "Life Has Got My Hands" actually established the mode of most comedy-oriented mini-dramas today, such as strong plots, fast rhythms, many changes in character identities, and many reversals. .
For example, Wang Dazhui in "I Never Expected" changes his identity in almost every episode. From a low-cost martial arts actor, to a tractor graduate who is interviewing for a job, to Liu Bei's son Liu Chan, the identity change is simply strange.
Since then, high-quality online dramas have fully occupied the market, and some short dramas have gradually withdrawn from the market due to vulgar and vulgar content.
After having "identity", it becomes "sweet pastry"
In August 2020, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television defined online film and television dramas with a single episode of less than 10 minutes as "mini-series" and officially included them in supervision.
This time, the mini-drama finally received "official recognition".
For a while, various video creation companies such as platforms, film and television companies, MCN agencies, and advertising companies have entered the game.
Yunhe data shows that the number of mini-series will accelerate in 2021, with a total of 398 mini-series filed in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 34%.
By May of this year, 421 micro-short dramas had passed the filing in a single month, exceeding the number of micro-short dramas filed for the whole year of 2021.
The "2022 Short Drama Insight Report" (referred to as "Report") by the Maoyan Research Institute shows that in the first half of this year, micro-short dramas have performed well. The World" Douban score reached 8.1.
"Please!" broadcast by Tencent Video
"Don't Pamper Me" has accumulated over 30 million yuan in accounts, setting a new high in the field of micro-short dramas.
At the 2022 Kuaishou Photosynthesis Creators Conference, Kuaishou revealed in a high-profile manner that the platform has had more than 260 million daily active users of short dramas in the past year, of which over 50% of the daily active users of short dramas have developed the habit of chasing dramas and watch short dramas on Kuaishou every day. Over 10 episodes.
The Kuaishou Xingmang short play has generated a total of 42 billion+ views in the past year.
Features
At present, micro-short dramas are still in the stage of barbaric development. Due to the serious homogeneity, there is a lack of real out-of-the-circle works.
This has also led to most of the mini-dramas being reduced to cannon fodder, not to mention profit sharing.
However, the monetization model of the follow-up live broadcast conversion is still favored by the industry from the rise of fans from micro-short dramas.
Single theme: "The overbearing president fell in love with me"
Although certain achievements have been made, compared with long videos, micro-short dramas have not been out of the circle and still belong to the minority.
According to the "Report", as of June this year, Tencent, Mango TV, and Youku have launched 171 exclusive short dramas. From the perspective of genre, love accounts for more than 80%, and sweet pets, domineering presidents, and wealthy daughters have become micro-short dramas. Keywords for the subject.
A researcher told reporters that today's short dramas are very similar to early online dramas, and many dramas with similar plots and themes have appeared under the barbaric growth.
For example, under the dog-blood route, there is no need to forge the connection, and the details do not need to be deadly. It is only necessary to use the fastest rhythm to highlight the high-energy and reversed plots, such as revenge, sadomasochism, identity disclosure, etc., so that the audience can quickly immerse themselves in it. Themes and genres are single.
When a certain theme is recognized by the market, there will be large-scale imitation and replication.
"For example, early online dramas are mainly suspenseful, while the current micro-short dramas are mainly based on 'the overbearing president falls in love with me'." According to an industry insider, a single theme will easily lead to low quality and low taste. of stereotypes.
Film and television critic Han Siqi believes that too much catering to fragmented consumption has also brought criticism of "digital pickles" to online mini-series, such as "short time, cool content, and sweet stories", and sometimes even catering to audiences in a fragmented era. The "heavy taste" content of emotional catharsis constantly raises the threshold of "cool" for the audience to taste the fast food culture. These drawbacks are worthy of vigilance.
A producer of short dramas told reporters that the project they are shooting is the theme of sweet pets, which is commonly known as "the overbearing president falls in love with me".
The reason why this type of drama is filmed is that the users of the mini-series, that is, the post-00 female-based user group, can satisfy their yearning for a beautiful love with the love of sweet pets.
In addition, the proportion of sweet pet short dramas is very high, and some short dramas that have achieved good results are based on this theme. "It may not be more brilliant, but it will basically not step on thunder."
However, users will not always be willing to pay for the same and single content.
In the end, in order to stand out, micro-short dramas still have to move from homogenization to innovation and diversification.
The reporter also noticed that compared with the shooting period of at least three or four months for long videos, the shooting period of most of the 20-episode mini-series may be only one month, and the investment is only 500,000-1 million yuan. With a sufficient budget and a hasty shooting cycle, it is easy to imagine the difficulty of creating a high-quality mini-series.
In fact, many creators hurriedly launched when they saw the surface of the micro-short drama, "As far as I know, many creators entering the field of micro-short drama now simply want to make a short-term gain, so as to make a big difference. This kind of mentality is not pure, and it is inevitable to fail." A long-form video producer said that he also heard that there were short dramas with a cost of several hundred thousand yuan, and the final share of the account exceeded one million, but after all, few people succeeded.
Like "Please!
Don't spoil me", it is said that its total investment reached 20 million yuan, which is considered a very large investment.
Profit is not easy: most of them become cannon fodder
Research from the Foresight Think Tank shows that from the perspective of business models, there are currently different models for micro-quick monetization according to different platforms.
The short-form mini-series put on the long-video platform mainly relies on the monetization model of traditional online content such as platform copyright purchase, broadcast and account sharing, and advertisement placement.
Most of the producers of such works are professional film and television production companies. The main profit-making method is to obtain accounts based on the number of broadcasts, and the realization of the content is more colorful.
In 2021, the unit price of Youku's S-level account-sharing revenue will be increased to 6 yuan, which is the highest unit price of the industry's current account-sharing short plays.
Judging from the accounting rules for Damang short dramas updated in February this year, the platform provides S+ ratings for horizontal screen short drama projects with a single episode of 8-15 minutes, and provides a minimum amount for such projects.
The producers of micro-shorts on short video platforms mainly focus on MCN institutions, top Internet celebrities and IP platforms, and pay more attention to the realization of B2B traffic brought by micro-shorts.
The main business models are broadcast sharing, rewarding and sharing, live streaming, advertising placement, content marketing, etc. The monetization model of "increasing fans with micro-short dramas and converting from subsequent live streaming with goods" is the mainstream.
The platform side relies on micro-series to increase platform users and viewing time, and then obtain advertising revenue and follow-up e-commerce and reward revenue commissions.
During the interview, the reporter also learned from a number of industry insiders that the micro-short dramas are still in the stage of barbaric development.
This has also led to most of the mini-dramas being reduced to cannon fodder, not to mention profit-sharing.
For example, the so-called explosive "Please!
"Don't spoil me" has accumulated over 30 million yuan, but the investment of this drama has reached more than 20 million yuan, plus the cost of publicity and distribution of several million yuan, how much is its actual profit?
However, the monetization model of the follow-up live broadcast and goods conversion is still optimistic in the industry, from the rise of fans in micro-short dramas.
According to Mirror Entertainment, @江七七, which has become popular with many short dramas, currently has more than 28 million fans on Douyin. According to the quotations on the huge star map, its 21-60s business cooperation quotation is 35.8 million.
"There are still many examples like this. Internet celebrities have become popular through short dramas, and they can bring goods or appear in short or even long dramas. The more important thing for short video platforms is to help creators continue to monetize."
new changes
The entry of traditional film and television companies
Where is the mini-series heading?
Not long ago, the mini-series "Goddess Hotel" was launched on Douyin. The series consists of six units of stories, telling the story of the "Goddess Hotel" where Nalan and the monster hunter Chunsheng are located. series of stories.
At present, 15 episodes have been updated, and there have been 140 million views on Douyin.
The producer of "Goddess Hotel" is the well-known Changxin Media in the industry. Guo Jingyu, the producer of this drama, is not only the founder of Changxin Media, but also a well-known director. Braveheart", "Soul Ferry", "Little Nyonya" and many other popular series.
Guo Jingyu is one of the earliest creators of online content in China. As early as 2014, he filmed the online drama "Soul Ferry". At that time, most of the online dramas were shoddy, and the total investment of "Soul Ferry" was At that time it reached 6 million yuan.
After the broadcast, the show has a good reputation, and the Douban score has remained at 8.5.
Last year, Changxin Media has already entered the track of micro-shorts, and has successively filmed 20 micro-shorts, with themes including costumes, modern times, suspense, and thrillers.
According to Guo Jingyu's vision, these short dramas should be made into a matrix and pushed in depth.
For the filming of the short drama, Guo Jingyu's answer was very straightforward, "Just to support the young team to do this."
Changxin Media's first mini-drama starred Guo Jingyu's wife Yue Lina, and the screenwriter was Xiao Jixiangtian, who was once popular because of "Soul Ferry".
Xiao Jixiangtian recalled in an interview that he spent one month writing 6 15-minute unit stories. In fact, there is no difference between short and long dramas, that is, the plot is compressed in a limited time. For 15 minutes, try to focus the trick on the two main characters."
In fact, in the current winter of film and television, many film and television drama production companies have tried mini-series, including Wannian Pictures, Haohan Entertainment, Hecheng Pictures, Linghe Culture, etc.
Some voices believe that the entry of traditional film and television companies may promote the development of mini-series.
However, traditional film and television companies have a somewhat ambiguous attitude towards micro-shorts.
A producer said frankly that the main business of the company is still long dramas, and the short dramas are just a test of the water. The reason is that the short dramas look beautiful, but they are limited by the audience and duration, so they don’t actually make money.
For example, in the placement of advertisements, the brand side feels that it is limited by the duration and traffic, and it is more inclined to put in long episodes.
A producer said that in fact, no matter the length of the drama, the content must be the most important. If the content is good, it doesn’t matter if it is longer. If the video is not good, no matter how short the video is, users may directly swipe it away.
Obviously, it is an objective reality that the quality of works is uneven in the current micro-short drama industry.
How to micro-implement the development direction of high-quality mini-dramas and improve the quality of content is a problem that practitioners must solve, and it is also the key to whether the drama industry can expand its influence in the future.
Chengdu Business Daily-Red Star News reporter Qiu Junfeng