In recent years, the creation of suspense crime dramas has undergone a qualitative leap, not only becoming more sophisticated in genre production, but also showing a mellow prototype in the pursuit of literary and artistic dimensions, fully demonstrating the unique social and humanistic charm of TV dramas as the most popular popular literary and artistic style. The picture shows the stills of "Thirteen Years of Dust"
Talk about cleanliness
Since 2023, the drama has broadcast frequent hot spots in the market, and has successively set off phenomenal drama chasing scenes, including "Crazy" and "The Three-Body Problem", followed by "Thirteen Years of Dust", "The Road of Life", etc., and the drama "Long Season" has become the highest-rated domestic drama in the past eight years. But the question faced after the heat wave is, with Zhuyu in front, can the audience's enthusiasm for watching the drama and the raised expectations survive in the episodes that will be broadcast? It is not because of the subsequent one or two lackluster dramas, which interferes with the audience's confidence in domestic dramas and the cultivation of viewing habits.
It can be seen from the list of dramas to be broadcast in 2023 on the head video website, there are many types and programs, but there are also some existing works. Because the broadcast time capacity of the first round of dramas on satellite channels has been very limited in recent years, "first network background" and "network and station linkage" have become the preferences for drama distribution, and big dramas, hot dramas, and slow-selling dramas have flocked to video websites. Judging from the previous broadcast experience, some viewers of the works will feel old-fashioned and old at first glance, and there are some projects that have been difficult to produce for many years due to various reasons such as production, and the result may be tasteless food and a pity to abandon them.
A TV series from the beginning of planning to the official broadcast, the time in the middle is very long, which is the overall decision of the production model of Chinese TV series "first write and then shoot and then broadcast", how to overcome the time difference between creation and broadcast, is a problem that every TV series content creator must think about and face.
Find constant from the laws of creation
TV series is a popular art for the public, but also a popular industrial product, and one of the characteristics of industrialization is to use mass production to ensure the sustainability of benefits. The stability of TV series content and production relies on mature industrialization to ensure that the average production level of dramas is always maintained above the qualified line, so as to achieve the goal of meeting the basic appreciation needs of the audience. Due to the production method and production and broadcasting system of China's TV dramas "write first, shoot and then broadcast", objectively determine the long creative cycle and slow capital turnover, which will also indirectly lead to an increase in blindness in investment and production, increased speculation, too many TV series put into production, scattered production funds, and it is easy to form a situation of overcapacity on the one hand, oversupply of episodes and duration, but unbalanced quality on the other hand, and the supply of high-quality content exceeds demand.
To coordinate this systematic problem in the entire TV drama industry, we must first start from the beginning of the creation of TV series content, can not blindly look for hot spots, pursue explosive hits, in fact, it is difficult for creators to ensure that the audience will still have a strong interest in a certain theme, a certain character or a certain type of shooting method after one year or several years; Moreover, do not artificially extend the time spent in the distribution process, many "difficult production" dramas and slow-selling dramas often have their own serious problems; Finally, do not reverse the content and form from the commercial perspective of the current market and revenue, such as limiting the increase of actor remuneration to reduce production costs, and cannot easily dozens or even hundreds of episodes, etc., to reduce the negative impact on artistic creation. The production of TV dramas should follow the law of constancy and essence of artistic creation, give the work an artistic core that can stand the test of time, win the audience, win the market, and thus beat the time.
Find iterations from genre works
Video websites in the early stage of the development of lack of content, the overall demand for drama content is more quantitative than quality, now iYouteng three-legged, the market competition pattern is basically stable, the head video website on the production of TV series content more and more right to speak, gradually reduce the waist, tail works attention and investment, more is to pursue the mass explosion and word-of-mouth excellence, hope to drive the website through a high-quality drama hit to drive the website to pull new and membership renewal upgrades. On the other hand, the huge number of Chinese audiences and the continuous demographic dividend have also made the content reserves of the three leading video websites for a long time not form obvious differences in themes and types, but the competition of the same theme and type is particularly fierce at the level of works.
Taking one of the most popular genres of crime dramas as an example, around 2017, there were a number of high-quality suspense crime dramas such as "White Night Chasing", "Undocumented Crime", "Forensic Qin Ming", "Native Crime" and "Residual Crime", which almost formed a trend of concentrated viewing of online drama crime genres, accelerating the expansion of the power of video websites, and then "Hidden Corner", "Silent Truth", "Chang'an Twelve Hours", "Opponents", "Crime Hunting Guide", and then to the recent "Crazy", "Moses on the Plain" and "Long Season", Only more than five years later, the creation of suspense crime dramas has made a qualitative leap with the naked eye, not only becoming more sophisticated in genre production, but also showing a mellow prototype in the pursuit of literary and artistic dimensions, fully demonstrating the unique social and humanistic charm of TV dramas as the most popular popular literary and artistic style.
Achieving such a quality upgrade in a short period of time is also an invisible pressure and driving force for content creators on the same track and at the same time, which means that creators must not only control the time cycle of TV series creation itself, but also actively respond to peer competition to avoid elimination, can not stop at the successful excellent works as benchmarks, but to think about the successes and shortcomings of these works, and regard them as transcendent objects, and strive to create better works that can be iterated. Fundamentally overcoming the time difference between the creation and broadcast of the TV series is transformed into actively creating another "time difference".
On the other hand, the tomb robbery works that also started on video websites were also very popular, but they never broke through their own limitations and embarked on the road of iteration of benign development. In terms of costume dramas with the most stable audience base, although there has not been a work out of the circle that surpasses the comprehensive level and artistic height of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" in recent years, the overall creative situation is good, and the drawbacks that were once complained about by the audience have been relatively rare, and the sophisticated production has become the fundamental aspect of costume dramas, and presents more diversified and diversified pursuits. In addition, in the past two years, high-quality works such as "Menghualu", "Yunxiang Legend", "Fengqi Longxi", "Tang Dynasty Mystery", "Daming's Silk Case under the Microscope" and other high-quality works have explored the theme, plot, performance, aesthetic style and other aspects of the painstaking exploration of themes, plots, performances, aesthetic styles, etc., all of which have more or less pushed the production and aesthetics of costume dramas forward, and the next work leading the iteration may be on the way. Fortunately, after the "first network background" + "network synchronization" solved the way out problem, the video website gradually formed a flexible and stable schedule system to build a brand theater, which further provided a guarantee for excellent works to shorten the production and broadcast time difference and meet the audience in time.
Look for change in real life
The most sensitive to the time difference in the production and broadcast of TV dramas is urban dramas. Because the content should reflect the real life picture of the public in contemporary society, emphasizing the connection and empathy with the audience, the creation of such dramas often pursues "short", "flat" and "fast" in production, advocates a sense of fashion, leads the trend and is wrapped up in the trend, responds keenly to current social hot events and topics, adapts industry hot spots and social news that have occurred into the plot, and often lacks depth and is superficial because of the lack of depth of discussion. This has led to some workplace elite dramas and urban emotional dramas, handsome men and beautiful women dressed brightly, work and love with both hands, both hands are very amateur, and even some dramas in order to cater to female audiences, echoing the current increasing female awareness, very superficially take "sister and brother love" and "little dog" as the point of view, and do not involve the transformation of public psychology and emotional value reflected behind the phenomenon.
In fact, structural changes in society are not achieved overnight, but require a longer period of time, longer than the normal creative cycle of a film and television drama. If we want to grasp those rapidly changing social phenomena in the creation, it is necessary to grasp the deeper logic of change and the psychology of the general public, deeply understand and grasp a series of "changes" of reality, and let the creation of TV series resonate with the real life of the same era, which is the breakthrough road to truly defeat the time difference.
The key to the success of the hit drama "Go to a Windy Place" at the beginning of the year is not only the beautiful enjoyment brought by beautiful scenery and beautiful events, but the appearance of this drama is like a fresh breeze, a spiritual healing, which is an accurate echo of the current social phenomenon of "anti-involution" of urban youth who are feeling pressure and anxiety. The urban romance drama "Love Only", which also shows "sister-brother love", shows this sibling love as reasonable through real and credible life and work scenes, solid and delicate character growth and shaping and meticulous plot development, and comprehensively shows the state of work and life of contemporary young people and their pursuit and attitude towards love and ideals. What's more worth mentioning is that "Grandma's New World", which takes a middle-aged and elderly female character as the protagonist, expresses the desire of elderly women to be themselves, get out of the family, and go to the world alone, changing the image of elderly women in domestic dramas as "evil mothers-in-law" and "good grandmothers" labeled supporting roles, and will also make the audience reflect on whether they subconsciously have stereotypes of elderly women around them. Although the series is not perfect, cutting in from the perspective of older women to express women's late awakening is also an awakening, which is a major breakthrough in women's themes, and brings the dual freshness of elderly themes and women's themes.
It can be seen that creators must not only find a series of changes in reality, find the deep-seated reasons for these changes, explore the psychological changes of the public and society, but also have the eye to discover, find the shortcomings, gaps or gaps in the current TV series' performance of the "change" of reality, open up another way, boldly innovate, and create masterpieces with novel themes, unique perspectives, and advanced awareness, which will inevitably meet or even exceed the psychological expectations of the current audience group, and bring the audience a refreshing surprise that keeps pace with the times.
After the blockbuster, the ratings may enter a period of downturn, which may have its rationality, but it is definitely not an inevitable law that needs to be abided by or necessary to maintain the benign and healthy development of the industry. As the film and television industry gradually matures, the structure is continuously optimized, and the stock continues to be adjusted, after the broadcast of many excellent dramas this year, although not every one can "soar", but the audience always has dramas to follow. It is expected that in the future, there will be more fresh and hot "zero day" dramas for audiences to choose from in more types and segments, so that good dramas will continue to be filed.
(The author is a Ph.D. in Film Studies and an associate researcher at the Shanghai Art Research Center)