"Family with Children" poster.

Reporter Li Xiazhi

Approaching June Day, many special programs "customized" for children began to appear on TV screens. While children's films, children's cartoons, children's dramas and other forms of literary and artistic creation shine in the market, children's exclusive TV dramas seem to disappear. The last children's TV series "Family with Children" that is familiar to the whole people has been broadcast 18 years ago, and in the past 20 years, the children's TV drama market is shrinking day by day, and it is urgent to explore a new way out.

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There is a lack of quality products, and the habits of watching dramas have changed

On social networks, such posts will appear from time to time to review children's dramas in the childhood memories of the "post-80s" and "post-90s". In this list, works such as "Bala La Little Devil Fairy", "Family with Children", "Happy Planet", "Home with Aliens", "Naughty Pack Horse Little Jump" and other works have always had extremely high voices, and the closest "Naughty Pack Horse Little Jump" is also a work in 2008.

In the children's drama market for nearly two decades, works that can be watched by all and accompany the growth of a generation of children have almost never appeared again. According to Wei Yinbin, head of the children's IP operation center of Tencent's online video platform operation department, domestic children's film and television dramas, especially live-action dramas, have actually been "broken" for many years, "mainly because the works produced in these years have some problems in terms of content selection and production quality, and it has been difficult to really attract the attention of audiences, especially young audiences." ”

Tan Fei, a well-known drama critic, also believes that with the development of the Internet in recent years, children's viewing habits are no longer fixed to the afternoon after school every day, "there is no fixed viewing time, and at the same time, it is affected by richer online content, and the habit of watching children's dramas through TV has been changed." "While a new generation of Chinese children has access to a wider range of audiovisual content, TV dramas traditionally created for children may need to be iteratively updated in content.

"Mi Xiao Circle School Notes" poster.

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Adapt children's literature IP to increase interaction

Taking material from existing IP that children are passionate about is clearly a clever idea. The children's drama "Mi Xiaoquan School Notes" adapted from the popular children's literature IP of the same name can be regarded as one of the few live-action series with a complete plot in recent years. The drama landed on CCTV and Tencent Video at the same time, and exceeded 200 million barrages in a few days of its launch, and was praised by the audience as "becoming the memory of the 'post-10s' era".

In the view of Zhao Cong, director of "Mi Xiao Circle School Notes", in the face of changes in viewing habits and business model considerations, the team has made appropriate adjustments to the storyline and character image of the original IP to meet the values and aesthetic needs of contemporary audiences. "The original book has a separate chapter of the unit story, the overall temperament of hilarious and joyful, and the group portraits of characters with clear personalities - these are the core elements of sitcoms." The live-action Mi Xiaohuan story chose the sitcom method, recreating the character of Mi Xiaohuan with a standard sitcom length of 22 minutes. "In our opinion, the reason why this IP is liked by children is mainly because its storyline and characters are very interesting and cute, and it also contains some principles and values that children need to pay attention to when they grow up."

With the change of TV equipment and the spread of the Internet, the audience is no longer limited to the TV screen as before, but more using the Internet and mobile devices to obtain film and television content. "The change of equipment will also affect the way of viewing, and it is necessary to pay attention to the compactness and rhythm of the story during the production process, so that the audience can quickly enter the storyline. Therefore, more attention needs to be paid to the storyline and characterization of each season to increase audience stickiness and ratings. Zhao Cong bluntly said that creators need to adapt to new ways of watching to meet the multi-layered needs of audiences, such as making shorter short videos or clips, or interacting more on social media.

Stills from the performance of "Kaku Puppet Theater".

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Linkage with theater to create an industrial chain

When children's film and television content expands to video websites, there are still people who hold on to the position of television. On the eve of "June Day", Kaku Children's Channel launched a new season of the "Kaku Big Plan" series, which will feature two rabbits in Karokab this year to open the new year's zodiac character story.

In 2022, the column team joined hands with China Puppet Art Theater to launch a special program "Cool Tiger Growth Plan", which tells the growth experience of Kaku's original IP zodiac character Cool Tiger in the form of a puppet sitcom. In addition to seasonal programs for children on the Kaku Children's Channel, the series also performed theatrically at the China Puppet Art Theater, which received good market feedback.

In the view of Wang Peishan, the producer of the "Kaku Puppet Theater" column, in the past, only immersed in TV content, may not be as intuitive as offline performances to reach children, and since doing this project, the original TV directors have "seamlessly switched" and become the main creators of offline stage plays.

"We no longer regard film and television content and stage content as two forms of art, they are more like different carriers of IP, no one serves whom, but through different forms of expression to make excellent content seen by the market." Wang Peishan revealed that the main creative team will carry out nearly three months of original story development according to the zodiac of the year at the beginning of each year, and begin to prepare and record seasonal programs in the middle of the year, and then synchronize the script development and performance preparation of offline theaters. This way of working has blurred the limitations of different content types and is more suitable for the market needs of children's film and television IP development today.

In Tan Fei's view, the current market for children's film and television content is inseparable from the development of the entire industry chain, literature, stories, characters are intertwined, can be made into cartoons, puppet dramas, can also be turned into TV programs and movies, "Now is no longer the concept of a separate production of dramas, the production and broadcast of the drama itself determines that the drama will not be the most important part, the drama is regarded as one of the links of the IP industry chain, it may be easier to understand the needs of today's market." ”