The value of the "Misty Theater" label is not only about the gains and losses of one city and one place.
"Octagonal Pavilion Mystery Fog" (hereinafter referred to as "Octagonal Pavilion") has come to an end.
From the perspective of data performance, the drama started with a rating of 6.3 for 5,000+ people and 5.7 for 40,000+ people at the end, far lower than the average score of the five dramas of iQiyi's "Mist Theater" in 2020.
Judging from the audience feedback, the Douban high praise short comment is mostly questioning, "the plot is outrageous, the waste of the team, the casting error, so the mystery ..." But at the same time, some viewers fully recognized that the suspense of "Octagonal Pavilion" presented a different answer sheet.
As the second year's pioneering work of iQIYI's high-quality label "Mist Theater", this drama is directed by the big director Wang Xiaoshuai himself, and is blessed by Duan Yihong, Hao Lei, Zu Feng, Wu Yue and other top quality actors. The common "water and soil dissatisfaction" of literary and art film directors shooting online dramas seems to be reflected in director Wang Xiaoshuai.
Data as of 2021.10.27
Since the two high-quality works of "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth" (hereinafter referred to as "Hidden" and "Shen Zhen") were born last year, iQIYI's "Mist Theater" has become a landmark brand that is commonly concerned inside and outside the industry, driving the market value of suspense genre dramas in the whole industry.
Zhu Yu also successfully raised the audience's expectations for the follow-up works of "Mist Theater" in the front.
According to Yunhe statistics, the effective playback volume of "Octagonal Pavilion" on the first day of broadcasting is nearly three times that of "Hidden". The highest popularity in history is also second only to "Secret", reaching nearly one million, temporarily ranking second in the "Mist Theater".
However, the high heat is not all "like a tiger", to a certain extent, it can be considered that the high pressure brought by high expectations to "Octagonal Pavilion" does affect its rating reputation, and also makes the series and the label jointly into doubt.
Is "Octagonal Pavilion" really not satisfactory? Does iQIYI's "Mist Theater" match its audience expectations?
Is the success of the two explosive dramas "Hidden" and "Shen Zhen" just an accidental phenomenon?
"Octagonal Pavilion" is set in the water town of Jiangnan, a murder mystery from nineteen years ago has not been solved, and the death of Xuanzhen (Mira), a young girl in the flower season in the past, hangs in the hearts of three generations of the Xuan family.
Nineteen years later, the murder recurred, a Kunqu opera, two murders, three families, a society of acquaintances with complex and entangled relationships, and an unknown murderer hidden under the steam of water, which led to a series of stories.
The opening panorama shows the water town of Jiangnan
Since the release of the trailer for the four dramas of 2021 by "Mist Theater", "Octagonal Pavilion" has attracted the attention of the largest audience with the most powerful lineup. "Not all TV dramas can gather Duan Yihong, Hao Lei, Zu Feng, Wu Yue, Xing Minshan, these Mesozoic drama bones", as well as Bai Yufan, Zhai Zilu and other well-known actors of the new generation to join, qi Qi to satisfy the audience's appetite.
But high expectations mean high standards, just the first two episodes, the relatively slow narrative rhythm, the main way of hand-held shaking camera presentation, have given the audience a surprise viewing experience, "the film is not as expected." ”
As a suspense genre drama, "Octagonal Pavilion" does have certain problems.
Unlike the blockbuster in which Zhang Dongsheng personally pushed his parents-in-law off a cliff at the beginning of "The Secret", "Octagonal Pavilion" chose a narrative method that slowly spreads out the group portraits of the characters and the grass gray snake line. In the first episode, Xuan Nianmei (played by Mira) was chased by the little to the seemingly idle pen of the Kun Opera Troupe, and it was not until the sixth episode that the fog of foreshadowing was gradually lifted.
This drama is like a large-scale script killing, and the missing timeline needs to be carefully sorted out by the relationship between the characters, and in the end, the complete story truth can be slowly spelled out.
This is naturally not the pursuit of a conventional suspense drama with a surprising opening, a tight rhythm and a strict logic, and it is no wonder that many viewers have a sense of "can't catch up". But there are also gains and losses, and after the plot is gradually rolled out, it has gained another group of audiences who empathize with the characters.
Throughout the play, "Octagonal Pavilion" is slightly weaker at the level of suspense and reasoning, focusing more on the portrayal of the contradictions of each original family. Xuan Liang (Zu Feng) feels guilty that he did not receive his sister Xuan Zhen on time nineteen years ago, indirectly causing her to be killed, and transferring the pressure to his wife and daughter, resulting in the haze of another family. Ding Julie (Xing Minshan) suffers from continuous domestic violence and is forced to run away due to "transvestites", and perennial repression leads to schizophrenia, once again destroying the family formed with Zhou Yamei (Wu Yue). Xuan Zhu (Hao Lei) and Xuan Zhen are twin sisters, but they are always suppressed and loved by them, and are forced to leave their hometown...
Many viewers said that they saw the shadow of their childhood in these plot settings. Screenwriter Yang Yishu admitted that the story of Xuanzhu Xuanzhen's twin sisters is actually born out of the real experience of getting along with his brother in his childhood.
"After watching it, what I remember is no longer the names of the actors, but the roles of Xuanzhu, Ding Julie, zhou Yamei, and their tragic fate in life."
Director Wang Xiaoshuai responded in the main creator's live sharing that this drama is not Sherlock Holmes's detective-style "Benguet reasoning", "The case is only a layer of background, and a series of impacts on the victims and murderers' respective families are what we really want to express." "Octagonal Pavilion" wants to do a step further than the original suspense short drama, and also brings more possibilities to Chinese audiences. ”
From the perspective of the suspense track, "Octagonal Pavilion" is more like an attempt to subdivide the vertical content of "suspense - native family". As a result of such a test of water, is it a success in the layout of iQiyi's "Mist Theater" label?
As early as 2017, iQiyi began the initial layout of the suspense track.
At the beginning of September of that year, iQIYI launched a 12-episode crime suspense drama "Undocumented Crime" adapted from Zijin Chen's novel of the same name, with outstanding style and compact plot.
The drama is rooted in the extremely cold temperament of harbin's cold winter nights, and the complex portrayal of crime and human nature, especially the subversive and extremely evil image of killer Li Toyota, has left a deep impression on the audience. This drama finally received 240,000+ people with a high score of 8.1, with a cumulative playback of 518 million, laying the foundation for the first domestic social suspense network drama in a number of Benge school mystery suspense dramas.
"Undocumented Crime" Lee Toyota stills
In Q1 2018, iQIYI announced the launch of the Internet theater model, deeply cultivating vertical themes, and creating "Love Youth Theater" and "Strange Suspense Theater".
Among them, "Strange Suspense Theater" has launched two online dramas since October, produced by Lin Ke, directed by Liu Shuqiao, and starring Li Guangjie and Yuan Wenkang, the Southeast Asian police action suspense drama "Humble City", and the urban suspense detective drama "Original Sin" produced by Gong Yu, produced by Han Sanping, directed by Ye Weimin, and starring Yin Zheng and Bai Bing.
Compared with subsequent works, these two dramas are lacking in popularity and word-of-mouth, but their experimentality is enough to prove the strategic value of the idea of "theatricalization" of high-quality vertical genre dramas, and "Mist Theater" is born out of this.
In Q2 2020, a new and upgraded version of the "Mist Theater" came into being.
As early as the beginning of 2017, iQIYI CEO Gong Yu said, "The super online drama model of benchmarking American dramas will become the mainstream in the future." "The so-called super network drama model, that is, shortening the number of episodes, increasing the length of a single episode, increasing the production cost of a single episode, truly returning to the essence of content, and adopting the broadcast form of "season broadcast + weekly broadcast".
Dai Ying, senior vice president of iQIYI and chief producer of the Mist Theater series, also pointed out, "We have added the creative context of short dramas to the industry, developed a blank area between long dramas and movies, and since then more works can be developed in this space that is more in line with the laws of creation." For the audience, they have more choices, and we have released the demand mining in the depths of this market. ”
The first five 12-episode suspense short drama simulcasts of the first year of "Mist Theater" exert the scale effect in theatrical operation mode, gather the popularity of high-quality single dramas, enhance the popularity of the entire theater, and enhance the user's cognition and stickiness of the label and even the platform.
Therefore, when the "Mist Theater" enters the second year when the audience is pulled up by the hardcore straight-line suspense theme, the platform must continue to deepen on this basis and once again dig deeper into the possibility of different sub-categories of suspense dramas.
The horizontal analysis of the four dramas launched this year has obviously reflected iQiyi's vertical subdivision idea of shaping the Mist Label 2.0.
"Octagonal Pavilion Mystery Fog" exposes the hidden original family problem in Chinese society, "Who is the murderer" focuses on the suspenseful reasoning of serial murders, "Fatal Wish" contains light science fiction adventures, and "Gold Rush" will look back at the southwest dense forest of the 1980s to unveil the mystery of gold diggers.
In this label's strategic team, although the "Octagonal Pavilion" that took the lead has a poor reputation, it has successfully pulled the audience's attention from the suspense category to the subdivision of "suspense - the original family dilemma", which has achieved the purpose of scheduling to some extent.
Dai Ying admitted that the selection of "Octagonal Pavilion" as one of the customized works of "Mist Theater 2.0" is precisely to see the family genes carried by this drama, attract the audience, and empathize with it.
On October 15, 2021, at the iJOY Rewards Conference, Wang Xiangjun, President and Chief Marketing Officer of iQIYI New Consumer Business Group NCG, shared a speech with the theme of "New Kingdom of Youth and Happiness", revealing the next stage of the big factory trends.
Wang Xiangjun believes that "market hotspots change frequently, and new consumer brands relying on traffic marketing are facing a growth ceiling because they cannot build a long-term brand mentality." The trend of differentiation of Internet video platforms is becoming more and more obvious, the pursuit of traffic explosive products in the first half, and the pursuit of long-term label establishment in the second half", and iQiyi has reached the crossroads of the second half.
From this point of view, iQIYI is not satisfied with only launching the only high-brightness label of "Mist Theater", but uses it as a pathfinder to make full preparations for shaping more high-quality labels such as dramas, variety shows and even online movies.
The "testing of the waters" of "Octagonal Pavilion" naturally has its exploration value. As for the reputation price paid behind the test, it will naturally bring corresponding trade-offs to the label's helmsman.
From the pilot of "Undocumented Crime", to the connection and aggregation of "Mist Theater", to the large-scale coverage of the brand network of all categories, iQIYI's content ambitions are not huge.
According to the 2021 mid-year financial report, the user growth of several major video platforms has stagnated to varying degrees, and the battle between large manufacturers seems to be in addition to "competing for user increments" and synchronously "competing for user stock".
Can iQIYI's content strategy win this victory?
Although the performance of "Octagonal Pavilion Mystery Fog" is not satisfactory, the accumulated reputation of "Mist Theater" is far from being overdrawn, and the audience is still looking forward to the next work to bring surprises. The "Mist 2.0" appearance is still unknown.
As of press time, iQiyi, Youku, and Mango TV have all released their 2022 annual film lists, and Tencent's film lists are also on the way, and the highlighted projects of major platforms are various. In 2021, the winter night that has not yet passed, the curtain of the next year's war is officially opened.
"Genre theater" has become the standard operation mode of vertical tracks for various platform layouts, and the next "mist theater" will appear in whose house?