Text/Sun Pengyue
Edit/Gale
Now not only is reading fragmented, but even the chase drama is beginning to fragment.
In this context, long video websites have lost money year after year, and iQiyi, as one of the three portals of long video, has recently stood on the cusp of large-scale layoffs. On the other hand, the short videos represented by Douyin and Kuaishou have set off the "three minutes" to watch a movie early. For example, the official Douyin number of the poisonous tongue movie has circled nearly 61 million fans.
With the blessing of huge traffic, Douyin and Kuaishou also played the "platform self-made short drama", increased their strength to support the creators of original short dramas, and directly burned the flames of war to the doorstep of "Aiyouteng".
In the early days, Douyin's self-made short dramas "Crooked Mouth Dragon King" and "God of War Homecoming" were basically shoddily made and relied on the "content stitching monster" that was summarized by earthy passages. With the gradual improvement of the aesthetics of the user group, the "thunder drama" has also begun to improve. It is understood that the Douyin platform is also vigorously supporting "vertical screen short dramas", not only giving creators a lot of platform exposure, but also creating a profit model for short drama fees to ensure that the creative team has enough funds to support the production of short dramas.
Under the short drama with more than 100 million hits, the fire of short video platforms on long video websites has become more and more fierce.
The most popular "Confession of the Evil Girl" of the Douyin short drama has reached 770 million hits, breaking a number of records for the Douyin short drama, which also makes many traditional dramas and online dramas look sideways.
First of all, "Confession of the Evil Girl" is a campus idol drama, with an unclear cut and chaos of love triangle, aimed at female users aged 16-28, and according to the user portrait released by Douyin, this type of user accounted for a very high proportion.
Secondly, the costumes and props are exquisitely shaped, the background is clean and clear, and there is no shoddy fabrication of the past thunder dramas. Finally, the plot is solid, the story conflict is strong, the pace is fast, and the audience's taste buds are stimulated in a few minutes, which is very suitable for fragmented viewing.
The novel "vertical screen short drama" perspective is convenient for holding a double speed to chase the drama; the royal plot of one woman and two men has changed the conventional routine of the traditional sweet pet drama. "Confession of the Evil Girl" earned enough eyeballs, not only did the play itself get nearly 800 million views, but the heroine Jiang Seventeen also ate enough dividends, quickly accumulating 24 million fans, becoming the head of Douyin.
In addition to sweet pet dramas, Douyin short dramas contain various types of drama films, among which "The Legend of Liu Longting" is a particularly popular costume idol drama, and vertical screen fantasy drama has also become a new perspective of fantasy.
"The Legend of Liu Longting" is an adaptation of the online text, telling the mysterious love story of the ordinary mortal heroine and the thousand-year-old snake fairy Liu Longting. The production of the costume fantasy background is more complicated than that of "Confession of the Evil Girl", which requires a complex world view and gorgeous fight special effects in just a few minutes.
In addition to the critically acclaimed special effects, the fight scenes in "The Legend of Liu Longting" are clean and neat, and the editing is not dragging at all. Since its broadcast, it has received 470 million views, becoming a representative of fantasy dramas that cannot be ignored.
In Douyin, there are more and more short dramas with more than 100 million plays, such as "Yi Nanping", "Yueshi Growth", "I Have Touched a Dead Opponent", "Wife's Counterattack", "Report Princess" and other short dramas. Up to now, the cumulative playback of topics related to Douyin short dramas has exceeded 30 billion, and this data is still growing rapidly.
The evolution of short video content is not only the need of users, but also the next step of creators. The vibrato behind it also needs to break through the bottleneck of user growth with the help of high-quality content, and even rely on short dramas to counterattack the long video platform with film and television dramas as the core.
In addition to the Douyin platform, Kuaishou is also actively exploring new plot short videos. However, contrary to the "exquisite beauty" of Douyin, Kuaishou mainly attacks the sinking market of fourth- and fifth-tier cities, and most of the users are 40-70-year-old users.
"Don't pay back the money you owe", "Tear the little three by hand", "Children are not filial piety", "Rob the inheritance", "Unrequited love"... A series of eye-catching and intricate emotional dramas were staged in the form of live broadcasts in the Kuaishou late-night slot.
In the eyes of college students and white-collar workers who have been brainwashed by various idol drama workplace drama costume dramas, kuaishou's "emotional drama" is undoubtedly a fake and embarrassing to cut his feet. This is in line with Kuaishou's user group, in the live broadcast room of "emotional drama", it is often 1 million + likes, and 100,000 + online viewers.
Unlike Douyin, Kuaishou is purely for the service of bringing goods: the husband cheats, in order to punish the scumbag and xiaosan, the wife directly sells all of her husband's jewelry stores online, not 998, as long as 98, gold jewelry is brought home; the rich young master found that he was cheated of money by his friends, and would rather "send" fifty million goods for free in the live broadcast room, nor can he be cheap liars...
Whenever the climax stage is reached, the actors who enter the play quickly adjust their state, become professional anchors, and shout slogans and begin to bring goods. From bracelet jewelry to slippers and cotton socks, the category is extremely rich.
Although the stories of these emotional live broadcasts seem a bit outrageous, the uncles and aunts who watch online are deeply involved in the drama, infected by the plot of "ups and downs", and have generously donated. Not only buying things, but also asking about the follow-up of the tragic protagonist in various fan groups, expressing concern and support for the anchor.
According to Burning Finance, the scripts of these emotional dramas are all produced by the studio, and the script type must be "grounded" and "strongly conflicted". The background is unified for the rural and urban-rural combination departments, and most of the core plots are infidelity, family education, property disputes, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships, cousins and love. The more bizarre the dog blood, the more it can resonate with the audience.
A script is only priced at about 25-50 yuan, and it can be reused, and at most the name of the character can be changed.
Kuaishou's emotional drama is too hot, and it has also spawned a new profession: Mai Hand, that is, emotional actor. These wheat hands and anchors actively interact, not only participate in live broadcasts, but also shoot short videos offline, which is comparable to the dragon set army of Hengdian.
As a "baby" in the long river of the Internet, a large number of middle-aged and elderly people are fascinated by the dog blood drama, in order to wait for a certain climactic plot, even tea does not think about food, day and night to guard the list of Kuaishou anchor works.
As early as 2018, iQiyi produced the vertical screen short drama "Life Has Dealt with Me" in an attempt to occupy the short video market.
As the first vertical screen micro-network drama on the whole network, the crew invited many comedy celebrities, such as Bao Bell, Ma Li, Shen Ling, etc. Unfortunately, at that time, user education was not enough, "Life On Me" was still limited by the network drama, the amount of playback was mediocre, only with the fire of the Internet celebrity Spicy Yoko, and did not splash too much water.
The entire video platform market has been divided and clean, and the user group and usage time are very clear. The evening prime time file chases dramas higher than users who brush short videos; whether it is a short drama of vibrato or an emotional drama of Kuaishou, the main purpose is to increase the stickiness of users during the prime time, increase the stay time, and rob users.
Although the number of downloads of Douyin is at the forefront of the market, it is already facing the status quo that user growth has almost peaked. According to the "2020 China Online Audiovisual Development Research Report", nearly 90% of China's netizens are using short videos in 2020, and the scale of short video users has reached 818 million.
At present, the extremely high penetration rate has plunged the relevant short video platforms into a state of insufficient existing users, and the early dividend period is nearing the end.
The popularity of the new track has attracted a large number of practitioners, and online literature companies, MCN institutions, and professional film and television personnel have joined the production of short dramas, so that "vertical screen short dramas" have gradually become the mainstream. This has a lot of tests for the producer, not only to make well-made, to meet the needs of users, but also to face the temptation of bringing goods. After all, the hard work to continue to produce works is definitely not as fast as bringing goods to money during the dividend period.
In any case, the emergence of short dramas means that Douyin Kuaishou has found a weapon to counterattack the long video platform in the face of the layers of blockade of medium and long videos.