Text | Digital Entertainment DreamWorks, author | Xu Bing
Entering the last two months of 2021, Internet gourmets have had a particularly good time.
First of all, on December 6, "Life String 3" released the event poster, the official announcement of the six-city wall furnace mobile screening, followed by the "Flavor of the World 3" announced that it was set for December 19, and the release of the two news successively made countless food lovers cheer.
Whether it's reuniting at a hot barbecue table after two years with a reckless "Life String 3" or meeting on the weekend with "Flavor of the World 3", which specializes in seafood treasures. The seamless two online food documentaries will contribute an Internet-style food carnival to foodies.
At the end of the year, looking back at the past year, with the heating up momentum brought by the recent two online food big IP for the documentary market, several entertainment jun would like to talk about the development and trend of domestic online documentaries on several major long and short video platforms in 2021.
As a food field where documentaries must compete, Tencent, which has always been proud of major platforms, was surpassed by B station two this year.
According to incomplete statistics, as of December 6 this year, the three platforms of Youku Tencent B Station have launched 44 self-produced domestic documentaries, of which food themes account for one-third of the total number of up to 15, compared with 8 in 2020, the number showed a doubling growth. Among them, Station B surpassed Tencent with the number of 7 films and two food documentaries with a rating of more than 8 points, ranking first in the food category.
Not only that, but from the table above, it can be found that the classification of food documentaries is becoming more and more vertical. Various platforms have already begun to have a trend of "inner volume" in the subdivision of hot pot, pasta, skewers, barbecue, breakfast, dinner, supper and so on.
Although it seems that the content crashes, in fact, the focus of the major platforms is different, and the producers and producers are still relying more on the characteristics and advantages of their own platforms to carry out brand IP promotion and create deeper vertical content. For example, although Tencent and Station B are aiming at the field of supper. "In the Direction of Supper" and "Let's Supper" were launched respectively, but the gameplay and positioning of the two were not the same.
Tencent Video's "Towards the Direction of Supper", and "Breakfast China", "Let's Move!" Seafood", "Boil! "HotPot" is supervised by Chen Xiaoqing, which is Chen Xiaoqing's new food brand "Eclipse of the Day" created for Tencent Video in addition to the "Flavor" series. Tencent Video is also relying on the "tip of the tongue" team to deepen the food label of the platform through these two major food IP.
Station B is based on the users on the platform, combined with the production team with rich production experience, to present a more diversified content matrix. For example, the 7 food documentaries launched by Station B this year include "Life A String of 3", which is known for its humorous and funny narration; "Strange Food", which is strangely classified from multiple perspectives; and "Small Town Night Food 2", which pays more attention to the personalized expression of the platform UP master. These works are more topical and interactive, which can make users on the platform actively discuss and form a heat.
In addition to the food documentaries that have been well developed, they are closely followed by reality TV documentaries with obvious rise.
Compared with traditional documentaries, reality TV documentaries add entertainment variety elements while making documentary observations. After the variety show "Where Did Daddy Go" became popular all over the country, the entertainment variety shows that added documentary elements and the documentaries that added entertainment variety elements became two emerging forces, constantly integrating and growing with each other. The reality TV documentary is the subtle and ambiguous middle line between the documentary and the variety show, which is both entertaining and does not lose the core of the documentary documentary truth.
Since the successful release of such documentaries as "Guarding the Liberation West" and "Little Lord Ankang - Pet Hospital" produced by Station B, it has also become one of the key directions of capital betting.
For example, the number of reality TV documentaries this year has climbed to 11, not only accounting for nearly a quarter of the whole, compared with last year's 5, the number has also doubled, it can be said that reality TV documentaries have grown into a rising star.
In fact, for this trend, Chen Xiaoqing, director of "Tip of the Tongue", said as early as 2018 that the trend of documentary variety shows cannot be stopped. In his view, the biggest change in documentaries over the years is to create "accommodating the audience" in all aspects, fully satisfying the audience's audiovisual feelings, because only in this way will more audiences choose to watch documentaries.
Although many "diehards" have expressed their unfavorable attitude towards such documentaries, countless practitioners have tried to add more innovative elements while keeping the core of documentary documentary truth unchanged. For example, more humorous lines or more novel angles, more intuitive picture presentation, etc., so that the work can attract the attention of young people more.
There is a demand to have output, and video platforms have produced documentaries in the reality TV model, which on the one hand shows that the audience is tired of traditional documentaries with a strong serious and preachy atmosphere; on the other hand, it also shows that today's audiences are more curious about some realist themes that are close to life and close to the present. As a documentary genre with strong growth at present, reality TV documentaries are becoming one of the most high-profile documentary categories in addition to the food category.
Although food and reality TV seem to have nothing to do with each other, the increase in both works reflects the same characteristic: that is, video platforms are trying to dig deeper into the subdivision of mature subjects, and they are increasingly more inclined to look for details around individuals.
Whether it is a three-meal-a-day food classification or a 360-line professional observation, the reason why these documentaries have attracted the attention of the audience is largely because they are close to real life, easy to resonate with the audience, and cause topic discussion. Therefore, it is easier to become the direction of platform investment.
Especially with regard to the public prosecution and law industry, which wears a mask of seriousness and mystery in the traditional perception of the public, serious and lively works will especially produce a wonderful chemical reaction of contrast. It reflects both the nature of entertainment and the significance of education, which is the reason why a large number of workplace documentaries have achieved high scores and become popular, and it is also one of the reasons why many video platforms insist on producing self-produced documentaries: high topicality.
Although most documentaries are difficult to commercialize, for video platforms, high topicality can bring high traffic and discussion to the platform and pull new. And compared to film and television dramas, the cost of documentaries is generally lower.
According to a documentary director who revealed to several entertainment jun, the current domestic documentaries (single season) rarely cost more than 30 million. The cost of independent documentaries can even be compressed to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. If it is a professional reality show, it costs between a few million, and if it is a food documentary, the cost is probably between a few million and ten or twenty million. The most expensive documentaries are those that have produced exquisite costumes and invited stars to shoot the plot.
Compared with film and television dramas with hundreds of millions of production costs, the cost of documentaries is very conscientious. And although the audience range of the documentary is relatively narrow, it has a very distinct advantage, that is, compared with the film and television dramas of the same cost, the audience tolerance will be very high, and it is easier to obtain high scores and create heat.
According to statistics, as of December 6, 2021, there are 25 documentaries with more than 9 points on Douban, while documentaries with more than eight points are as high as 96, and 20 chinese documentaries are chinese, and within the same score range, there are only 11 domestic TV dramas with more than 8 points, and the cost cost is several times higher than that of documentaries.
Low price and high quality, with a lower cost for the platform to create a high-quality label. Perhaps another reason why most platforms currently value and lay out documentaries. Among them, the movement of station B is obviously more active.
For tencent Youku, these traditional entertainment-oriented long video websites, the role of documentaries is more reflected in the content ecology on the platform. The number of audiences that the documentary can attract may not be as large as that of the film and television variety show.
However, as a short and medium-length video platform, station B is not the case, the focus of station B is to seek outstanding advantages, outstanding characteristics, strong categories, can quickly attract new target user groups, and then use the super community attributes of station B to assimilate the circle users attracted.
For now, Station B only maintains an advantage in the field of animation, and the competitiveness of long content is still relatively weak. Therefore, there is a great need for a distinct long content tag to further open up popularity at the mass level. In all content categories, documentaries that meet the tastes of B station users have become the best solution.
In November this year, Station B held the first documentary conference in Shanghai with the theme of "Record is Light", announcing 21 new documentary works that will be launched from the end of this year to 2022. At the press conference, Station B disclosed the achievements of documentaries on the platform: as of September, Station B had launched a total of 3,000 documentaries, produced 106 films, and won 107 domestic and foreign awards.
These figures are undoubtedly a good proof of the excellent compatibility between Station B and the documentary, and also mean that the documentary produced by Bilibili will become the most distinctive and unshakable banner of the knowledge area of Station B in the future.
Under the tide of innovative competition for documentaries, independent individual documentaries have also become a new force with considerable potential.
Although the level of filming is much lower than that of traditional documentaries, individual documentaries can also cater to audiences to a greater extent while maintaining an objective narrative of stories. On the one hand, they have the affinity that the current audience wants to be closer to the life of fireworks; on the other hand, they also have the characteristics of objective and true documentaries, and the cost is lower, and it is easier to control the tone of the content, which are the advantages of independent documentaries.
After online documentaries are becoming more and more inclined to variety entertainment, the serious shell of documentaries has gradually been stripped away, which may be a value damage for documentaries for some documentary fans. However, some practitioners in the industry are happy to see this trend, and for them, they are more concerned about the content of the documentary itself, as long as the objective and true characteristics of the documentary are maintained, whether it is a reality show or an interactive one, the form is actually meaningless.
In order to attract audiences to broaden the audience of documentaries, the form of domestic documentaries is showing diversified exploration. Traditional documentary + reality TV mode, traditional documentary + plot experience mode, traditional documentary + interactive mode, anthropomorphic animation and other forms have appeared, and inviting celebrity voiceover narration has gradually become popular.
For example, "The First Meal" invited female stars such as Mei Ting; "But, There Are Books" invited Hu Ge; and Pan Yueming voiced "Serengeti Season 2"; "Courtship Game" invited Meng Fei. All show that the platform hopes to cater to the audience's ideas to a greater extent without losing the objective characteristics of the documentary. But at the same time, these documentaries have inevitably increased costs and controversies due to the addition of stars, as well as having to extend the production time of the works.
Therefore, after the declining cost of equipment, the audience's technical requirements for shooting have gradually relaxed, and the UGC platform has become a general trend, the advantages of more flexible content for individual independent documentaries have begun to appear. In recent years, some traditional documentaries have rarely covered industries, or personal vlog-style documentaries, such as "Detective Adventure" and "The Great Manufacturing", which focuses on the factory assembly line, have continued to emerge.
This can't help but make people want to explore, in today's UGC platform is developing rapidly, personal consciousness is getting stronger and stronger, will the form of individual-based documentary filming set off a wave in the future? In particular, can vlogs with the characteristics of first-person micro-documentaries become the mainstream of independent documentaries in the future?
Taking "Small Town Night Food" as an example, this documentary is a work led by the owner of Station B, and even to a certain extent, it can be used as a linkage between the documentary area of Station B and the food area and even the living area. After all, as a UGC platform, the up master on the B station can help supplement the details of long content through two creative contributions, and high-quality short videos can also become the inspiration for long video content. Many viewers can find that many UP masters appear in many documentaries on Station B, such as "Pet Hospital", and even launched UP main documentaries, such as "Can You Go to Your House to Eat", "Live Up to Love" and so on.
If such a style forms a trend, it may become a new opportunity not only for station B, but also for the short video platform's Douyin Kuaishou. Also through the real and objective lens, it shows that life and life are the meaning of the documentary. If everyone can shoot a documentary, the Douyin Kuaishou platform is even closer to the general public.
However, for now, although the documentary industry has developed a micro-short documentary form, the emerging short video platform Douyin Kuaishou has not yet been laid out for documentaries.
As far as Douyin is concerned, the only part of the documentary is either the promotion of "Lost Immortals" and "Veterans" around the UP masters on the platform; or the star Internet celebrity micro-life documentary "Every Me"; and the commercial brand-sponsored documentary "I Want to Be Better". And these are all forms of fancy documentary, not the value of documentary itself.
In contrast, Kuaishou's short documentaries are richer than those of Douyin, except for "New Left-behind Youth", which tells the story of the platform, the musician documentary "Real Money and Silver", and the 10th anniversary documentary "The Light of the Stars". The self-made humanistic documentary "Domestic Art Lingling" launched in 2020 also scored 7.5 points on Douban.
It is worth mentioning that kuaishou and Xinhua News Agency's cooperation with the national documentary "Bi V China" and other works have shown the trend of platforms encouraging users to shoot personal documentaries. In July this year, Kuaishou also jointly launched the documentary "World Heritage of China's Micro Business Card" (season 1) with the Documentary Channel of the Film and Television Drama Documentary Center. Although the overall works are still mainly light and fast, it is clear that Kuaishou's attitude towards the documentary industry is more positive.
However, although Kuaishou's attitude towards the documentary field is more positive than that of Douyin, neither of them has the idea of doing documentaries at the level of corporate strategy, and for both, the value of short documentaries is more reflected in the attempt to commercialize variety shows. Therefore, Douyin Kuaishou is currently more inclined to shoot live-action documentaries for the big ups on its own platform, followed by following social hotspots to do some explanatory documentaries.
Therefore, although individual independent documentaries may become an emerging force in the future, the current development is still difficult to predict. However, in the current situation of continuous innovation of domestic online documentaries and continuous closeness to fireworks life, in time, individual independent national documentaries may not be able to collide on the UGC platform to give birth to new possibilities.