Zhang students out of the circle of revelation.
Text | Sunny
A few days ago, the Douyin internet celebrity "Classmate Zhang" was reminded by the "China Fire Department" by name because of the behavior with safety hazards in shooting short videos, rushed to the hot search, and then was named by the "China Police Network" because of road traffic safety issues, setting off a wave of attention again. During this time, Mr. Zhang was successively concerned by CCTV and People's Daily, and the official media took this opportunity to comment on positive guidance.
This middle-aged man living in the countryside of Yingkou, Liaoning Province, went from the short video platform to become an "internet celebrity" on the whole network, once again bringing people's focus to the creation of video content with rural themes. Social short videos have been developing for several years now, and the popular creative language has turned round after round, but the rural narrative of short videos seems to have magic, gradually developing and growing between the ebb and flow.
There are thousands of rural Internet celebrities
Why Zhang?
Before landing on the hot search, Zhang has already gained high attention on the short video platform. By recording trivial but pyrotechnic daily life with videos, he released dozens of videos in just two months, accumulating tens of millions of fans and quickly becoming popular.
After being on the hot search and becoming popular on multiple platforms, Zhang also took advantage of this momentum to open a Weibo account to interact with "China Fire", replaced the socket with security risks that appeared in the previous video with 3C certified security products, and #Zhang changed the socket #Topic also quickly appeared on the popular list on the Douyin platform, which not only publicized fire safety knowledge, but also brought a new wave of heat to Zhang.
In recent days, the fans of Zhang's account are still rising rapidly, as of December 13, there have been 1600w+ fans, and related topics around Zhang have also become hot topics in public opinion, and he has become a well-deserved "phenomenon-level Internet celebrity".
Around the topic of "Why is Zhang on fire", many people think that the life he shows in the video is very real, from daily work, relatives and friends, to getting up and lifting the quilt, tearing up the calendar with saliva and other trivial things, are the material under the lens.
In his videos, the props and scenes that appear in the picture are simple and ordinary, and even many of them carry the sense of age and gray atmosphere of rural life. And the other people who appear in the video are like the neighbors and old friends that everyone will meet in the village of their hometown, and they have a trivial intersection with each other, real and kind.
While taking root in rural themes, Zhang made his own characteristics, the audiovisual language has the ultimate professionalism and intentions different from other rural short videos, a short video appears in hundreds of shots, full angle, multi-scene, immersive shooting techniques, with brisk editing ideas and background sounds with a sense of substitution, the ordinary rural life is displayed in a rough and real way, which has won the love of a large number of netizens.
Traffic monetization
The rural narrative is timely
The creation of short videos with rural themes is not a new thing, and even out of the head Internet celebrities like Li Ziqi and Huanong Brothers.
As of now. The two topics often carried by Zhang in the video posted on Douyin, the hashtag #My Rural Life, have been played 54.5 billion times, and the #New Farmers Project 2021# has received up to 76.9 billion views. Other short video topics with keywords such as rural and rural on the platform also have many tens of billions of plays, which is enough to prove the large capacity of this vertical category.
Under the long-term social discourse system, the peasant group is in a state of aphasia for a long time, and the convenience of short video creation and the continuous improvement of the communication effect have undoubtedly opened up a new space for this group. Video content has brought disruptive changes to the countryside and made rural life more possible.
As technology empowers more and more social groups, more and more people have the opportunity to participate in video creation, and those who have real personal contact with rural life have begun to have the ability to record life and tell stories with video.
From the narrative object to the subject, through their own perspective to record and display life, they are no longer a vague group of "represented", but a dynamic subject who truly has a camera and communication channels.
In recent years, especially since the outbreak of the epidemic, video and live broadcast forms have been widely used to sell agricultural products, which has played a powerful role in broadening product sales channels and achieving efficient docking between buyers and sellers. The video industry has empowered the county economy and has formed a relatively complete industrial chain.
After gaining traffic through the popularity of video content, bloggers often use the network attention to develop the sales chain of rural products, and develop a simple life display into a mature industry. Video content and related live broadcast content have played a positive role in promoting the development of rural economy in recent years, and it can be said that in many rural areas, doing video content has become a new hot business, attracting many grassroots creators.
At the same time, social short video platforms also benefit from the huge flow of themes, and attach great importance to the development of agricultural and rural theme video creation.
In 2019, Volcano Small Video established the first rural short video workstation in China, sent special personnel to guide the short video creation of local farmers, and regularly invited talent anchors to share their experiences.
On August 4, 2020, Douyin launched the "New Farmers Plan", and from April 1 to November 30, 2021, the "New Farmers Growth Month" activity was launched, focusing on cultivating original videos of rural life, agricultural breeding, catching the sea, etc., and issuing rewards in the form of dou+.
Aesthetic sinking
Emotional value is leverage
Once upon a time, exquisite afternoon tea and the life of buying a chartered car were sought after. When similar content is more and more routine, the reality of "packaging" has become a new traffic password, coupled with the continuous sinking of the short video market and the development of the Internet, the audience's aesthetic has also begun to develop in the direction of "sinking".
Hoeing the ground to grow vegetables, cooking on a fire, the unadorned sense of casualness and the most ordinary pleasures in life are transmitted through short videos, and all aspects have an inexplicable attraction to the "city people" living in high-rise buildings. These trivial daily routines allow the audience to get a cordial and interesting experience through a screen, and they who cannot live the local life in person can get psychological comfort through videos.
From the perspective of the age of the fans of Zhang's account, the majority of them are 24-40 years old middle-aged and young people, the growth process of this generation is not far from agriculture and rural areas, the memory of rural life is rooted in the deep minds of many people in contemporary times, the enamel basin, video recorder, old color TV, and even the sea newspaper posted on the wall in The video of Zhang Classmate always has some memories that can awaken a generation.
Douyin account "Classmate Zhang" fan characteristics (data source: Feigua)
For some young people who grew up in the city, rural life is a new world that has never been exposed to before. Short videos build a perception of rural life for them through a fast-food, lightweight way. And The leisurely life that Zhang enjoys himself in the video may also make many users imagine the idle lifestyle.
China's social development is accompanied by the rapid progress of urbanization, disintegrating the public's rural pastoral complex, and rural short videos build a "landscape" for onlookers by transmitting rural pictures. Therefore, whether the audience is nostalgic or new, videos with rural themes can always bring them certain emotional value, comforting the busyness and fatigue brought about by the rapidly developing modern society.
Copy the blockbuster
But beware of kitsch traps
There are thousands of video creators, and creators are always racking their brains to find a newer and more effective track, looking for one new blue ocean after another. Therefore, once a certain type of content becomes popular, you can see a large number of copies and imitations, #Zhang Students around the school # has become a popular paradigm on the social short video platform, and the shooting methods he uses have also attracted many netizens and video creators to follow suit, and even the bgm he uses in each video has become a hit.
However, from the perspective of the underlying logic of the popularity of short videos, the rural theme is not a universal password that has become popular, and the key lies in the richness and interest of the content. Station B up the main "Iron Pot Stew Brothers" first became popular with funny copywriting, mainly sharing the content of "learning to cook with Teacher Wang Gang", but over time, the restrictions on the selection of topics have become more and more prominent. Zhang's video creation also has the same problem, even if multiple scenes are frequently switched, it is inevitable that scenes with too many scenes will be difficult to shoot new ideas.
B station up the main "iron pot stew brothers" video
The subject matter is a basket, and what is inside is more important than the basket itself.
China is a big agricultural country, and rural agriculture-related content is always easier to resonate and spread, with the continuous growth of the market scale, short video support for agriculture and agricultural undertakings have broad prospects.
In an interview with the media, Zhang said that if he has the ability, he still wants to do something for his hometown, and he also lamented that there are too few young people in the village, and said that rural short videos still need the creation of young people. After Zhang was on fire, the fans who came to open in his village were endless, and the Zhoujia supermarket that appeared in his video also gained more customers because of the fan punch card.
On the other hand, in addition to economic benefits and traffic wealth, rural life videos should also have a correct and positive social and cultural orientation. Official media such as the People's Daily commented on the emergence of more "Zhang students", hoping that they can use professional technology to record the real China and tap the charm of the countryside.
For a long time, the keywords linked to rural video content were often earthy and spectacular, and many of the negative evaluations of Zhang's content also said that he was "smearing the countryside".
The countryside is a complex topic, and the peasant narrative has not yet formed a logical paradigm of elegant and popular appreciation. Therefore, in addition to making full use of rural theme video content for exposure and drainage, we must also be vigilant against falling into the trap of kitsch and losing the charm of the real content itself.