Deep Sound Original · The author | Zu Yang
"Now the short drama, just like the network university (network movie) from 2015 to 2018, can get millions or even tens of millions of points with hundreds of thousands of investments." Sun Guangyang, CEO of Shanghai Jiying Pictures, the producer of "You Are My Exclusive Favorite", told "Deep Ring".
Low cost, low threshold, high return, small to large, these "tempting" characteristics, so that the short drama seems to become another "touchstone" after the network movie.
MCN institutions, IP platforms, and traditional film and television companies have entered the "new blue ocean" of incremental and more productive content brands. Long video platforms have long been interested in this "big cake", and have launched support plans and updated account sharing policies. With the input of more funds and resources, the development speed of short dramas has been accelerated again.
Yunhe data shows that excluding emerging short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, a total of 398 micro-short dramas will be launched on the whole network in 2021, compared with 296 in 2020, an increase of 34%. The four major platforms of Among Tengyou accounted for 367 films, and the total number of annual TOP10 plays increased by 100 million compared with last year; in terms of content quality, short dramas are still moving towards high-quality and theater, and many short dramas such as "Big Mama's World", "Datang Snack Goods", "Give You My Exclusive Favor" and so on have also achieved word-of-mouth box office win-win results.
Short scripts are not a new thing, and this content form has begun to appear on long video platforms since "Never Expected", but it has not been sustainable. Nowadays, the "second" popularity of long video platforms has also given the industry the opportunity to clarify its basic logic: is it really a cost-effective business to do short dramas? At what stage has this track developed today, and has it been put on the cusp? Everyone digs gold, who can drive and drive first?
The heat climbed, and the crowd dug for gold
In the ranks of short dramas on long video platforms, they can be roughly divided into two major genres: focusing on plot and focusing on traffic.
Focusing on content and plot, film and television companies and IP platforms are the mainstays.
Traditional film and television companies have become a common phenomenon in doing short dramas, such as the recently launched short drama "Don't Mess with White Pigeons" behind the contractor is Wuyuan Culture, whose representative work is the 2017 blockbuster "White Night Pursuit"; youku's short drama "Mermaid Princess 3,000 Years Old" is produced by Fanku's subsidiary Baiku Who Never Tires of Film.
The source of these episodes is covered by online text or comic platforms. In particular, these platforms are not only doing the upstream "IP library", but also involved in the field of short dramas. For example, the short drama "This Killer Doesn't Change Demand" produced by Quick Look Comics ranked first in the Youku costume comedy hot list; the short drama "Deadly Housewives" produced by Winter Comics Company was close to 10 million yuan in a month after it was launched.
Those who are partial to the traffic business are mostly artist agencies or MCN agencies.
These companies, which are closer to artists, produce short dramas that are more likely to assume the role of "praising people". In this kind of short drama, you can see more close-up shots of the protagonist, or a rather pleasing persona arranged in the play, which is the calculation behind this is that when the protagonist has higher exposure, he can monetize the subsequent live broadcast.
Short dramas on the long video platform have become the traffic upstart of the crowd nuggets, and the reasons for this are not difficult to understand. Nowadays, short videos focus the eyes of the main consumer groups on the mobile terminal, and the 1-3 minutes of content through the inexhaustible supply of a single column of information flows will firmly engrave the fast-paced and fragmented consumer psychology into the consumer psychology of this era, and the changes in user consumption psychology and consumption habits have boosted the content consumption form to become shorter and shorter and more fragmented.
In addition, the film and television industry has ups and downs, and the uncertainty of content and the discontinuity of blockbusters are also forcing film and television creators to constantly look for new increments. The short dramas that arose on the short video platform not only conform to the fragmented viewing habits, but also have the advantages of low cost and short production cycle, so it is "logical" to become a path for the transformation of creators.
Before doing short dramas, Sun Guangyang, the founder of Jiying Pictures, was a filmmaker. In 2020, when the short drama industry showed signs of upward development, he turned to the short drama track and produced the first short drama "To You My Exclusive Love", and this drama also allowed him to see the huge possibilities in the short drama industry: lower input costs, shorter production cycles, and higher return on investment.
"Give You My Exclusive Favor" was prepared in August 2020, started in March 2021, the shooting cycle was only 20 days, after more than four months of editing, post-production, approval, it was launched on September 27, 2021, and it won 10.43 million at the box office in three months of broadcasting, while the investment volume of this drama was only between 1 million and 1.5 million.
"Give You My Exclusive Love"
From project establishment, filming, preparation, launch, and approval, traditional film and television dramas take at least two to three years, and short dramas shorten the cycle to one year or even shorter. And the time to collect the money has also been shortened, Sun Guangyang revealed that "Give You My Exclusive Favor" is now in the state of payment collection. In the previous interview with Entertainment Capital, it was also mentioned that "Youai Tengmang and Kuaider are particularly fast in the collection of money in short dramas, and they can recover the money in three months, and there are few bad debts." ”
The platform has also launched a series of "plans" to increase the benefits of short dramas, Tencent Video's "Mars Plan", Youku's "Fu Sha Plan", and Mango TV's "Da Mang Plan", all of which list different content standards and sub-account offers, competing for film and television creators. In a sense, long video platforms offer new opportunities for film and television creators who do short dramas – to enter the game with a lower cost of capital.
Of course, this may also be a new challenge - to completely jump out of the limitations of the creation and production ideas of long dramas, and use a shorter period of time to make high-quality short dramas that are not lower than the standards of long dramas.
Different from the creative logic of long dramas
The creation logic and content production methods of long dramas and short dramas are not the same. For example, the law of "seven minutes of gold, three episodes before life and death" in long episodes is more extreme and obvious in short dramas of 2-10 minutes. For another example, although they all belong to the "sweet pet", the short drama should pay more attention to the "CP sense" and "sugar" rhythm of the male and female protagonists.
In the short drama, the famous scene of the male and female protagonists "sprinkling sugar" is calculated accurately to the second. In the short drama "Mermaid Princess 3,000 Years Old", from the first episode of the reincarnated male and female protagonists to the first famous scene of "kissing", only in the past three episodes, you can also see a lot of comments such as "progress is too fast" and "the speed of watching the drama can't catch up with the speed of your sugar sprinkling".
An average episode is 10 minutes long, with multiple climaxes, reversals, and hooks at the end to draw the viewer to click on the next episode. Limited time and limited budget, to accommodate higher information density, to tell the beginning and end of the story clearly, it can be said that the script of some short plays, its creative difficulty will even be greater than that of traditional dramas.
Sun Guangyang of Jiying Pictures also said that many film and television creators around who are accustomed to long dramas are difficult to change their mindset when doing short dramas. "The male and female protagonists set off fireworks at the beach, and when it comes to dinner, the logic of the creation of the long drama is that the male and female protagonists should discuss what to eat and set the position, but the short drama may be on the table in the next second."
A high-quality long drama, a good story base, sophisticated production, IP fan base, and the blessing of traffic stars are all elements that promote it to become a hit. However, when the short drama is produced, the lower capital investment obviously cannot support the requirements of large IP and traffic stars. According to the "2021 Micro-short Drama Annual Report" released by Youku, the proportion of non-IP short dramas will reach 69.5% in 2021, and IP adaptation will account for 30.5%. Original scripts are still the mainstream of the short drama industry, and the scripts adapted by IP are also limited by cost, mostly based on mid-waist IP, and have not accumulated enough fan bases.
The IP choice of short dramas falls more on the story and adaptability.
The so-called storytelling is to see if there can be more "starting and turning", whether there can be more "sense of conflict", such as the type of rich grudge, cool text fast wear is relatively more popular, but also more able to stimulate the topic discussion; on the adaptability, Sun Guangyang for example like more psychological description, olfactory description, need to bury a lot of details of the content, it is not suitable for adaptation into a short drama.
In terms of casting, short dramas also have a set of selection criteria.
Due to cost considerations, the suitability of actors and roles is the benchmark for consideration, such as the "hegemony" in mainstream theme sweet pet dramas, the filmmakers will have higher standards for looks, figures and "sense of nobility"; secondly, although the investment volume of short dramas is small, they will also choose actors who come from science classes or have served as supporting roles in long dramas and accumulated a certain audience. In particular, ai dou, who is born in the draft and has loyal fans, is also within the scope of selection.
When predicting the quality of a drama, the production company behind it has also become a reference standard. Therefore, as early as the preparation and production process, the head of the film and television company will emphasize the "main investment control", requiring exclusive production and enjoying all the right to speak in production. However, in the production and preparation of short dramas, more attention is paid to "resource superposition" and maximization of commercial value.
At present, the producers and co-producers of other short dramas that are popular on the long video platform have remained at 3-5, and the producers, co-producers and producers behind a martial arts love short drama "Pick up the move, Husband Jun" participated in the production of Jiying Pictures have even reached 11.
In response to this phenomenon, Sun Guangyang explained to "Deep Sound" that the investment level of a short drama is very low, but the resources of all parties can be superimposed to maximize the commercial value; moreover, multi-party "sharing" can also play a role in diversifying risks. The short dramas jointly produced by multiple parties are served by the main controller with a larger share, and have a higher right to speak about the production of the series, and if it is less than 10% of the shares, it will not intervene in the creation.
"It's a kind of hugging of film and television companies, and it's also a business consideration." Sun Guangyang said. It is also based on this that Jiying Pictures has recently launched a "gravitational wave" short drama plan to attract IP parties, film and television producers, publicity and distributors in the upstream and downstream of the film and television industry chain, etc., to achieve resource integration in the field of short dramas and maximize commercial value.
Is doing short dramas a cost-effective business?
When more and more people rush to this big cake, the business model and return on investment of short dramas have naturally become the focus of discussion.
At present, the short drama business model can be roughly divided into five aspects: sub-accounting, platform customization, advertising implantation, live broadcast monetization and paid on-demand screening. Among them, sub-accounting and platform customization are the "mainstream" of short drama monetization on long video platforms.
The billing model of short dramas is similar to that of online movies, which is based on two ways: traffic clicks and advertising clicks. The long video platform will be based on the film and television production company to provide the film flower, finished products for content rating, when the higher the rating, the episode will get more publicity and promotion resources before going online, and the probability of being seen and clicked by the audience is correspondingly greater.
Sun Guangyang told Shen Xiang that in the field of online movies, the final box office can actually be estimated in advance according to the rating of the platform. Like online movies, ratings also directly affect the revenue of the series after they are launched. And this also hides a risk: if high-cost productions do not get high ratings, then the box office is likely to be difficult to meet expectations.
Compared with the sub-account, the risk of platform customization is smaller, and it is controlled by the main investment of the platform and undertaken by the film and television company. For example, according to East-West Entertainment reports, the "Big Mango" short drama under Mango TV is more based on customized cooperation.
For film and television companies, platform customization is obviously a more secure model, but it may not be everyone who has the opportunity. As the short drama moves towards high-quality and systematic, the entrants are also more diverse, and the head film and television company also transforms and develops the short drama, in this context, the long video platform is naturally more inclined to the head, the film and television company with successful production experience, and those new entrants and film and television companies with less production experience may have fewer opportunities to catch the express train customized by the platform.
In addition to sub-accounting and platform customization, advertising implantation and C-end payment are still in a "cultivation" state.
In Sun Guangyang's view, short dramas have a lot of advertising implant space. For example, in the short drama "My Dearest Liu Yu'an", which is currently being broadcast on Tencent Video, snail powder is a tool to promote the heating of the feelings of male and female protagonists, and snail powder outside the drama has the attribute of Internet celebrity, and its radiation crowd has a certain degree of match with the audience of this food, which is very suitable for brand implantation.
However, it has to be admitted that the current brand owners generally believe that the implantation system of short dramas is still limited by time and traffic, and most advertisers are still more inclined to put long episodes. Even advertisers who have price concerns about long-form dramas also have other options such as information flow ads and KOL placements on short video platforms.
C-end payment has been "tested" on short video platforms, and for now, the results are not very successful.
Douyin and Kuaishou have launched the episode payment function, but the fact is that the number of plays can reach millions and tens of millions, but the number of users who pay is only tens of thousands and thousands. On the short video platform, users are not willing to pay for short dramas. It is precisely for this reason that companies that do short dramas on short video platforms are often taking a more circuitous path of monetization, using dramas to praise celebrities and then letting people do live streaming with goods.
Short video platform paid short drama
Based on the above business models, is it still a good deal to do a short drama?
If only compared to long dramas, short dramas are indeed a better business. After all, with the "boutique" becoming a major trend in the industry, the ultra-high investment of long dramas is already a business that can only be done by absolute "head players". The short drama is indeed low investment, short production cycle, faster return on funds, for players outside the head of the film and television industry, this is a relatively lower threshold of entry tickets, but also provides more transformation possibilities.
At present, most of the head film and television companies regard the short drama as a kind of business supplement, and have started short dramas, such as the Vertical Screen Short Drama "Life Has Started for Me" produced by Haohan Entertainment, a subsidiary of Huayi Brothers, Jiahang Media launched "The Other Half of Me and You" on Youku, and its production of "Qintian Strange Story" was broadcast on Mango TV. These companies will be "small and big" early investment baseline continues to raise, some of the new entrants, only rely on hundreds of thousands, shoddy fast operation of the player to pry tens of millions of box office has become impossible.
Compared with online movies, it is not easy to rely on short dramas to "make quick money". In the sloppy period, the production threshold of the network was lower, and some directors even said that they could shoot one with a mobile phone; and most of the entrants at that time were in the same running line, and everyone groped together. However, in the field of short dramas, head players such as Huayi Brothers have long entered the game, and the competition is more intense accordingly, and after the accumulation of experience in the period of the Internet University, the video platform has become more mature and professional in the sub-accounting mode of short dramas.
Although the current short dramas are in a period of rapid development like the online movies from 2015 to 2018, the difficulty of doing business is obviously not the same. And after the period of rapid development, it is bound to experience a shuffling period that has a fatal blow to small and medium-sized players.
"By the end of the year, it's time for the short drama to usher in a wave of reshuffle." Sun Guangyang said.