The logic and innovation of Chinese network dramas

Author: Ouyang Yuejiao

This year, the State Administration of Radio and Television officially issued administrative licenses for online dramas, and used a unified "network standard" when domestic key network dramas, including online dramas, online micro-short dramas, online movies, and online animation films, were broadcast online. From the past filing and registration system to today's licensed broadcasting, the emergence of "net logo" has witnessed a kind of development and change: "Internet technology and new media have changed the form of literature and art, spawned a large number of new literary and artistic types, and also brought about profound changes in literary and artistic concepts and literary and artistic practices." In recent years, mainland network literature and art have flourished, the scale of the industry has expanded rapidly, the creative ecology has been continuously optimized, and the number of users has increased significantly. ”

No longer "behind closed doors"

Before 2014, online dramas were still in the rough and pristine stage, which was also known as online self-made dramas at that time. That is, online literary and artistic works produced by video websites independently or in cooperation with film and television companies, with online audiences as the main body, and combined with traditional TV drama production methods, are broadcast through network platforms or terminals linked to each Internet link.

The so-called "self-made" usually refers to the film and television dramas funded, produced and broadcast by several major platforms such as iQiyi, Tencent, Youku, Mango TV and other major platforms, and the opposite type is "sub-account", that is, individuals, teams or other producers provide works to these platforms, and then share the revenue according to a certain proportion. Due to the strong strength of the head platform, self-made dramas are usually of better quality. In those days, "self-made" was mainly relative to the creation of traditional film and television dramas, giving people a bad impression of shoddy production. Even among the excellent works, such as the first season of "Mao Deception" (2010), which recently caused a craze for supplementary dramas due to the re-listing of B station, the plot level was jokingly called "the money of a popsicle made Haagen-Dazs" by netizens, but it was still because of small costs, amateur acting skills and plastic costumes that dissuaded many viewers.

When it was discovered that the explosive network drama was the password to obtain traffic, the major streaming media platforms began to increase investment, such as the launch of more than 200 network dramas in 2014, an increase of up to 300% over the previous year, so that year was also known as the "first year of China's network drama". Until 2020, the number of online dramas will remain at about 300 per year, and striving to make a blockbuster to attract people's attention is the main goal. With the help of the accurate analysis of user groups by big data, the production of online dramas is completely different from the old habit of "making cars behind closed doors" of traditional film and television dramas, and attaches great importance to user feedback in the selection of scripts, casting and even advertising, and can be adjusted to meet the needs during the production process. As a result, network dramas often choose online literature with the same online attributes and have accumulated a certain popularity as the script, with traffic stars with many fans as the protagonists, and a large number of IP adaptations have been born. In recent years, blockbuster network dramas, such as "Qing Yu Nian", "Chang'an Twelve Hours", "You Are My Glory", etc., are all products of the above logic.

Tailored for the audience's preferences, but also so that the subdivision of the network drama type more and more mature, in the current popular and successful theme types are mainly suspense, ancient dolls, fantasy, urban love, in addition to suspense, other types of obvious benchmark female market, in the narrative type and the formation of sweet pets, big heroines and other popular routines. The "2021 China Network Audiovisual Development Research Report" particularly focuses on the potential of "she", when the platform realizes that women are more likely to generate interactive behavior and contribute traffic, it will be the general trend to continue to subdivide the tastes of female audiences and create more narrative types that fit the psychology of different female groups.

The interaction logic of film and television dramas has changed

With the maturity of genre and the specialization and quality of production, network dramas and taiwan dramas can be described as equally divided at present. However, this does not mean that online dramas unilaterally move closer to traditional film and television dramas, in fact, in recent years, network dramas have more or less changed the underlying logic of film and television drama production, dissemination and viewing.

Traditional film and television works, especially TV dramas, are originally aimed at the public's cultural industrial products, and network dramas try their best to exert this feature to the extreme, in addition to the above-mentioned IP adaptations, traffic stars, and subdivision types, the most important thing is to participate in the construction of a virtual space that closely interacts with real life. In the past, traditional film and television dramas often "imitated" reality, paying attention to plot integrity and the fullness of character image shaping in the narrative, which looked very "real", but the audience also knew that it was a parallel fantasy world, which was a one or two hours of daily temporary separation from daily life and immersion in the illusion of realistic narrative. In web dramas, the realism of the plot or character image is no longer so important, but instead, it is the key to providing a highly symbolic and quickly recognizable genre pleasure. Whether there is a "terrier", whether the CP is good or not, whether the stars they support have got enough "positions", and whether the amount of playback can suppress the competitors of the same period of time, etc., most of the time exceed the attention to the content of the network drama itself. In fact, the immersion of online dramas compared with traditional film and television dramas is weakened, while the audience's participation has undergone a qualitative change.

Rather than telling a story, web dramas provide viewers with material to express their emotions and opinions. Although as early as the end of the 20th century, Henry Jenkins used "text poaching" to describe the audience's creative participation in film and television dramas - mainly to make fan videos, write the same humanities, etc., but this also needs to be broadcast and watched after the film and television drama can be feedback. The "poaching" behavior in the era of network dramas obviously has the characteristics of immediacy and even foresight. The "bullet screen" culture can be said to be a representative of immediacy, and the comments that appear at a specific point in time give the audience the illusion of watching at the same time, and sometimes more interesting than the plot itself, resulting in many people not watching the play without the bullet screen. In addition, in the publicity stage of network dramas, fans or platform parties have begun to continuously release Reuters, make topics to rush the Weibo hot list, intercept "highlight moments" during playback, make secondary editing, and also set "only look at TA" and "double speed playback" in the playback system, which is actually convenient for the audience to screen materials faster and participate in topics. Another significant change is that audience participation is no longer pure and autonomous, as platform parties often use this high level of participation to expand publicity, but sometimes it will also cause public opinion to regurgitate.

The playback characteristics of network dramas that can control the rate and can be paused and replayed at any time have also created the phenomenon of "N brush" in addition to fast food consumption. This situation mostly comes from suspense dramas that have a certain degree of difficulty in understanding and require "disk logic", such as "The Hidden Corner" that is out of the circle, and some netizens have interpreted the "hidden ending" in addition to the blackened Zhu Chaoyang through repeated viewing, screenshot analysis, and even from a short separation of sound and picture. There is also the use of "Leeuwenhoek" (Internet buzzword, referring to very careful observation) to describe the behavior of microscopic viewing of episodes, which occurs more often in classic film and television dramas replayed online, such as "Zhen Huan Biography" replayed on the Youku platform, which can still maintain considerable popularity today ten years later, and even derived "Huan Xue", which has to be attributed to the "N brush" and detail examination habits of netizens. This also makes the platform not completely ignore the power of content, even if the logic behind it is still traffic.

Formal innovation is still the driving force

After the network drama won the traditional award, and the birth of the "net logo" gave it its official identity, it is widely believed that the network drama will move towards the direction of "content is king" and more high-quality. To maintain the vitality of network dramas, the most important thing is the ability to innovate in form.

Over the past few years, the reason why online dramas have developed by leaps and bounds is precisely because they have tracked and tapped the preferences and needs of young audiences in the Internet era, and can combine online native content with emerging business models and existing mature film and television genres. Judging from the "2021 China Online Audiovisual Development Research Report", one of the major challenges facing online dramas at this stage is the impact from short videos. By the end of 2020, the user scale of short video has reached 873 million, occupying 34.1% of the online audiovisual market, surpassing the 704 million users and 19.8% market share of comprehensive video (including network dramas, online movies, network animation, network variety shows, other online broadcast content, etc.), which is even more menacing in the same period of growth. In April 2021, iQiyi, Tencent, Youku, etc. also issued a joint statement to oppose the short video platform's secondary infringement of their own content and open a collective defense model. Short videos, which used to be seen as drainage resources, began to make long video platforms feel the crisis.

Under this situation, the network drama has also carried out some exploration of form innovation. For example, before short videos occupied the market, their commonly used vertical screen form had been borrowed into the production of network dramas. In 2018, iQiyi launched the self-made vertical screen drama "Life Has Dealt with Me", which presents a funny passage of life in the length of a single episode of 2 to 5 minutes, and adopts the touch screen gesture of sliding up and changing episodes. Another new genre is interactive dramas, such as "His Smile" (2019) produced by iQiyi and "Fist Quartet" (2020) produced by Tencent, which can enter the plot branch by triggering different options during the viewing process, achieve multiple endings, and even add click elements of the music game. There have also been experiments to enhance the user experience in terms of interactive mode, such as the costume drama "Zhu Qinghao" (2022), when the plot is carried out to the heart of the hero and heroine, the mobile phone of the watching the drama will also vibrate. Of course, the above attempts are far from successful, but only provide some diversification possibilities.

The launch of the "Network Drama Distribution License" clarifies the direction of efforts for online audio-visual content in the next stage. As Lu Fan, deputy director of the Television Research Center of Peking University, said: "The new policy environment puts forward higher requirements for online literary and artistic creation, and it is more necessary for creators to adhere to the people-centered value orientation, focus on the epic great practice of the new era, establish a legend for the times, for the times, and for the times, with more masterpieces that profoundly reflect the changes of the times and depict the people's spiritual map, so that the film and television gardens on the Internet are full of flowers and business." "For network dramas that constantly explore innovation in balance, on the one hand, they continue to move closer to taiwan dramas and classic film and television works in terms of content quality; On the other hand, in terms of form, we must continue to absorb more avant-garde network native content and its formal expression, and try to integrate the narrative characteristics of other media. In this way, we can better meet the demands of the times and maintain the vitality of development.

(The author is an associate researcher at the School of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University)

Source: Liberation Daily