Author|Gu Han
Editor|Li Chunhui
In the spring of 2023, the entertainment industry is one of the first industries to fully recover, which should have become a consensus inside and outside the industry.
Throughout the Spring Festival from 2022 to 2023, the strong recovery of the drama industry has brought people's attention and topic focus back to long videos. National dramas, ancient puppet revival, the rise of science fiction, from "The World" and "The Beginning" at the beginning of 2022 to "Crazy" and "Three-Body Problem" at the beginning of 2023, long videos are constantly providing new experiences while creating national explosions - not the type of micro-innovation that is common in the past, but some things that have never been seen in Chinese dramas have been bravely brought up and accepted by the audience.
Perhaps it's time to look at the drama industry and online video on a larger timescale.
Around 2014, major long-form video platforms successively cut into the upstream and made efforts to self-made business, and the new player of the Internet began to understand and transform the film and television industry in its own way. During this period, although refreshing online drama works such as "The Crown Princess Promotion" and "The Exquisite Ancient City of Ghost Blowing Lanterns" were born, they also brought concepts greater than content, and the price of IP and stars soared. This is a raucous and colorful long video adolescence.
Since 2018, the field of long-form video dramas has achieved a fairly high right to speak, but internal and external troubles have followed. Under many challenges, in 2022, long-form video will finally implement cost reduction and efficiency increase.
Five years is a big cycle for long videos. After experiencing the turning point of 2022, which was worrying and surprising at the end, we have reason to judge: long video has entered a new era. Both itself and the market environment in which it is located have undergone changes that cannot be ignored, and this has extended to new themes and new points in the new era.
Long videos cost money
The recovery of the drama market is not only a continuous masterpiece in our physical experience, but also faithfully reflected in various data reports. According to Yien statistics, in 2022, the average broadcast index of TV dramas and online dramas will increase by 15.9% and 20.7% year-on-year, respectively, and the "hit rate" of works will be greatly improved. At the same time, word-of-mouth has also played a turnaround battle, and the average score of Chinese drama Douban has reached the highest level in four years.
In particular, it is worth mentioning that there are not only innovative dramas such as "The Beginning" and "The Three-Body Problem" in the high-scoring club, but also popular ancient dolls such as "Menghualu" and "Star Han Splendid", and the popularity and word-of-mouth inversion that we are familiar with are becoming less and less.
The reason, of course, is that long videos have lost money for many years - and after accumulating enough content experience, they began to change their thinking.
On the one hand, the content structure is more reasonable. Each company has different names, but they are basically a variety of layout methods that combine big dramas, genre dramas, and innovative dramas. On the other hand, production scheduling is more planned. Save unnecessary investment to ensure that the head drama can broadcast the effect of the head, and the theme innovation can realize the value of innovation.
2023 is the second year of cost reduction and efficiency increase, looking at the film list, this trend of supply-side structure optimization is more obvious, and the new popularity verified by the market will soon be increased.
The first is the realist national drama. Since the revival in 2017, realism has become the focus of the layout of various platforms, bringing together the best creators and actors in the industry, and steadily exporting explosive models every year. It is inspired by the realities of development and change, and its potential never peaks. Not long ago, "Crazy" once again proved how much energy a realistic national drama can burst out when it meets the right schedule.
Strictly speaking, realism is a creative idea, not a qualification of subject matter. Tencent Video's 2023 film list allows us to see the multiple possibilities of realistic dramas:
The main theme + strong plot, such as the procuratorial drama "Public Prosecution Elite" starring Di Li Gerba, the first "This Peace of Mind is My Hometown" that fully reflects the construction of Ping An China; Write about specific eras and regions, such as "Blossoms", "The Sea in Dreams", "The Banner of Fathers"; Focus on a certain profession, such as the medical drama "The Heart of the Child" and the legal drama "Ordinary Road"; Pay attention to the growth of women, such as the "Ode to Joy" series, Zhang Xiaofei's new drama "Good Things Become Pairs", the comic book women's group drama "She Just Don't Want to Lose", and "I Live Elsewhere" that uses parallel time and space settings.
In addition to more diversified themes, from the exposed materials, the texture of many dramas has been significantly improved compared with previous similar works, reflecting the platform's pursuit of "precision quality". It cannot be ignored that the heavyweight of the main creator, "Blossoms" is Wong Kar-wai's TV series debut, and "Father's Banner" is a strong combination of Kang Honglei and Zhao Dongling.
On the other hand, the comprehensive rise of innovative themes, which not only have loyal vertical users, but also have the opportunity to become the focus of the whole society.
In the early years, the online audience was younger, and the platform actively created differentiated fantasy content for them. Now that online video has become a national application, the platform is still committed to expanding the boundaries of Chinese dramas, and has made many achievements in innovative directions such as suspense short dramas, live-action comics, strong plots of big heroines, and science fiction, and has reached a wider range of people.
As early as 2016, Tencent Video introduced heavy industry special effects into the drama through the "Ghost Blowing Lantern" series, creating a precedent for Chinese dramas. Since last year, it has achieved a lead in the sci-fi track through "The Beginning" and "The Three-Body Problem". If it was still exploring and testing the waters before, 2023 is the official bet:
In terms of action exploration, in addition to "Ghost Blowing Lights" series' "Return to the South China Sea", there are also "Tibetan Sea Flower" by the third uncle of Nanpai, and "West Out of Jade Gate" by female writer Tail Yu. In terms of science fiction, Tencent Video will create a science fiction matrix through many dramas such as "Three-Body II: Dark Forest", "Three-Body Problem: Great History", "Stars", "Time Abyss", "Yuandu" and tell the Chinese science fiction story.
The market is more willing to pay for it
The successful recovery of the drama industry, the strong promotion of cost reduction and efficiency increase, not only relies on upstream efforts, but also downstream support.
Growing up in the Internet era, the post-90s and post-00s have been exposed to excellent cultural and entertainment works around the world since childhood, and the amount of film reading and aesthetics has been greatly improved compared with the previous generation of audiences, and they also have new content consumption habits. It is this kind of user that drives the platform to continuously improve the quality of content and innovate the user experience.
Knowledgeable and sometimes makes the audience seem harsh. If the content rests on its laurels, the audience will abandon it, and they don't mind leaving a few sharp comments to pierce the fig leaf of the bad drama.
But in 2022, we will see more: knowledge makes the audience recognize goods. Whether it is the introspection and breakthrough of classic categories such as costume dramas and romantic dramas, or the high difficulty and scarcity of projects such as "The Beginning" and "The Three-Body Problem", the audience can get it at the first time and give a warm welcome and real money support.
In the summer of 2022, "Brilliant Star" is eclectic, inviting Fei Zhenxiang, a male director who started the "Ghost Blowing Lights" series, to direct, the picture is cold and simple, and tries to use light and shadow to tell stories like movies, and the look and feel is obviously different from previous costume dramas. But soon, the audience realized the intention and sophistication of this technique.
During the broadcast of the play, the audience not only followed the drama on time, but also produced a wealth of drama reviews, analysis and second creation. In the end, not only the platform gained revenue, the actors gained popularity, and the main creative team behind the scenes also enjoyed a lot of dividends.
The threshold for appreciation of "The Three-Body Problem" is not low, but this has not discouraged the audience's interest in the sci-fi theme. In the early stage of broadcasting, it was often seen that netizens were eager to try, asking if they could understand the series if they had not read the original work, followed by sincere answers and enthusiastic Amway from book fans.
In this way, as an innovative drama, "The Three-Body Problem" has achieved a broadcast performance that exceeded expectations: on the day of broadcasting, it broke the record of the highest popularity value of Tencent video dramas on the first day, becoming the fastest drama to exceed 20,000 in popularity value; It scored a high score of 8.4 on Douban, causing heated discussions on social platforms, with the number of hot searches exceeding 962 times; the ending screening ceremony also received a warm response.
The return of blockbuster artists, the overall improvement of content, audience enthusiasm and huge topicality have also pulled advertisers back to long-form videos. In 2022, advertisers are not only willing to bet on national actors and national IPs, but also appreciate high-end market content.
According to the statistics of netizens, "Menghualu" starring Liu Yifei and Chen Xiao has received a total of 60+ brand launches (including joint cooperation).
Long-form videos have changed, the market has changed, and high-quality content has finally helped long-form videos get out of the quagmire of burning money and enter a virtuous cycle: Youku's losses narrowed year-on-year for six consecutive quarters, iQiyi began to make profits in early 2022, and Tencent Video became profitable from July 2022.
Tencent Video grabbed the position
With the improvement of the quality of dramas and the overall financial stop, entering a new era also means that the long-form video competition has escalated again. So the question is, what are the new points in the new era?
The first is more diverse content. In addition to the realism and innovative themes mentioned above, costumes, love, suspense and other often new categories are also a must-fight place. Whether the content is complete and whether the development of old categories can be unconventional has become a test that all platforms must face.
In 2022, Tencent Video will lead the upgrade of costume dramas with "Menghualu" and "Star Han Splendid", observing its 2023 film list, many projects have both classic and new meaning:
In terms of costume dramas, first of all, the character and CP mode are innovative. In "With Phoenix Xing", Zhao Liying plays a "queen master" of the demon world, holding a long gun and full of force, which is not only in line with her current age and aura, but also conforms to the audience's call for "strong women". Secondly, the IP distribution is balanced, in addition to romance IP dramas such as "Sauvignon Blanc" and "Folding the Waist", there are also hot-blood dramas adapted from male frequency IPs such as "Breaking the Sky 2" and "Snow Eagle Lord".
It is also worth mentioning the development methods of serialization and cosmos, including the "Jin Yong Martial Arts World" built by the remake of Jin Yong's full series of works, and the fairy sword series composed of "Immortal Sword" and "Immortal Sword Six". "Jade Bone Yao" is adapted from Cangyue's novel "Zhu Yan" and is a prequel to the "Mirror" series. Zhao Lusi's new dramas "Shenyin" and "Ancient Jue Dust" are both adapted from the works of Star Zero, which is the relationship between the later sequel and the previous work. It can be imagined that such development is conducive to increasing user stickiness, making full use of the platform's content and operation resources, and containing greater business potential.
The headization of romantic dramas is also a trend to be observed in 2023. On the one hand, the content pattern is open, "Love Only", "I Want to Miss You Very Much", "Three Points" and many other works not only tell the emotional relationship between the two, but also focus on some classic or new careers through their work, which has a bit more realistic texture than pure love dramas.
On the other hand, the production specifications have been improved. Wu Lei's partner Zhao Jinmai's "In the Blizzard" went overseas to shoot, and Li Muge's new drama "Ruyue" is a Republic of China fantasy drama, and there should be many special effects scenes.
The suspense pendant category is currently dominated by boutique short dramas, such as "Hidden Corner" director's new work "Long Season", Chen Jianbin's "Black Earth Without Words", and it is said that Zhang Songwen will partner Yao Anna's "Ice Hunting". The elements are diverse, in addition to modern criminal investigation, there are "Under the Bustling City" with a costume background and "Huan Yan" and "Tianxingjian" with a Republican background.
The comedy pendant category will join hands with first-line comedy labels such as Happy Twist, Zhao Benshan's team, and Deyun Society to customize and create content. As we all know, comedy as a series - whether it is a sitcom or Zhao Benshan's country comedy has had glorious moments. However, the proliferation of comedy content in the Internet age has delayed the comedy revival on the agenda. Tencent Video is the first echelon of video websites in terms of resources and penetration rate, and its power may be able to bring substantial changes.
On the basis of diversified content, providing users with diversified services has also become a new direction for video websites. At present, there is no obvious difference between the Internet and TV dramas in terms of content, and the key lies in experience. In the future platform competition, who can more effectively play the advantages of technology and big data, tap into the more personalized and secret needs of users, provide better content, and match better services, who will win the hearts and minds of the people.
At the V Vision Conference at the end of last year, Tencent Video put forward the concept of "three forces drive", that is, content power, IP development capabilities, and the operational power of pulling internal and external resources for full-matrix linkage promotion and innovative gameplay, which fully reflects Tencent Video's confidence in this regard.
Finally, there are issues that video websites, film parties, and audiences are very concerned about, and the diversified commercialization of long videos. Not only to create good content, but also to let good content bring worthy income to the platform and film side, it is best to have fun in a way that makes users feel worthwhile. In addition to the most basic advertising and membership models, IP derivative entity peripherals, distribution to TV stations or overseas are all important directions for the platform to explore.
In the past decade, there have been lively and impetuous, but it must be admitted that the entry of video platforms has brought many positive changes to the content industry: the industrialization of Chinese dramas, the innovation of viewing experience, the diversification of business models... And this makes us especially look forward to what Tencent Video, which is accelerating again, will do in a new upward cycle.