"Is it now that both endings have become the standard for TV dramas?" After watching the finale of "Si Teng" and "Fan Wai", veteran drama fan "Xiao Muzi" sighed in the circle of friends. Recently, two popular dramas such as "Si Teng" and "Mountain and River Order" have ended. In addition to the ending of the main film, "Si Teng" also specially prepared a 30-minute ban, and "Mountain and River Order" paid 3 yuan to unlock the Easter egg. Compared with the slightly sad ending of the positive film, fanwai and Easter eggs both give a relatively more satisfactory ending.
The emergence of the "double ending" has a great relationship with the identity transformation of the audience and fans. Nowadays, with the prosperity of the fan economy, the demands of the audience and fans have penetrated into all aspects of creation, and the impact on the creation of film and television dramas cannot be ignored. If a hot drama wants to maintain its popularity, it is inevitable that they will pay attention to their opinions. However, in addition to "pet fans", film and television works also need to maintain the laws and standards of artistic creation, and cannot only cater to the audience.
Therefore, many professionals believe that the practice of shooting more than one ending is also a new model of film and television peripheral derivatives, which not only allows fans to get more psychological satisfaction, but also the platform can further monetize through traffic. According to the investigation of the Red Star News reporter, a TV series has two new phenomena of ending on demand, which seems to only meet the different needs of the audience, but in fact has hatched a new economic chain of TV series.
"Mountain and River Order" Easter egg
[The audience invented new words]
To Be，or to He?
For the ending of the TV series, the audience gave a new word: Be (Bad ending), and He (Happy ending happy ending). The ending of the main films of "Si Teng" and "Mountain and River Order" is undoubtedly Be. At the finale of "Si Teng", Si Teng, who once again has memories, returns to the forest with Qin Fang, who almost lost his life to save her, and disappears.
Coincidentally, the "Mountain and River Order" that ended earlier was also considered to be a "bad ending" - after Wen Kexing saved Zhou Zishu with all his strength, he suddenly had all his hair white, looked weak, and slowly slid down his hands. Zhou Zishu, who was facing him, had red eyes and tears in his eyes, which seemed to indicate that the final outcome was Wen Kexing's death.
"Si Teng" has an extraordinarily ending
Just in addition to the call for "sending blades to the screenwriter" and "difficult to flatten" on the bullet screen, both dramas give another ending: in the 30-minute ban of "Si Teng", Qin Fang and Si Teng finally walked together and became a pair of immortal couples; "Mountain and River Order" needs to spend 3 yuan to unlock the Easter egg, although only 3 minutes of the 7-minute Easter egg is telling the story, but many fans are still satisfied: in this version of the ending, Zhou Zishu saw the white-haired Wen Kexing, and began your coming and going tricks on the top of the snowy mountain. The two finally lived a secluded life like a crane in the clouds.
[The original ending is actually mostly satisfactory]
After adapting the TV series, it was deliberately changed for the sake of freshness
The Red Star News reporter noted that the endings of the original novels of "Si Teng" and "Mountain and River Order" are actually relatively satisfactory. The ending of the novel "Si Teng", after Qin Fang found Si Teng, the story came to an end, the author Tail Fish handed over the small days of the two to the reader to imagine, and did not directly make a figurative statement; in the ending of the original novel "Tianyake" of the "Mountain and River Order", after Zhou Zishu's injuries were healed by the witch, he and Wen Kexing retired to the mountains and forests, and there was no longer the shadow of the sword and light of the past.
Over the years, many film and television dramas have been adapted from popular novels, and for producers and screenwriters, if the ending of film and television dramas is exactly the same as that of novels, they will definitely lose their freshness and attractiveness. For example, the previous fires of "The Hidden Corner" and "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", etc., the endings of novels and TV series are very different. "The sad ending is more dramatic, and the open-ended ending is actually more able to capture the audience's heart." A senior screenwriter in the industry told Red Star News reporters.
However, the famous screenwriter and producer Bai Yixiao also proposed the concept of "fan points" when talking about IP adaptation, that is, when adapting, the points that fans care about are as perfect as possible, and strive to restore the scene in the reader's mind. Because it has gained so many viewers after the broadcast, empathetic viewers may not want to see a sad ending, and the producers finally came up with a second happy ending in order to satisfy the audience.
【From Viewer to Participant】
The huge fan base is demanding
What is obvious is that "Si Teng" and "Mountain River Order" are both highly discussed episodes on social media. A huge fan base quickly gathered to chase dramas, create stalks, and popularize knowledge. For example, on the Douban group of "Mountain and River Order", there are fans who specially sort out the ancient allusions of the lines in the play, such as "But the degree is not bitter, I greet Ru by myself", from wang Xianzhi's "Peach Leaf Song" composed for his concubine; Wen Kexing lamented Zhou Zishu Jiugong's "Fluttering Like the Wind And Returning to the Snow, As if the Moon of the Light Clouds", from Cao Zhi's "Luoshen Endowment", and so on, which can be described as intentional.
Some insiders said that the enthusiastic dissemination of this "tap water" among fan audiences now has on the one hand effectively boosted the popularity of the series itself, and on the other hand, it also made them have a more stringent examination of the series. Through channels such as Weibo and Bullet Screen, fans have more participation in the progress of the series, invisibly changing from a simple consumer to a producer of some content. Since hot dramas rely on fans for survival, it is inevitable to try their best to meet their demands.
After the broadcast of "Mountain and River Order", because many fans questioned the production, the creator re-dubbed and re-edited, and the new version received the affirmation of fans after it was launched. Li Muge, the director of "Si Teng", also said: "The ending of another version is to give the audience and the fans of the original work a relatively clear explanation. Among the many directors interviewed by the Red Star News reporter, they all said that they would pay special attention to the bullet screen when watching the play, and see what opinions the audience made.
The ending of "Si Teng"
[You give me what I want, I give you what you want]
The traffic and revenue brought by fans are the biggest driving force for the platform and producers
For the platform and producers, the most important thing for fans to satisfy is that fans can bring huge economic benefits.
As the broadcast platform has changed from TV to network, the interaction between fans and the platform has been strengthened, and the platform can make full use of the initiative of fans to achieve further monetization of popularity. In addition to unlocking the "Happy Ending" Easter egg for 3 yuan, "Mountain and River Order" will also be launched under the name of "Mountains and Rivers Order", a total of 50 episodes of tidbits, each episode requires the audience to spend a dollar to unlock to watch. Although Youku did not announce specific revenues, this is obviously a considerable amount of revenue.
During the broadcast of "Mountain and River Order", Youku launched the "Unlock Glass Armor" plus activity, and a netizen won the first fault with 108995 pieces of Glass Armor. According to rough statistics, the netizen recharged the membership card for more than 200 years, according to the Activity Price of Youku Annual Pass 128 yuan / Zhang, the cumulative amount is 26624 yuan; based on this calculation, the cost of the second and third places is about 13,000 yuan. Even if other gameplay is excluded, only 100 million Liulijia and Youku annual cards are calculated, and the maximum revenue brought by this game to the platform is about 24.61 million yuan.
According to the calculation of the Red Star News reporter: the derivative peripherals of the "Mountain and River Order" such as hairpins, folding fans, and original soundtracks also exceeded 20 million. In addition, the total price of the costume public welfare auction of wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu and other major actors in the play also exceeded 850,000. That is to say, these few activities alone, the drama's income exceeded 50 million.
So, will the double ending of the TV series become the standard in the future? Red Star News reporters learned from industry insiders that at the moment when advanced on-demand is becoming more and more popular, some head dramas will definitely come up with more tricks to monetize, similar to such as fanwai, extra-chapter, etc., the double ending will not become the standard at present, but it is likely to become a trend in the future.
Red Star News reporter Qiu Junfeng
Edited by Qiao Xueyang
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