The short drama app called ReelShort has recently exploded in Europe and the United States, and even became the number one downloaded iOS entertainment chart in the United States in the middle of last month, surpassing TikTok.
It is indeed unexpected that the wind of short dramas will blow to the European and American markets, after all, who would have thought that the "earthy and embarrassing" plots of wealthy family grievances, revenge and sadomasochism, boss chasing wife, and love after marriage can actually have an appetite for overseas audiences.
As a overseas APP under Chinese Online, the short dramas output by ReelShort retain the "original" flavor of domestic short dramas, although the actors are European and American faces, but you can roughly guess what the plot is by listening to the titles of "Goodbye, My CEO" and "The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband".
The short drama on ReelShort is similar to the drama on the domestic short video platform, with a duration of less than 3 minutes, and the first few episodes can be watched for free, and then you need to pay or watch ads to unlock it. Overseas short dramas have recently officially entered the public eye, but the market has not yet fully opened and has not yet entered a mature development period.
Compared with the overseas short drama market, which is still a blue ocean, the domestic short drama boom has lasted for a long time.
Although this online content is not a new concept, it has entered a period of rapid development as a dark horse, with a compact plot and a streamlined length, seizing the fragmented time of contemporary people.
Kuaishou and Douyin, which were the first to enter the game, began to pay attention to the polishing of "quality" after the explosive output of winning with "quantity", and led the film and television manufacturers to enter the high-quality track.
The traditional long video platform that has been impacted has not put itself on the opposite side, but combined with its own user portraits to enter the short drama in the form of a horizontal screen, relying on the advantages of the traditional drama chasing model, to seize a broader audience market.
Tracing back to the source, short dramas are not a new product of the short video era, but are incubated on long video platforms. Youku's "Never Expected" and Sohu's "Dick Silk Man" are two phenomenal works on the early tuyere of domestic micro-short dramas, rooted in the joke culture at that time, and the two seized the wave of "self-deprecation" to play nonsensical black humor when the culture began to show fast food, and opened up a new situation in domestic dramas with innovative models.
"Never Expected"
"Dick Silk Man"
However, the times are fleeting, and the follow-up works are weak, and the content form of horizontal screen short dramas has not been continued.
The rise of short video platforms has given birth to a new outlet for short dramas.
The audience is tired of the procrastinating rhythm of dozens of episodes of long dramas, and chasing dramas at double speed has become a daily routine, and the abandonment rate is also increasing. Within two or three minutes, the vertical screen short drama with frequent climaxes and reversals successfully seized the audience's fragmented time and became a new "electronic meal".
The boss chases his wife sweetly, is reborn through the golden finger, and the down-and-out heroine counterattacks... The story line of the popular short drama is not new, but with the direct drama experience of "dense rhythm, strong conflict, and many cool points", it meets the entertainment needs of the audience in the fast-paced life.
A short drama that exploded in the early days of Kuaishou
In the face of the impact of short video platforms, the response of traditional long video platforms is not to "defeat", but to "join". Based on the viewing habits of original users, most of the creation of micro-short dramas on long video platforms lock in the horizontal screen mode, shorten the length, emphasize the coolness, retain the beginning and end of conventional film and television dramas, and quickly advance the plot on the basis of long-term narrative.
A horizontal screen short drama produced by a long video platform
The current micro-short drama track is divided into two camps: horizontal screen and vertical screen.
The former is represented by the four major long video platforms of "Aiteng Youmang", the duration is generally 7-15 minutes, produced by a professional film and television team, the plot is more coherent, and the actors are more professional, which can be regarded as a mini version of the web drama;
The latter is represented by Kuaishou and Douyin, two major short video platforms, with a duration of about 3 minutes, produced by MCN institutions and Internet celebrities, adapting to the browsing habits of short video users, emphasizing the impact of the lens language, and the content of a single episode is relatively independent.
The battle between horizontal and vertical, in the final analysis, is to seize the user's fragmented leisure time. The creation of jokes in vertical screen short dramas is easier to meet the needs of fragmented entertainment, and the dissemination and fermentation of point popularity are more convenient. When the landing point is locked in the attributes of the drama, the coherent plot and sophisticated production are the advantages of the long video platform, and the horizontal screen mode is difficult to be replaced for a while, and the horizontal screen short drama is obviously more suitable for the audience's preference for chasing dramas.
Kuaishou short drama "The reason why I went back to the age of seventeen"
In the middle of last month, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television once again launched a one-month special rectification work on online micro-short dramas, increasing management efforts and refining management measures from 7 aspects to better improve the normalized management mechanism. In the final analysis, it is to promote the high-quality development of short dramas.
After four years of prosperity and growth, the ecology of short dramas has matured, and the competition in the horizontal screen track has become more and more fierce. "Aiteng Youmang" has successively introduced support policies, relying on the advantages of drama production to continuously subdivide the theme of short dramas to meet the needs of users in different circles. More and more subjects are participating in it, and there is still a lot of room for imagination in the development of this content form.
Reducing costs and increasing efficiency is the general trend
It is unknown whether the film and television winter has passed, but the curse of "difficult to make profits" on long video platforms has always existed. The domestic long video platform is represented by "Aiteng Youmang", and its main profit model is commercial advertising and paid membership.
After years of development, the market has gradually saturated, and the new members have also tended to stagnate. "Reducing costs and increasing efficiency" is a key word that frequently appears in the development strategies of major platforms, changing the money-throwing model of "spending money like dirt" in the copyright war in the past.
Tencent short drama "Big Mom's World"
Short shooting cycle, low production cost, and considerable rate of return are important factors for short dramas to attract long video platforms to enter the game. The production cost of long dramas is often tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan, but in the short drama track, one million is already a high investment.
In the face of the prosperity and development of short dramas, the long video platform naturally did not sit still, opened short drama channels, improved the account sharing model, introduced support policies, and attracted more creators to settle in the platform.
Mango TV short drama "Ignorance"
Mango launched the "Big Mango Plan", Youku released the "Fuyao Plan", Tencent launched the "Shifen Theater", and the long video platform that laid out micro-short dramas created good revenue. Taking last year as an example, many of the short dramas created by Tencent Video, Youku and Mango TV exceeded 10 million.
Long drama thinking, horizontal screen habits
Short dramas have entered the stage of high-quality development, and users' side-screen drama chasing habits have not been ignored, and "This Young Man is a Little Cold" and "The Eldest Princess" that are out of the circle on the short video platform have all adopted the horizontal screen shooting method.
Kuaishou horizontal screen short drama "This young man is a little cold"
Kuaishou horizontal screen short drama "The Eldest Princess is on Top"
And the users of the head long video platform with a scale of more than 100 million are also potential audiences for horizontal screen short dramas. There is no doubt that the horizontal screen, as a long-term mode of watching dramas by human beings, has an innate advantage in physiological comfort.
The brainless coolness of vertical screen short dramas creates instant pleasure for the audience, but for a large number of drama followers, dramas with complete story information and coherent plots are the choice to meet the needs of generalized entertainment.
The horizontal screen short drama produced by the long video platform with the thinking of a long drama abandons the procrastinating rhythm of the horizontal screen long drama, and also makes up for the content disadvantage of the vertical screen short drama. Relying on the platform's rich experience in drama development and production, the content type is not limited to a single model such as sweet pets and ancient styles, but gradually tries to urban, suspenseful, crime and other themes.
Multi-party efforts, the sword refers to high-quality products
Vertical screen dramas have occupied the high ground of popularity with the user scale of the short video platform, but they have always faced the problem of lack of texture, the actors' acting skills are exaggerated, the perception of the service is not good, and the plot is homogeneous and routine... The frame limitations, which are different from conventional film and television works, have led to limited lens expression, and rough post-production has been criticized.
From savage growth to orderly upgrading, the short dramas on various platforms have embarked on the road of high-quality products.
Youku short drama "The Other Half of Me and You"
The horizontal screen shooting of the long video platform makes the narrative more free, and its creative thinking is quite "make the long drama shorter", which retains the visual comfort of the horizontal screen, explains the story information clearly in about 10 minutes, and maintains the coherence of the plot, and designs dense highlights.
Mango TV short drama "False Face"
Tencent Video Short Drama "Provocation"
Platforms that are accustomed to cooking big dishes are obviously more professional in content production, and the results of "cooking small fresh" are more guaranteed in quality. Mango TV and Tencent Video's "False Face" and "Provocation", which have come out of the circle one after another, are excellent cases of high-quality short dramas, which meet the audience's demand for "dog blood" in terms of plot, and strengthen the dramatic tension with mature lens language in production.
When the chef who makes the "electronic meal" begins to roll up, the audience naturally has a taste demand. The battle between horizontal and vertical is, in the final analysis, to seize the user's fragmented time. High-quality is the only way for the development of short dramas, and the expansion of themes is also the focus of breaking the game, after all, even if it is an audience who eats fast food, who doesn't want to eat something good?
Editing, text - JL new media editing - koi pictures - from the Internet