文 | 真故研究室 石雨菡
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Twenty years ago, many Chinese overseas made a living by opening restaurants. In the past decade, a new generation of Chinese students in Kochi have begun to make money in major technology companies in the United States. And now, the Chinese have a new job option: making short dramas.
Starting in 2023, short dramas going overseas will become a new craze in the film and television industry, and those who keep up with the wealth code and capture the tide of the times can always get a piece of the pie when the wind comes. And the Chinese "volume" inevitably makes the industry from the blue ocean to the red sea, only in a moment.
When the short drama of the assembly line operation is still on the head of the foreigners with thick eyebrows and big eyes, the "short drama workers" in the chain still do not make money.
A new job for a Chinese: making skits
In the first half of 2023, four or five Chinese parents came to Huang Xiaohe with their children, hoping to let their children follow Huang Xiaohe to participate in the filming of short dramas and pave the way for their future careers. Huang Xiaohe finally realized that the skit was really popular in the UK.
Huang Xiaohe, who was born in 92, studied in the UK for ten years and studied all the way to a doctorate. From biology to directing, Huang Xiaohe's career direction has been determined in stages, looking for a place in the film and television industry, starting to shoot video content such as advertisements and promotional videos, and also operating his own self-media channel.
In April 2020, the number of new domestic micro-short dramas surged, and in the second half of the year, "online micro-short dramas" were officially included in the category of key online film and television dramas. In the same year, TikTok was downloaded more than 850 million times worldwide, beating Facbook and Instagram to become the world's most downloaded app in 2020, and short videos from China entered the hinterland of Europe and the United States.
It was also in this year that Huang Xiaohe ushered in a new business, shooting short dramas for the European and American markets for domestic or Chinese short drama companies. This is a chain reaction, which can also roughly explain the path of today's short dramas to go overseas: domestic short videos go overseas after they mature, and the short dramas that come into being with short videos are copied and tested overseas by domestic capital.
1-10 minute short plays, Huang Xiaohe is no stranger. In 2018, he tried to shoot a similar work, inspired by a book he saw in a bookstore in the UK called "Study Abroad Junk", which is composed of short stories that expose the chaos of the international student community. "I was blown away by the fact that if I could make a video of this kind of short story, a series would be born. ”
After filming for a while, the short drama of the same name "Study Abroad Garbage" still died. Huang Xiaohe said that one of the main reasons for the failure was that the content was too reflective of reality, and the international students who participated with great enthusiasm at first were afraid of "social death" and worried about the lower social evaluation, so they were unwilling to do it again.
This time, Huang Xiaohe's first spontaneous attempt at a short drama was due to interest. From 2020 to now, Huang Xiaohe has successively undertaken three short drama projects, and the surrounding film and television colleagues have also done it one after another. And now filming short dramas has changed from a hobby to a business that can be handled on an assembly line.
Huang Xiaohe said that the short dramas he has come into contact with at present are nothing more than localized packaging and transformation of the cool points of domestic online texts, and most of the themes are the emotional entanglements between foreigners, following the routine of one-minute reversal of domestic short dramas. The composition of the actors should be in line with the international vision, such as one yellow and one black, one white and one Latino, and mixed race from all countries.
In terms of filming cycle, it is also an episode of one minute, with a total of 50 episodes. In 2020, the investor of Huang Xiaohe's first short drama project gave him half a year. By 2023, the investor's requirement is that it will take a total of 15 days from planning, storyboarding, hiring actors, shooting, editing, repair to final delivery.
As for production costs, Huang Xiaohe's daily income in 2020 was about £100, "equivalent to the income of a waiter". Now it is about 200 pounds a day, that is, two waiters, but the construction period has been reduced by more than ten times, and the work intensity has increased significantly.
"I can't make much money by making short dramas," Huang Xiaohe said.
Figure | The scene of the filming of the skit, provided by the interviewee
In the group of local producers in the UK, there is a growing demand for short films. On the bus, you can see a lot of British people chatting with skits for entertainment. In recent months, from the mouths of Chinese parents who came to Huang Xiaohe with their children, Huang Xiaohe learned that British universities have opened new media performance, new media directing, new media planning and other majors around short videos.
From short videos to short dramas, from life and entertainment to education and employment, shrewd Chinese businessmen with algorithms that can control everything are rapidly spreading in the global village.
"Volume" to the world
Mimi, who lives in Los Angeles, graduated from the New York Film School in 2013 with a degree in film production. The following year, Mimi and some friends in the same industry set up their own film and television studio, undertaking local advertising, documentaries, movies and other content in China and North America.
Starting in August 2022, Mimi found that the demand for short drama shooting in the studio has increased, and the themes are mainly werewolf bosses, vampires, gangsters, etc. Out of curiosity, human affection, Hollywood strikes and other internal and external factors, Mimi also began to occasionally take on the work of co-producing short dramas.
In addition to forming a team for filming and production, he is also responsible for the localization and polishing of short drama scripts, and helps Chinese or domestic short drama companies solve problems such as shooting permits and insurance.
So far in 2022, Mimi has taken over a total of 3 short drama projects, but the number of rejected short drama projects is as high as 17.
"Unreasonable" is the main reason for Mimi's refusal. For example, the overall budget is low, the profit margin is small, and the work intensity is high, and she has ten years of experience in the professional film and television industry, but now she no longer wants to use such cheap labor to consume herself and her team's energy.
According to Mimi's observation, I have found her short drama projects, the overall budget is as low as 8-120,000 US dollars, the medium is 150,000 US dollars, and the short drama project with the highest budget and can meet the standard of pushing dramas is about 200,000 US dollars.
Taking a budget of more than 100,000 yuan as an example, some short drama companies hope to form a group of 25-30 people, and the average daily salary of the team members is far lower than the minimum daily wage stipulated by California law by calculating the number of filming days through the volume of the script, and then removing the venue, transportation, meals, insurance and other expenses. "What I have come into contact with so far is that Chinese teams are taking on short drama projects, and the local film and television teams in North America will basically not accept such a budget, which is an 'insulting offer' for them. ”
In order to greatly reduce costs, Mimi also learned that some short drama platforms, after obtaining the team members, venues, actors and other resources provided by the producer, converted all the contact information of these people into the database and converted them into their own resources, and then rehired the platform's own internal producers on the grounds that the original production team was not enough.
"Many young North American people who have just graduated hope to be able to shoot low-threshold short dramas as a springboard for themselves to enter the film and television industry. However, many of them do not have the mature ability to discriminate, and they are prone to encounter such a situation where their interests are damaged. ”
Huang Xiaohe was also deeply touched by this. On the one hand, the budget is small, and now in order to be able to shoot and launch quickly, the investors of short dramas do not have strict requirements for the quality of the content, even if there are modifications, that is, they adjust the color.
When I first started taking on the short drama in 2020, the investor would spend two or three months watching the sample films, selecting the team and negotiating the price, and would also participate in the casting of actors. Recently, the process of early checks by investors is better than nothing, and you can shoot with a simple chat.
Figure | The scene of the filming of the skit, provided by the interviewee
Even if the cake is not big, it is still an income. Huang Xiaohe said that in order to be able to take over the list of short dramas, many peers can only keep lowering their offers.
"The money is taken by the investors, and the lower the price, the more involuted, and in the end, everyone doesn't make much money. Huang Xiaohe said.
Skit, low-end manufacturing
Domestic film and television works going overseas is a heart disease that the domestic film and television industry has been doing, but it has been difficult to say success. Typical examples are domestic films.
In 2018, Bona's boss Yu Dong had a sharp comment on this phenomenon: "The biggest trade deficit between China and the United States is actually Chinese films. Nearly half of our $60 billion box office is American films, but our combined box office in North America is less than $3 million a year, and the export capacity of domestic films in North America lags far behind that of South Korean, Japanese and European films. ”
Recently, the box office myth of Hollywood movies in China has failed, but the road to overseas has never worked. In the past five years, the domestic film "The Wandering Earth" series, which has performed well in North America, has only exceeded $10 million at the North American box office of the two films combined. From this point of view, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" released in 2000 achieved a North American box office of 128 million, which is the pinnacle and a miracle.
Cultural barriers, the gap in the level of the film industry, and even the international situation, any point can be an obstacle to the external dissemination of domestic films. And nowadays, there are many short dramas that have replaced domestic films and dramas that have swept overseas, and it seems that they will not be subject to these restrictions. In the face of themes such as bottom-level counterattacks, sadomasochism of wealthy families, and domineering presidents, the power, wealth, and sex embodied behind them are full of allure for all mankind.
The skit went to sea through two stages. At the beginning, it was to directly transfer the short dramas that were successful in China to foreign countries, and add English subtitles to the original episodes. Then, with the maturity of AI technology, the content can be seamlessly transformed through face swapping and voice technology.
The disadvantage of this is that the content tailored to the domestic audience is easy to adapt. For example, foreign audiences are not interested in themes such as sons-in-law and mothers-in-law, but love werewolves, vampires and other settings. When forcibly feeding foreign audiences, there was even an absurd scene of "New York First People's Hospital".
In order to improve the quality, domestic short drama companies began to produce "fine chaff" for overseas audiences, and recruited overseas Chinese to serve as script creators, mainly some international students and Chinese film and television practitioners.
It can also be seen that IP and scripts are a major factor restricting short dramas from going overseas. At present, short drama platforms that are active in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and other places, such as ReelShort, GoodShort, FlexTV, etc., all have a parent company behind them that starts as an online article or goes overseas.
In November 2023, the ReelShort short drama APP, an overseas subsidiary of Chinese Online and a subsidiary of Maple Leaf Interactive, once surpassed TikTok to the top of the free app entertainment list of the Apple Store, and the "short drama explosion theory" rose.
Figure | Skit on ReelShort
It is worth noting that although it is to cater to foreigners, the entire production and operation of Chinese short dramas going overseas, except for the actors, is done by the Chinese. "True Reason Research Room" communicated with a number of overseas short drama practitioners, and the reason is embarrassing: only Chinese are enough to roll.
In essence, short dramas are not a content business, but a traffic business.
The birth of a short drama can be mainly simplified into two stages: production and streaming. From the cost point of view, the script, shooting, actors' salaries and other parts that occupy the majority of the traditional film and television industry are often not worth mentioning in a successful short drama. Even if the industry enters the fierce Red Sea battle and begins to pursue quality, the total production cost of a short drama usually does not exceed one million.
However, once the short drama enters the streaming stage, that is, it is advertised on social platforms such as Douyin (overseas TikTok, Facebook, etc.) and achieves positive benefits, the cost of a short drama will be as high as millions or even tens of millions, and the domestic popular short drama will even reach a scale of 100 million yuan.
The person in charge of a game company also revealed to "True Story Research Room" that due to concerns about the escalation of domestic control over games in the future, he also began to consider doing short dramas to go overseas. At the end of last year, the live-action interactive image beautiful girl game "Finished! I'm Surrounded by Beauty" continued to top the best-selling list of steam in China after its release, and also drove the A-share short drama interactive game concept stocks to rise sharply. In this link, game companies are also well versed in it.
For directors and actors, skits are no longer works, but products. The production time of a short drama is compressed to one to two weeks, and the short drama is a new commodity that enterprises continue to launch under the traffic mode, which is no different from the 9 9 agricultural products and 29 9 shirts sold in the live broadcast room. Merchants have a large number of new products, streams, trial and error, as long as they bet on a popular model, they can achieve success.
Rather than saying that the short drama is a film and television going overseas in the Internet era, it is more like a low-end manufacturing that China swept the world ten years ago. Short drama practitioners, whether they are directors, screenwriters, or actors, are a simple part of the assembly line, no different from the workers who stepped on the sewing machine and screwed back then. Wealth and fame have nothing to do with them.