After experiencing savage growth, the skit industry ushered in a "regular army".
On January 29, Douyin officially announced that it had reached a cooperation with Stephen Chow for exclusive boutique micro-short dramas, and the two sides will jointly develop and operate the "9527 Theater", and the first batch of works is already in production.
In recent years, with the rapid development of micro-short dramas, certain drawbacks have also been revealed in terms of content, production level, and production capacity. When the "King of Comedy" and the "King of Traffic" collide, what kind of sparks will be created, and what kind of new stories will the short drama industry tell?
Courtesy of Visual China
"Star Master" entered the game, and the short drama moved towards high-quality products
On January 29, Douyin announced that it had reached an exclusive cooperation with Stephen Chow for high-quality micro-short dramas, and the two sides will jointly develop and operate the "9527 Theater".
The stalk of "9527" comes from the movie "Tang Bohu Dots Autumn Fragrance", which is the code name of the film Zhonghua'an. At present, the first batch of works of "9527 Theater" is already in production. The first season of the first work "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" is expected to meet the audience in May this year. According to reports, Stephen Chow will work together as the initiator to unite outstanding young creators and create content directly for users based on the Douyin account of "Stephen Chow's directorial works".
According to Hong Yong, an expert from the think tank of the 50-person forum on the integration of data and reality in China, Douyin and Stephen Chow can not only use Stephen Chow's brand influence and content creation ability to improve the artistic quality and market attention of micro-short dramas, but also Douyin can further strengthen the content differentiation and high-quality strategy of its own platform through this cooperation.
For Stephen Chow's cross-border short drama, many people in the industry have expressed their expectations. Zhang Shule, an expert at the China Economic Media Think Tank, said that Douyin's introduction of professional partners like Stephen Chow is also a strategy to accelerate the development of short dramas into high-quality dramas. "The effect of Stephen Chow's test of the water will directly affect the determination of more professional film and television workers to attack short dramas. ”
Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Consulting, also holds the same view, he believes that Douyin's linkage with Stephen Chow has made a good start for the industry, and more professionals will intervene in this market in the future.
In recent years, micro-short dramas are attracting more people and funds to enter the game, forming an industrial chain composed of various roles such as copyright owners, producers, streaming parties, and broadcast platforms. However, the brutal growth of the industry has led to uneven quality of content, and professional film and television workers can make up for the shortcomings in this aspect by producing micro-short dramas, especially high-quality micro-short dramas.
Two months ago, the famous Hong Kong director Wang Jing also entered the short drama and served as the chief choreographer and director of the short drama "Billions of Silly Princes". In addition, before Stephen Chow left the stage, a large number of professional film and television institutions had already entered the micro-short drama, including Huayi Brothers, Ningmeng Film and Television, Huace Film and Television, Mango Supermedia, etc. The entry of these professional institutions into the market not only means more adequate funds and resources, but more importantly, brings stricter production standards and quality control.
Zhang Qing, CEO of Mi Li Pictures, believes that the formation of a high-quality work depends on the cooperation of the entire executive team such as directors and actors. But Stephen Chow's entry will definitely drive the overall quality of short dramas to develop in the direction of high quality. Micro-short dramas have entered the stage of "high-quality" from "extensive", and the industry will be more standardized in the future, and high-quality content is expected to become the mainstream of the short drama industry.
Courtesy of Visual China
A place of contention, a new outlet for high-speed development
2023 can be said to be the first year of short dramas, the market size of online micro-short dramas has reached 37.39 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 267.65%, and analysts from the China Business Industry Research Institute predict that it will reach 50.44 billion yuan in 2024, and the short drama market will still be in a period of rapid growth in the next few years. At present, the micro-short drama industry has emerged leading companies such as Honey Network, Kyushu Culture, Silver Land, and Malt Media.
According to data, the current number of short drama users exceeds 500 million, and young users account for nearly 60%. In terms of quantity, the total number of short dramas launched in 2023 will exceed 1,400, a year-on-year increase of 50%. In 2023, there will be 500 micro-short dramas with more than 100 million views on Douyin, of which 12 works will exceed 1 billion views, and the daily number of micro-short dramas will double. The average daily DAU of Kuaishou short dramas reached 270 million, and the number of users who watched more than 10 episodes of heavy short dramas per day reached 94 million, a year-on-year increase of 52.6%.
"Micro-short dramas have the characteristics of short production time, low cost and high income, which is also the reason why large Internet companies and non-professional capital have entered the competition for the micro-short drama market. Xiang Kai, a young Chinese playwright and director, said that Dachang's involvement in short dramas is nothing more than a new round of traffic or attention competition on short video platforms at a time when Internet traffic is peaking.
Recently, Douyin just released the high-quality micro-short drama "Chenxing Project". High-quality content creators from all over the industry can receive up to 5 million yuan in cash and 100 million yuan in traffic support. This is the first time that Douyin has released an industry-wide short drama support plan.
During the same period, Kuaishou also clarified the five major content directions in 2024, planning to launch 20 short dramas with related content, and providing 100 million resource exposure and special platform operations, while increasing support for native paid short dramas. In addition, Kuaishou has launched an independent short drama App Xifan.
On January 16, Liu Huabo, head of Youku PGC's long dramas and short dramas, said that in 2024, Youku's support budget for account-sharing dramas and short dramas will be doubled, and subsidies will be increased in terms of resources and marketing for head projects that perform well during the hot broadcast period, and high-quality film partners who have cooperated for a long time will also be given all-round optimization and support in terms of mechanism policies, cooperation models, and talent recommendations.
Zhang Shule said that short dramas, as a combination of short videos and long videos, are a must for both sides, and they are also the key points for long and short video platforms in the battle for traffic and user time. At the same time, short dramas are more in line with the characteristics of online texts, and they also make the IP adaptation of online texts more useful, and a new blue ocean may emerge in the field of online text derivatives that has been difficult to break through.
Courtesy of Visual China
Standardized management is indispensable for business realization
With an average episode of 3 minutes, a bloody plot, and a dense micro-short drama, it has become an "electronic mustard" for young migrant workers, making them "top", and some people even spend seventy or eighty yuan a night to watch micro-short dramas. Micro-short dramas provide young people with a new way to decompress and bring new short video monetization models, but there are still many irrationalities in their charging models and content production.
Micro-short dramas usually sink into the push content in the form of short videos, and once netizens click to watch, they have invisibly stepped into its consumption trap. The price of a short video episode starts at 1 yuan, and the number of episodes can reach eighty or ninety episodes, which means that netizens need to spend nearly 100 yuan to watch all the content. In addition, in the recharge page of some micro-short drama applets, the option of "automatically unlock the next episode is automatically turned on by default" is automatically checked, which can be automatically deducted, and the elderly group who are not familiar with the function of the mobile phone are not alert to this kind of induced consumption.
The plots of some micro-short dramas are false and exaggerated, the themes are vulgar and curious, and even have bad content such as pornography and violence, which not only contradicts mainstream values, but also touches the bottom line of the law. In this regard, in November 2023, the State Administration of Radio and Television issued the "Detailed Rules for the Creation and Production of Online Micro-short Dramas and Content Review", and carried out a one-month special rectification work, effectively restricting the production of vulgar content under the strong supervision of the market.
Considering the short duration, large number, and high cost of adopting traditional film and television drama review standards, it is necessary to further strengthen and promote the construction of industry self-discipline mechanisms in the future, and establish credit supervision systems such as "blacklists". Through the joint efforts of enterprises, governments, and industries, we will drive micro-short dramas to focus on social issues, explore core values, present the theme of the times with grand narratives with "small incisions", and constantly explore the road of high-quality and professional development of micro-short dramas.
In addition, under the hot surface of the short drama industry, there is an increasingly high cost, and commercialization has become a problem that needs to be solved urgently in the short drama industry chain. Li Tao, founder of Xi'an Fengxing Company, the producer of the explosive short drama "Wushuang", revealed that the short drama relies heavily on investment expenditure, and the so-called breaking 100 million refers to the overall income, of which the traffic cost is more than ninety percent, including manpower and shooting costs, and the net profit after deduction is about several million yuan. As the producer of 14 popular short dramas, Xi'an Fengxing's overall income in short dramas is less than 10 million yuan, and as the founder and chief director, he has less than one million yuan in cash on his account.
In this regard, experts said that recharge payment is not the only way out for micro-short dramas, and in the future, micro-short dramas can also be realized through advertising placement, creative interstitial advertising customization, and urban brand cooperation.
Zhang Liya tidying up