Originally published in China Youth Magazine, Issue 6, 2024
From online articles to short dramas: young people's cool catcher texts - classics
A female college student returned to the 80s, abandoned by her adoptive parents in the city, and married a pig farmer with two children in her second marriage...... This is one of the most popular short dramas "I Was a Stepmother in the Eighties" a while ago, and countless young audiences shouted "up".
This short drama was filmed for less than 10 days, and a single episode is no more than 1 minute long, and it uses 80 episodes to tell the story of a girl who has been contempted and provoked, relying on her charm and wisdom, to take revenge and live a happy life as she wishes. It sounds no different from the cool article routine on the Internet, but it has received hundreds of millions of views in just a few days, and there are more than 20 million recharges on the first day of launch.
From the hidden self-contained accusation of "sinking market" to the declaration of "I am a local dog and I love to watch", I don't know when the short drama, its audience mentality and market environment have changed.
In 2018, short dramas with a single episode of no more than 10 minutes sprouted on the east wind of short videos. In recent years, traditional long video platforms have taken the lead in entering the game, and short video platforms have also established mature business links by relying on the pay-per-episode model.
is also a short drama that shoots 100 episodes in a few days, and can be filmed for two or three hundred thousand yuan, which gathers online elements such as revenge, rebirth and counterattack, but it was difficult to satisfy paying audiences due to actors and visual effects, and it was once unable to compete with the "long drama". However, the accumulation of the industry and its own iteration have prompted short dramas to increase the cost of filming under the quantitative control of the input-output ratio, the service is becoming more and more refined, and the actors' acting skills are online. Coupled with the "streaming" of real money - that is, advertising to the information flow of short video platforms, now, short dramas have become a traffic business on the table.
The Attention Economy: Sinking and Incrementing
How a short drama becomes popular does not depend entirely on word-of-mouth, but more about grabbing users' attention.
The one- or two-minute trailer in the information flow, and the famous scenes with climactic scenes, first whet people's appetites. The platform releases the first 10-15 episodes for free, leaving suspense and attracting follow-up payments. The single-episode payment model means that the "cool point" is often cut off, and users can recharge a few episodes to watch a suspense, or they can recharge all the way to the end, and there will be discounts for batch payment;
According to iiMedia Research's "2023-2024 China Micro Short Drama Market Research Report", in 2023, the size of the short drama market will reach 37.39 billion, an increase of 10 times from two years ago, while the size of China's film market in the same year will be 54.915 billion.
If it is said that the short drama once targeted the middle-aged and elderly groups, it used the stalks that the main Internet users felt that "playing leftover" to attract the "sinking market" that had not caught up with the east wind of the Internet. At present, young people under the age of 30 have gradually become an incremental space in the eyes of this business. Last year, 60% of the user portraits of micro-short dramas were young viewers under the age of 30, and 70% were women.
In fact, young audiences who are familiar with online adaptations of film and television dramas, in order to resist the same routines, procrastinate plots and stylized emotional lay-outs, have long developed the habit of double speed, triple speed, only looking at the face of the protagonist, or only watching "idol hair candy cut". If you don't have the patience and time to watch the whole film, it doesn't matter, there are still a few minutes of film and television commentary.
In this way, young audiences themselves are natural "creators" and recipients of short dramas. And the short drama is "short" enough, and there is no need for commentary, when you see the beginning, you know that the ending will live a happy life, and you only need to ride this exciting roller coaster to reach a satisfactory end. For most people who are anxious and anxious about their busy lives, this certainty is fascinating.
In addition to being short, the popular short drama completely serves the purpose of "looking good". Audio-visual is the main medium at present, with delicate and eye-catching faces, face-to-face direct pictures, and simple stories that do not need to be used...... Just for fun. Therefore, the short drama does not need complex lighting, composition and storyboard design, high-cost material scenes, and does not need logical foreshadowing and delicate psychological description. The audience who only pays attention to faces and only wants to look cool will "go both ways" with the makers who reduce the cost of throttling, and jointly leverage this "traffic cake" of hundreds of millions of yuan.
From web articles to short plays: new stories
The production of short dramas is oriented to the audience on one end, and the upstream IP companies on the other side, of which online literature companies account for a large proportion. Rebirth, Travel, Counterattack, God of War, Overlord, Mengbao...... These seem to be the "traffic passwords" of the old scripts, and they have a massive user base cultivated by the online text market for more than a decade.
The short drama is closely linked again through the new form of Internet audio-visual. If rhythm addition and audio-visual stimulation are the innate advantages of short dramas, then the online text stalk is a major secret to the continued survival of short dramas.
In the 50s of the 20th century, the British scholar Hoggart once said in "The Function of Literacy and Hyphenation" that laborers "regard art as a way of escape, a pleasure but has little to do with the affairs of daily life".
Online literature follows such a "golden rule" to create memes. It must not be the same as reality, it must be detached from life, so that the viewer can add some magnificent imagination to the repetitive daily life at a glance. The unsatisfactory world around them disappears for a moment, and the viewer is free to gallop through a new network of relationships, as if living in it. There is only single-minded emotional care and total attention, where the wounds of reality are compensated, and the unattainable personal desires are realized smoothly and pleasantly.
It is no surprise that the short drama inherits this "compensatory psychological mechanism" of the online text. In the atomized modern society, the confrontation between the individual and loneliness has become a daily situation, and it is more difficult to obtain emotional value in daily shallow interactions. Since deep links are rare in reality, escape to an ideal world and create a new bridge. Until the crises are cleared one by one, the protagonist stands on the top of the mountain and is unmatched, and he is not afraid of harm when he delivers all his trust to his lover.
So, what are the topics that the "compensatory pleasure" of young audiences is focusing on?
Women account for seventy percent of the users of short dramas, and they still love to watch "love". The most popular male protagonist image among women is mostly derived from some "perfect models" jointly created by female authors and female audiences for a long time. They are "masculine", tall, and socially important, but at the same time, they are warm and affectionate, able to see through the emotional needs of their heroines, and recognize their qualities and charms. The heroine may be isolated at first, but after a series of thrilling twists and turns, a happy life falls from the sky.
The current popular image of the heroine projects a variety of qualities such as "intelligence", "uniqueness", "bravery" and "independence", but these stories will always eventually lead to a hidden return - that is, the heroine's charm is always waiting for the stimulation of another individual, as Zhang Ailing said, "the approval of a certain man". Hope is passive, and for the majority of the group, this is still a kind of social subconscious.
To love and be loved, an old story template. No matter how the times change, the audience is convinced in the story that the individual itself deserves to be loved and cared for, even if it is an indirect experience, and the pleasure is real.
In short plays, the supporting roles other than the male and female protagonists are often "tool people". Space is limited, and the shaping is simple, but it can also get a glimpse of the social mentality in it - after all, quantifiable traffic and payment are straightforward. Therefore, the second male number who ignores the heroine's inner and willing will always be out, and the hero and heroine will eventually become a couple after a thousand misunderstandings......
What male audiences like to see is "counterattack" and "God of War", which is similar to the male frequency online article, what is valued is "the recognition of others", and they are eager to be strong, turn the tables against the wind, and go to the end of the world with a sword. Many episodes are also "generic", the abandoned person is begged by his ex-wife to eat back grass, and the hard-working parents finally see their children know their kindness, and the young employees once counterattack and become bosses...... The attention of society is never shifted by the expectations of the individual, and the compensatory pleasure in the short drama naturally has its emotional market.
Emotional commodity: a psychological fairy tale
Therefore, the setting of the short drama seems to be imaginative, but as long as it conforms to the emotional logic and can make people experience emotional nourishment and psychological satisfaction, it will continue to gain the audience.
The more distant the story is from the real world, it is more like a psychological fairy tale for adults, and it is also a soothing experience. The audience then goes up and down, but in the end there is always "consummation", and the certainty of happiness is also pleasant.
Even if the protagonist has a difficult start, it is often to facilitate the audience's substitution, and the emotional satisfaction increases. Under the "cool points", there is aphasia in daily exhaustion. In fact, in Foucault's words, "Watching is a power." "The audience gets the thrill of regaining control of life in the long-term hope of a story of ups and downs.
For the highly stylized and institutionalized modern life, the old pastimes seem extravagant. Du Kang is good, but getting drunk can delay the next day's schedule, grand trips require scarce vacations and a generous budget, and it takes a lot of perseverance to read or think deeply after work.
Paid skits have become an easy way to "go elsewhere", spending a little money to satisfy a tense brain, which is really an easy harmless indulgence.
In fact, for the younger generation, the "shame" of pleasure has long been weakened. "Work" doesn't automatically take precedence over "play" – this is admittedly deviant for the fathers. Whether it is work or play, personal expression and individual value are the essence, and they are also the spiritual needs of each individual.
The current competitors of short dramas are not online texts, film and television dramas, but short videos. Many short videos rely on creating anxiety, which is also the traffic logic of the old era. Skits soothe stress and provide an outlet for release through people's desires. So tomorrow, let's get on the road.
Audiences no longer pay for anxiety, but for fantasy. It's like in an advertisement, where a glamorous celebrity suggests that as long as you use this product, you will become that elegant and decent person. The logic of the skit is similar - you can experience happiness by consumption.
At this point, skits are not creations, but emotional commodities.
As a compensatory emotional experience, this kind of Internet commodity cycle will come to an end. AI models for text-based films like Sora have emerged, and the low cost of short dramas does not seem to be a big advantage. However, even if the novelty disappears and the audience threshold is raised, selling fairy tales and fantasies on the blue sea of emotional needs is an unsinkable boat.
Producer: Pi Jun
Final review: Chen Min Reviewer: Liu Xiao Liu Bowen Editor: Han Dongyi Liuyi