Text | New Sound Pro, Author | Zhang Yitong, He Jing
"Xinsheng Pro" learned from multiple sources that after the Spring Festival this year, the vertical screen short drama crew in Hengdian has a significant decreasing trend.
Compared with the daily group news summary of Hengdian, this change can also be clearly felt. In September last year, nearly 60 vertical screen short dramas were filmed in Hengdian in a week, and by December, this number dropped to more than 40, and in the latest week, there are only about 30 vertical screen short drama crews planned to start shooting in Hengdian.
Representing the highest level of industrialization clusters in China's film and television industry, in 2023, driven by the continuous rise in the short drama market, a large number of vertical screen short drama crews will emerge in Hengdian, and there is even a saying that Hengdian has become a "vertical" store for a while.
Now, industry participants are telling us: "Hengdian has become a "Heng" store again. 」
Most people in the industry believe that this is a normal phenomenon for the boom to recede and the industry to return to rationality. Investors who were once attracted by the amount of more than 100 million recharges, and who flocked to it, are gradually realizing that the mini program skits are far less profitable than they imagined. Under the fierce competition of high homogeneity, it is rare to become a hit. Even if you are lucky enough to win a hit, the high cost of streaming and the opacity of platform data make the benefits that producers and producers can share is very limited.
"The first wave of leek-cutters have already left. The decrease in the vertical screen crew of Hengdian is considered by some practitioners to be a concrete manifestation of the market decline.
At the same time, emerging industries, which are regarded as having huge development prospects, are accelerating the construction of short drama industry bases and investing relevant funds and policy support. As the ecology of Hengdian becomes more and more involuted, some short drama production companies are taking the initiative to leave Hengdian and go to more cities to find new opportunities.
It's getting harder and harder to make money from skits
Xiao Wang has been a lighting engineer in Hengdian for 7 years, in addition to undertaking lighting work, he also forms a team as a producer to take on production projects related to short dramas. He could clearly sense that the enthusiasm of investors and producers for short dramas was declining.
"Last year, when I was at my craziest point, about 15 to 16 producers a month called me and said they were going to do skiss, and now there's no one left. 」
The most immediate reason for this change is the decline in earnings.
Although tens of millions or hundreds of millions of recharges are often made, it is difficult for the money to fall on the producer, "The producer can only get 7%, 80% of the streaming fees for platforms such as Douyin and Weibo, 10% for WeChat tolls, and 3% for the streaming team. 」
During the Spring Festival, the hit short drama "I Was a Stepmother in the 80s" recharged more than 80 million, but the Mimeng team actually received only more than 5 million, deducting the production costs, and only earned more than 2 million in the end.
For the current mini program short dramas that usually cost five or six hundred thousand yuan, if you want to make a profit, you need to recharge at least 10 million. In other words, only by making explosive models can you make money. However, under the fierce and homogeneous competition, it is becoming more and more difficult to explode, and in addition, Mini Program short dramas are rapidly involved in the low-price war, which means that the total amount of recharge brought by the same user volume is less, and most of the people who lose money have become the majority, "80%-90% of Mini Program short dramas are loss-making. 」
At the same time, the overall recharge market is also declining, and some senior practitioners revealed that the daily recharge consumption of vertical screen paid short dramas has fallen from an average of 60 million per day last year to 50 million, because the homogenization of content is too serious and the supply of new content is not available.
Recently, a screenshot of the circle of friends about the dissolution of the short drama company Hangzhou Yimeng has been circulated in various short drama communities, and the screenshot shows that Yimeng, one of the producers of Crazy Brother Yang's short drama, has launched 27 short dramas and lost 30 million.
For the producers, the uncertainty is also the opacity of the platform's data. "The platform says how much you make, you just make as much as you make. Although some leading practitioners said that as a strong content producer, they can ask to see the backstage flow, but for most small teams, it is difficult to fight for the right to speak with the platform.
A film and television practitioner told us that a friend of his invested in 6 short dramas last year, only 1 made 20,000 yuan, and the remaining 5 lost money.
Cost reduction: 6 days to complete the auction is the new industry rule
With a limited rate of return, investors try to reduce losses and increase profit margins by further reducing costs. Xiao Gao is active in the short drama circle in Hengdian as a personal coordinator, and after October last year, she clearly felt that most of the short drama crews began to reduce costs, which was directly reflected in the further compression of the filming cycle. 6 days is becoming an invisible rule in the mini program short drama industry, and it is almost impossible to overdue, the crew that was originally scheduled to shoot in 7 days will hope that the team can complete the work in 6 days, and some crews will even say that they will shoot for 6 days when recruiting.
Another detail that Kodaka observed was that the number of box lunches ordered by the crew was decreasing. "Some people don't eat the crew's box lunch, in the past, the crew would book the full quota according to the capitation, but now some crews will order less than a dozen servings. 」
At the same time, there are increasing content requirements from users of short dramas. Xiao Wang has been in contact with short dramas since 2019, when the production cost of a short drama only needed 15-200,000 yuan, and three or four people built a small team, and it could be filmed in three or four days. "At that time, there were almost no requirements for content, and there was no moderation. 」
Nowadays, a standard vertical screen skit crew usually has twenty or thirty people. In the past, it was all dubbing, but now there is a special recording department for live recording, and one choreographer was enough in the past, but now there are more types of work such as screenwriters, directors, and executive directors, and it has changed from a short video shooting method to a serious crew.
Xiao Gao also often played a supporting role while being the crew coordinator around 2021, at that time, the requirements for the actors' acting skills were not high, basically as long as they finished the lines, they could pass, in order to save time, the director would try his best to pass.
But this situation rarely occurs now, and the audience has higher requirements for the actors' acting skills, and in order to achieve a good presentation effect, it is not uncommon to shoot a shot for two or three hours.
The shooting cycle has been compressed, but the single shooting time is increasing, and for frontline workers, the average daily working hours have to be further increased. Many practitioners told us that during the group period, the daily sleep time was no more than four hours, and Xiao Gao told us that she had worked with a group before, and she could only sleep for two hours almost every day during the entire filming period.
This has become the core reason why many front-line participants choose to leave the short drama industry, many of Xiao Wang's friends have switched careers to shoot horizontal screen short dramas and long dramas, and Xiao Gao no longer seamlessly joins the group as he did last year, but leaves himself some respite time according to his physical condition, "It's really too tired. 」
Self-Closed: It's getting harder and harder for external teams to pick up work
Wei is a member of a professional photography team in Hengdian all year round. He began to participate in the filming of vertical screen short dramas in early 2023 and was one of the first professional photographers to enter the industry. Last year, his team participated in the production of a number of mini-program short dramas.
After the Spring Festival, photographer Wei obviously felt that it was not as easy as before. A small production company that had signed a contract with them used to send at least 6 scripts a month to inquire about the schedule, but this year Wei took the initiative to find the other party, but was told that there was no project to do.
"It's already closed the loop. Wei told us that in order to reduce costs and better control the quality of content, platforms and production companies are gradually turning to the creation of a closed-loop ecosystem. The formation of a closed loop is transmitted layer by layer, the platform chooses long-term cooperation or its own production company, and the production team is gradually inclined to contract and self-build in the selection of specific types of work such as photography and lighting.
As a result, relatively independent external teams like Wei's team are getting fewer and fewer jobs.
Some production companies have approached Wei, hoping that they can become their exclusive signing team, but Wei did not agree. Closing the loop and being part of the ecosystem may lead to more and more stable projects, but it also means giving up bargaining power.
In an ecosystem as highly involuted as Hengdian, this is extremely dangerous, and the other side of the strong cluster effect is the endless price war between the production teams. "Hengdian has entered a situation of fighting, and if you want, there will always be a cheaper team. Entering the closed loop, it is only possible to be further squeezed, "How to reduce costs is the easiest, of course, to reduce employee costs." 」
After the Spring Festival, Wei and his team connected more customized short drama projects launched on Douyin and Kuaishou, including high-quality short dramas cooperated by the platform and brand customized dramas. Compared with mini programs, investors in this type of drama focus on content quality and less on monetization efficiency, and front-line workers can get relatively large creative space in terms of cost and time.
Compared with many short drama teams in Hengdian that rely on connections and have only one actual fixed member, these production teams are also more professional and stable.
Out-of-town: New first-tier cities are the first choice
In February this year, Wei only took one job in Hengdian. Just before we called, he had just finished filming two short dramas in Shenzhen and was planning to travel to Hangzhou to work on a new project. From March to April, he was almost not in Hengdian, but filmed all over the country.
He observes that more and more skit companies are leaving Hengdian to look for opportunities across the country.
"There are fewer short drama news in Hengdian, but more in other parts of the country. 」
There are three main reasons behind this transfer: first, a large number of customized projects from Doukuai and brands do not stick to the theme of ancient costumes, so there is no need to take Hengdian as the core filming location; second, after the vertical screen ecology of Hengdian gradually closes the loop, there are fewer and fewer projects flowing to the market, and independent teams have to go to other places to find cooperation possibilities with new platforms; third, the accelerated construction of short drama bases and policy support in various places have attracted many teams to move out.
This change can also be seen from the collation of actor recruitment information in Hengdian. In a group news summary in November last year, there have been many recruitment of short drama crews filmed outside Hengdian, and cities such as Qiandao Lake, Qingdao, and Hangzhou are among them.
Wei observed that at the opening ceremony of many vertical screen crews from other places, some Hengdian teams would be seen, "It may be in the form of co-production first, but they are moving out one after another. 」
New first-tier cities such as Chengdu, Wuxi, and Hangzhou are currently one of the main relocation places for Hengdian short drama companies, which are mostly related to local short drama support policies. For example, the three districts of Yuhang, Linping and West Lake in Hangzhou have all issued relevant short drama support policies and invested in the construction of large-scale production bases, attracting a large number of short drama companies to the local area.
Wei is willing to see this dispersion as a manifestation of the improvement of the industry, compared with last year's situation when everyone flocked to Hengdian like weeds, the industry began to diverge, speculators were eliminated, and the quality of content was improving. This has been verified in our conversations with many practitioners, from the shooting process to the specific types of lighting, makeup, and lighting work, the degree of specialization of short dramas is constantly improving.
Compared with classmate Wei and Xiao Wang, Xiao Gao, who has always joined the group as an individual, is actually not sensitive to the increase or decrease in the number of Hengdian crews, "There are always people coming in and people going out here, maybe not as many as before, but not too little. 」
But she still has a faint anxiety, the 2C attribute of the mini program skit means that once it loses the attention from users, it loses everything. "After the Spring Festival, I feel that the current audience doesn't seem to like watching vertical screen dramas so much. The label of wanting to change careers is still hanging on the homepage of Xiao Gao's Little Red Book.
The multiple-choice question is placed in front of everyone, is it to leave Hengdian, or to leave the vertical screen skit?