"The short drama that was launched recently, I heard that it earned 800 million. "The boss of a leading live broadcast company with a total monthly turnover of 40 million yuan and a total revenue of more than 100 million yuan for three consecutive years sat in front of me, his eyes were warm, and his tone was obvious envy.
Since last year, "the production cost is hundreds of thousands, and the recharge income is hundreds of millions" has gradually become the shining label of the short drama, making it once replace stocks, real estate and gold, and become the most popular investment option around me. With this question, I found Sanji, a producer of a large video platform, with more than ten years of experience in film and television production, and has created three or four short dramas that can be called "hits" in the industry, and is intensively planning new projects.
"Truth be told, most of the skits lose money. Sanji bluntly punctured the golden bubble surrounding the industry, and then popularized science to me, the current short dramas are roughly divided into two categories: one is high-quality short dramas, each episode may be 2 to 5 minutes long, or more than 10 minutes, usually within 30 episodes, will be broadcast on short video or long video platforms, and its main revenue model is business placement, patch advertising, live streaming and account sharing.
Online short drama "I was a stepmother in the 80s" / Photo source: Visual China
The other is a small program drama, a single episode is about 1 to 2 minutes long, mostly about 100 episodes, the picture is mainly vertical screen, the overall production is rough, and the plot has dense reversal bridges, generally on WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou and other short video platforms Mini Programs are launched, mainly through user recharge to get returns.
Although focusing on the production of high-quality short dramas, Sanji has also participated in several mini-program dramas, "The production of this kind of drama is based on Internet thinking, which is different from high-quality dramas, and is more like a probability product." The successful cases of "making hundreds of millions of dollars in a few days" circulating in the market mainly refer to small program dramas, but Sanji believes that this kind of remarks are also mixed with a lot of "cat greasy" - her short drama to achieve a revenue of 10 million is an example, in which the cost of streaming may be as high as 90%, and the remaining 10% of the gross profit, the production company can only get about eighty percent at most, "It is impossible to say that my drama has broadcast 800 million, and I will earn 800 million."
Streaming, mostly refers to intercepting the highlight clips in the short drama and placing information flow advertisements on multiple channels such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Baidu, and Tencent to attract new users to pay to watch. The industry defaults that this is the key to determining whether a mini program drama can become a "hit".
After entering the short drama industry, Zeng Yongle and Mao Mengjia received a lot of bizarre production needs, and one investor even hoped that they could shoot a 100-episode mini program drama at a cost of 5,000 yuan.
Mao Mengjia is also a short drama producer, having previously participated in the filming of some large-scale TV series and films, and has turned to specialized short drama projects since last year. "Some platforms that make dramas, it directly converts income on the drama, and they must work hard to stream. Many of the 'hot models' you see are not suddenly 'explosive', and there must be other operations later. In Mao Mengjia's view, the life cycle of the mini program short drama on the market is only about 30 days, and the prime broadcast period is usually 1 to 3 days after the launch.
"So it's more of a traffic business. Mao Mengjia took a male frequency short drama with high market recognition as an example: "It invested 10 million to 20 million at the beginning, and it didn't make any money at that time, and it has always been in a state of loss." In the end, this mini-program short drama with a production cost of only three or four hundred thousand yuan achieved a revenue of more than 200 million, but after deducting the cost of streaming, the gross profit was only a few million yuan, and this did not take into account the profit sharing of the rest of the participants.
In the eyes of practitioners, the hundreds, if not thousands, times return on investment is just a pure lie. Even if we don't talk about the high cost of traffic, there are only a few short dramas that can really be effectively broadcast, but in reality, there is still a steady stream of wealth myths that have been pushed to the front of the stage, causing wider attention.
A lot of hot money and people are pouring into this track. Not long ago, the investors that Sanji has cooperated with participated in the industry conference of a small program drama, and a "investor" sitting next to him is a middle-aged woman from a small county, while on the other side, sitting is a producer of a first-line commercial film director team with billions of box office.
"Once these mini program dramas 'explode', not only can they make a profit, but they can achieve a large amount of turnover, and they can leverage the company's stock price and bank loans, so you can see income stories like 100 million and 200 million at every turn!" Sanji added.
The disorderly expansion of the market has created chaos in content production. Mao Mengjia's co-partner, director of photography, Zeng Yongle, told me that in Hengdian alone, there are now 600 to 1,000 short dramas that are being filmed at the same time in a single day, "and that's not counting the filming in Xiangshan Film and Television City, Henan and Beijing." Among the massive projects, high-quality short dramas with high sound and picture quality and rigorous plot logic can only account for one or two percent of the total at most.
Mao Mengjia and Zeng Yongle work for a small film and television company, and they face a more complex creative environment than large institutions. "There is a saying in our industry that any restaurant owner who sells rice noodles can come to the manager. Zeng Yongle quipped, and behind this jargon is the ultra-low production threshold of short dramas, "that is, you can make short dramas with any amount of money." The low production cost is an important factor in the popularity of short dramas. Last spring, Mao Mengjia and Zeng Yongle tried the water to shoot short dramas, and quickly completed several works in two or three months, but the highest investment they received did not exceed one million yuan.
Because of the increasingly fierce competition, the cost of high-quality short dramas is increasing, and the few short drama producers I have met have budgets ranging from one million yuan to five or six million yuan for a single project, and even more than 10 million yuan. In contrast, the production cost of mini program dramas has also risen slightly, but hundreds of thousands of yuan is the limit that most employers are willing to give.
In Jinhua, Zhejiang, Hengdian Film and Television City, a film and television worker uses a vertical screen monitor to direct a play. / Source: Visual China
Zeng Yongle doesn't want to meet investors who are "playing with funds", they are similar to fund brokers, raising funds from various channels on the one hand, and finding downstream production companies on the other hand, so that they can complete the delivery of dramas. "The drama made by these people must be rough, because he wants to make money, and he has to take at least 40% to 50% of the original investment, and there is not much filming funds left, and there are not enough materials for production and publicity!"
If you want to make a good short drama, the production fee of one million yuan is the baseline that Zeng Yongle agrees, "It can ensure the basic operation of a crew and give everyone time to create." And a large amount of compressed capital investment will greatly affect the way the crew works, "just shoot day and night, without considering the plot, without considering any other aspects, as long as it can be filmed."
After switching from the production of long dramas to short dramas, Mao Mengjia's mentality has changed significantly. In the past, the crew started filming, although the work cycle was as long as three or four months, as a producer, she was always in a happy mood, and often took food and drink to visit the scene to reward the crew members. But now that the short drama project is about to start, she feels very painful: "The production cycle of the short drama is short, just a few days, and we have to find various ways to reduce the cost and adjust the emotions of the staff." The position of the short drama crew is "one radish occupies several pits", and after the start-up, it "rotates continuously", and there is almost no rest time. The work on site is stressful, even if it only needs to last for a few days in a row, Mao Mengjia will say in her heart: "Oh my God, when will the filming be finished? It's so hard to endure day by day!"
The "mixed" filming scene also brought her more suppressed emotions. Now, except for some key projects with sufficient production costs that can use well-known professional actors, most of the short dramas are filmed with amateur actors or recent college graduates. The remuneration of the leading actor in the short drama is not too low, and the male and female protagonists can get up to three or four thousand yuan a day, but Mao Mengjia has met actors who can't even speak their lines clearly on the set, "A long line, say a sentence and call someone to remind a sentence, after saying the previous sentence, ask someone to remind you, and then say another sentence." She felt ridiculous, how could there be such an actor, can this also be called an actor?
It is difficult for some rookie actors to cooperate with the crew scheduling on the filming site, and some people are also contaminated with "vices" early. Mao Mengjia had a skit project that started in winter, when it was snowing, and the actors were grinding indoors, making all the staff wait for more than an hour in the snow outside, "They have not been baptized by the rules of the regular crew, and they do not have professional qualities, they only feel that they are actors, which is very powerful."
In addition to these, on the set of the short drama described by Zeng Yongle as "nothing", there are more problems waiting for him and Mao Mengjia to solve. The two had previously assisted in the filming of a project, and the investor appointed a director in his forties who did not have any film or television works. The shooting lasted 5 days, and the director temporarily activated the camera equipment that he had never used before, but did not take Zeng Yongle's professional advice on the spot. In the end, the filmed materials could not be connected normally in terms of picture and plot, and even the setting of the characters deviated from common sense.
"For example, the protagonist is very depressed at the beginning and has a lot on his mind. He suffered a lot of blows in his life and returned to his hometown. In the KTV of the hometown party, he met a big brother, who handed him a bank card, and then his body twisted up instantly. Mao Mengjia imitated the exaggerated movements designed by the director, and her tone was bitter: "It's not appropriate for us to mention this to him on the spot, but ...... It can only be said that we have fulfilled our obligation to remind. ”
Mao Mengjia's description piqued my interest, but when I asked to see the finished film of this short drama, she resolutely dissuaded: "It's so ugly, don't watch it, it's too embarrassing!"
Ren Xiaoliang is the founder of "Pen Farming", a studio focusing on the creation of short dramas and short video content, and she is also the chief screenwriter of the well-known short drama "Twenty-Nine", which has more than 780 million views. Mao Mengjia once reminded me that this vertical screen short drama about a full-time rich wife teaming up with a "little three" to fight her ex-husband "gave the industry a good start".
Another short drama "The Great New Year" written by his studio (produced by Douyin and Perfect World Film and Television, and produced by Perfect Declaration) "dominated" Douyin's short drama channel during the Spring Festival in 2024, and at the end of the year, the number of views of the feature film exceeded 1 billion, and the total number of likes exceeded 9.5 million, of which the fourth episode received 1.705 million likes and 42,000 comments. In the comment area, many female viewers left messages about their similar situations and troubles in marriage, and they were touched by some classic lines in the play, and felt that this drama was their "Internet mouthpiece".
In order to break through the information cocoon and avoid the creator's "self-esteem", Ren Xiaoshao also has a unique way of judging whether the content he plans is novel. She often grabs ten new plot segments with the screenwriters at a time, throws them on the TV set in the conference room, and then pulls colleagues from other positions to judge together, "Is this paragraph interesting?", "Have you seen it before?", "Do you think it's funny?", and this kind of behavior is also jokingly called "internal public execution".
Before creating the short play, Ren Xiaoliang wrote online articles, worked as a content editor of the official account, and was also responsible for commercial content for a period of time, and has achieved some good results. As the traffic pool of the WeChat public account shrank, she turned her head and jumped into the wave of short video development. In the four years she has been in the industry, she has accumulated several masterpieces, but she still feels: "Among all the content carriers I have written, short dramas are the most difficult one." ”
It is difficult for the creator of the short drama to have a sense of security, and Ren Xiaoliang always feels that he is "quite humble". Watching a skit is not the same as watching a movie, "the audience is already sitting in the theater, and after ten minutes they feel that it is not good, and they will persuade themselves to taste it again, there is no such process in the skit", she tried to show people's mentality when watching the skit with simple tone words: "They are, wow, oh, ah, what, what!"
In today's world, people are less patient and more in pursuit of instant pleasure, and the cost of giving up a skit is too low. Ren imagines herself as a skit viewer, lying on the bed, couch, or anywhere else with her phone in hand, "putting her left foot on her right foot, then raising her finger to the screen and saying goodbye," and all possibilities are over. The time for short-form content to win the audience may only be three seconds, "In a medium like video, three seconds may not be able to finish a complex line, but three seconds is enough to decide the life and death of a short drama."
The driving force behind many overseas short dramas is also Chinese companies. On April 22, 2024, in Beijing, the audience showed the promotional photo posters of the popular European and American short dramas "Fate My Taboo Alpha" and "Never Divorce the Secret Billionaire Heir" that they were watching. / Source: Visual China
is also a plot of marriage being intervened by a third party and the heroine's return of revenge, some viewers slice and compare the classic TV series with "Twenty-Nine" with the same theme, but found that in the 45-minute duration, the former is only the content of one episode, "but "Twenty-Nine" has reached the end of the day.
Short dramas have a completely different creative logic from long dramas, and each of its links is accelerating, and finally stacked into a new content expression. In Ren Xiaoscall's view, it is far more appropriate to regard it as a kind of literary and artistic work than to call it an Internet product. She is accustomed to calling the audience "users", and if she wants to build a good short drama product, the core is: always regard the user as the most important.
"You need to know exactly who your users are, what they're familiar with and what they're not, what do your users want to know, and the last bit of what you leave to yourself is, 'What else do you want to give your users?'"
wants to capture the audience's attention in a very short period of time, in the past two years, Ren Xiaoliang has gradually developed some of his own methodology. The studio she founded has a requirement for all the screenwriters she works with: don't write stories you don't like, don't write stories that you get tired of, and don't write characters that you find boring.
"One of the terrible things that the screenwriters I work with is that they often leave only one line or one scene when the first draft is handed in, and everything else is left behind, and the rest is rewritten. Ren Xiaoshallot did the same with the script she wrote, some screenwriters would angrily ask her why, and she only replied: "All of these, I think users have seen them." "In order to fit the current public opinion and situation, there are about 30 episodes of the short drama "New Year" broadcast during the Spring Festival this year.
If you want to create an eye-catching short drama, you may also need to have some unique skills. Although the tracks are different, Ren Xiaolian is also a loyal viewer of many mini program dramas, and she has watched the well-known male frequency "hit" "Wushuang" three times. "After watching it, I think it's really a great product!" She found that this 100-episode short drama was cleverly designed and fast-paced in every link, and when she tried to watch it at twice the speed, she couldn't keep up with the plot.
A delicate, compact plot can continue to occupy the audience's attention, but if you want them to pay, you have to rely on another creative logic - urging extreme emotions. "When will you pay? Therefore, if the essence of payment is heavier and more agitated emotions, it is not difficult for you to understand why Mini Program dramas are always slapping in the face, always counterattacking, always cool, and always being wronged. ”
When watching another mini program drama with excellent results, Ren Xiaolian also wrote down the feelings of each episode in his notebook, and found that what was left on it was the same continuous and surging emotion, "It's too powerful, the coherence of emotions is too good", she had to admit that even the male protagonist who was dissatisfied with herself at the beginning became pleasing to the eye in the end, "It's really something".
All the practitioners we contacted believe that short dramas will not die out in a short time, however, with more and more "regular army" in the film and television industry entering the market in the past six months, coupled with the continuous tightening of regulatory policies, the entire industry will have a "big reshuffle" in the next year, and continue to develop in the direction of standardization and quality. (Part of the stills taken by: Li Xiao)
摄影 陈斌、Zijun Ma
采访、撰文 黑妙妙,Sisi
Edited by Yang Yuchi
Editorial Assistant J· Hui
This is an abridged version of this article and the full text was published in the May issue of ELLEMEN