Youku Suspense Theater was upgraded to White Night Theater, as the first debut drama after the theater upgrade, "Faint Fire" did not disappoint.
On the first day of the series, the CCTV rating was 1.7971%, ranking second, the popularity of the station was approaching 10,000, the effective broadcast of Maoyan ranked TOP3, and the effective broadcast market share of Yunhe Data feature film ranked TOP7.
You must know that suspense dramas are relatively narrow, so this result can be said to be quite good. And the audience, who has always been strict in suspense dramas, also praised this drama, "attentive and heartfelt", "both suspenseful and poetic".
Judging from the actual broadcast results and audience reputation, it is not too much to say that "Faint Fire" is a dark horse in Q2. With this good start, the golden sign of the White Nights Theater has also become brighter. When it comes to "dark horse dramas", observers found that many dark horse dramas this year are from Youku, from "Xianxia No. 1 Label" to "Dark Horse Club", what kind of password is hidden behind the flowering of Youku's whole track, and what enlightenment can it bring to the industry?
Let's start with how "Faint Fire" ignited the "fire" of the drama market, and see how Youku has carved out its own path of advancement in the drama market in the red ocean.
"Faint Fire"
Let "her" be seen
At the end of 1999, thousands of lights and bright fireworks were intertwined, and the whole Qingshui Town was immersed in the happiness of entering the millennium. And a murder that happened on Chinese New Year's Eve, like lightning that pierced the sky, broke the feast.
The victim, Xu Yi, is a well-known wealthy businessman in Qingshui Town, and his wife Nanya, who has been abused by him for a long time, is one of the biggest suspects. Nanya voluntarily turned herself in, and even if she didn't, it would be obvious to the rest of the town who the real culprit was. But Lin Fanglu, a criminal policeman who returned to Qingshui Town due to a job transfer, didn't think so, and during his visits and investigations, secrets surfaced one after another.
Whether a drama can retain the audience depends on the quality of the content. Specific to suspense dramas, it depends on two aspects, one is to set up a puzzle, and the other is to tell a story.
The puzzle is a game of IQ between the audience and the creator. When there are multiple reversals in the content, and the audience can't guess the direction of future episodes, the desire to win and lose and curiosity will be hooked together. Storytelling depends on the layout of the whole story, whether it can give unexpected and reasonable logic and motivation, so that the audience can be completely convinced.
At present, it has been less than a week since the broadcast of "Faint Fire", and there have been many rounds of speculation about "who is the murderer". For example, at the beginning, many people speculated that it was Nanya, thinking that her surrender was written in the "murderer preposition"; with the appearance of Zhou Luo, some people thought that it was possible that Zhou Luo helped Nanya kill her husband because of sympathy, but this statement was soon found to be not so tenable. The three friends around Zhou Luo seem to have their own secrets, Deputy Lin, who was transferred back to his hometown from other places, and Nan Ya also had a history of being a young classmate, including the accident of the project contracted by Xu Yi himself, and the absconding of relevant personnel, which made the mystery bigger and bigger.
In addition to the series itself, the polishing of the details of "Faint Fire" is also one of the reasons why it can become a dark horse drama.
Let's talk about the setting of the redemption line in the play first. Zhou Luo and Nanya are both victims of the gossip in the town, each with their own pain, and they are also each other's redeemers, and this line is very infectious and special. Generally speaking, the motives of the characters in the redemption line are mostly "pure", but "Faint Fire" is bold and confronts the complexity and evil of human nature.
Nanya is a woman with a lot of secrets, she likes rock music, loves to read poetry, and is incompatible with Qingshui Town, there are countless rumors around this beautiful woman, and Zhou Luo initially paid attention to Nanya because of her beauty and mystery. He once believed that Nanya was the woman in the rumors, so he said excessive things to Nanya without choosing words. And Nanya, in the face of Zhou Luo's apology, also left loudly "I have the freedom not to forgive".
Who said that all redeemers should be spotless angels? Those who have been tainted with "evil" know how to resist the darkness.
Let's talk about lens aesthetics. The millennium is a special year, where the old and the new are intertwined, and the trend and the retro go hand in hand, which is shown in the lens of "Faint Fire". Library cards, cassette tapes, old-fashioned computers, these things with typical millennial characteristics, combined with the blue and yellow filter, the dream core is full of details. The director's presentation of the millennial aesthetic has its own flavor, adding a unique atmosphere to the series.
In addition to a good plot, excellent character relationships, and exquisite details, "Faint Fire" goes a step further and explores the real plight of women.
The first dilemma is that the women represented by Nanya have suffered from internal harm from within the family for a long time, and for various reasons, they can't find anyone willing to lend a hand, so they can only suffer the status quo in silence.
The second dilemma is that such women often devote all their efforts to the next generation because of their own misfortunes, which has also become their weakness to be pinched and hurt for a long time. Nanya couldn't leave Xu Yi because of her sick daughter.
The third dilemma comes from outside the family. Xu Yi was the perpetrator, but the people in Qingshui Town said that Nanya deserved it, and people even asked "why did you beat her". Just like Sister Guixiang said, "As soon as a woman is good-looking and unwilling to be like others, she is easy to provoke right and wrong", but she herself is obviously the one who is most unwilling to provoke right and wrong.
Domestic violence and acquaintance violence have been deeply analyzed and discussed in the play. Qingshui Town is actually a mirror that illuminates reality, because there are many unfortunate and resilient women like Nanya in our lives, and if we want to solve their predicament, we must first let their predicament be seen by the outside world.
As the director said: For these women's injuries and predicaments, we need help from the social level, and we also need a drama to wake up. Recently, actor Ying'er updated a long article on social platforms, telling her feelings after chasing the latest episode of "Faint Fire", saying that "marriage is not a fig leaf for domestic violence", which is the concrete embodiment of the humanistic care and power brought by the series.
How can such a drama with both content quality and social responsibility not be recognized and hotly discussed by the audience.
The explosion continues
Youku becomes a "dark horse incubation pool"
Although "Faint Fire" has been broadcast for less than a week, some viewers have already said, "What am I watching when such a good-looking drama ends". With the official announcement of the official release of another new drama "New Life" of the White Night Theater on May 6, these audiences no longer need to worry about the problem of no good dramas to watch.
"New Life" kicks off with the death of the fraud genius Fei Ke, and through the narration of five victims of the scam at the memorial service, Fei Ke's life is spread out in a jigsaw puzzle way. Film critics who participated in the early viewing of the film said that "New Life" is an out-and-out drama version of Rashomon - the liar may not have good intentions, the victim may not be completely innocent, and the desires of all beings and the chaos of good and evil are portrayed very profoundly.
The main creative team of "New Life" ensures its quality. This is the director's second anti-fraud work after "All or Nothing", and of course this is also his first drama series.
The Olympic bid said that the whole filming process was like a huge puzzle, because "the story presented in the script has truth, lies, and intersections of time points, resulting in many actors being confused at the moment of performance, in fact, they themselves don't quite know whether they are acting in reality or fiction." ”
Producers Gao Boyang and Zheng Lin revealed that unlike the previous anti-fraud themes, "New Life" focuses on both the scammer and the victim, the scammer is hateful, and the victim also has his own human weaknesses. Only by knowing why the scammers are deceived and why the victims are deceived can the audience truly be inspired and nourished by the content of the series.
Whether it is the main creative team or the subject matter, it is full of expectations. I believe that "New Life" will continue to further light up the "fire" ignited by "Faint Fire" and make it more gorgeous.
And if you jump out of a single theater, it is not difficult to find that since the end of last year, Youku has become a "dark horse club".
"The Queen of News", which was broadcast at the end of last year, won 1464 hot searches on the whole network, with a score of 8.6 on Weibo, TOP1 in the same period, dominating the list of Chinese word-of-mouth dramas for 4 consecutive weeks, and was praised by netizens as "the light of Hong Kong dramas", and it also triggered extensive discussions on women's workplace dilemmas, professionalism and other workplace issues on the whole network.
At the beginning of the year, the dark horse "The Case of Tang Di Gong" won the first place on the popularity list on Maoyan, Vlinkage and other platforms, and was rated as an S+ drama series by Yunhe, with nearly 1,000 hot searches on the whole network, and the total number of views on Douyin exceeded 9.6 billion times. It organically combines oriental classical aesthetics with suspense detectives, and the group portrait is impressive, and it has attracted many overseas audiences, forming an effective culture through the content to go overseas.
The youth drama "Flying Life Love" has not yet been broadcast, and the double-end reservation has reached 220W, with 1,864 hot searches on the whole network, and nearly 5 billion views of the main topic of Douyin. The story of youth chasing dreams touched people's hearts, and the audience spontaneously joined in the meme, so that the influence of the drama continued to radiate outward and break the circle.
and "Flower Order", which just finished broadcasting some time ago, quickly exceeded 10,000 on Youku after it was broadcast, becoming the fastest drama on Youku this year. At the same time, "Flower Order" also won the daily crown of Maoyan online drama popularity 14 times, and won the weekly crown of Maoyan online drama popularity twice, from the starring role to the supporting role, it was blessed and fed, and all members were on the table. The novel characters of the male and female protagonists with feelings, and the suspenseful detective case reveals a story of human nature, all of which are boosting "The Order of the Flowers" to "fight its way out".
Judging from the track distribution of Youku's dark horse dramas, Youku not only maintains its absolute advantage in Xianxia costume dramas, but also performs well in modern dramas and suspense dramas. In this fierce competition and the market is becoming more and more volatile, what is Youku doing right?
Innovate and change
Youku's "Dark Horse Methodology"
In 2024, why will it become Youku's "year of dark horse dramas"? Observers believe that this is the inevitable result of long-term accumulation and accumulation. From last year's Youku Vice President Xie Ying's speech "Youku's Persistence and Innovation", we can find a more specific answer.
For the outside world, Youku is equal to "the first brand of Xianxia", which is an indisputable fact. But this does not mean that Youku wants to exert its strength on the track of Xianxia or ancient costumes, on the contrary, they have been exploring more diverse themes and expressions.
Xie Ying said: "In terms of the head content of the mainstream track, Youku will continue to increase investment in high-quality dramas on the one hand, continue to deepen the reserve of big dramas, and on the other hand, it will also adhere to micro-innovation and multi-dimensional exploration, striving to inject more realistic texture into costume dramas and open up more space for expression for reality-themed dramas." ”
To put it more bluntly, Youku has completed the expansion of existing genre themes through the integration of genre superposition and elements. We found that Youku's dark horse dramas have never been suspense dramas that only talk about suspense, and medical dramas only have medical treatment, but a mixture of various types of elements, giving the audience a new experience.
For example, the dark horse drama "Flower Order", it is true that it is an ancient puppet drama, but the content does not only stay at the level of "the emotional line of the male and female protagonists", but adds a detective line that uses the past to metaphor the present and the treacherous court line, and explores practical issues such as the death of the original family and the evil of school violence. When romanticism and realism are combined, the narrative becomes more solid, the relationships between the characters are more realistic, and the audience is more likely to be touched.
Modern dramas are also suitable for this methodology, as mentioned in the analysis of "Faint Fire" above, its story expression does not stop at the level of "who is the murderer", as the plot deepens, social issues such as women's plight and acquaintance violence are displayed in front of the audience at a glance. This kind of treatment makes the story itself more powerful and has a warning significance to society.
It must be admitted that the current drama market is already a red ocean, and the solidification of genres is even more troublesome for many creators. Youku has given existing genre dramas a "new life" through innovation, and the audience has gained a new experience from it. Of course, theme innovation is a means to attract the attention of the audience, and only with excellent content can the audience be retained and the word-of-mouth continues to ferment. Obviously, Youku's innovation is not superficial, but has been deeply polished and reshaped from the subject matter to the content.
It can be said that the reason why dark horse dramas frequently appear on Youku is that it has brought a new growth flywheel by relying on theme innovation and excellent content. By doing the right content increment, refine the vertical track, and break the type solidification.
Judging from the drama reserves, there will be a large number of dark horse dramas born on Youku in the future:
The White Night Theater has "Once Upon a Time in the Borderwater", which is adapted from the novel of the same name by the Genius Catcher Project Oral True Story Library, the suspense drama "Sandstorm" escorted by the gold medal creative team composed of Gao Qunshu, Cao Baoping and Zhao Dongling, and six dramas including the criminal investigation and anti-drug drama "Snow Labyrinth" supervised by Zhang Yimou and directed by Lu Xing.
In terms of costume dramas, there are Xiao Zhan and Zhang Jingyi leading and starring in the conspiracy drama "The Legend of the Tibetan Sea", Yang Yang and Jin Chen's "The Legend of Mortal Cultivation of Immortals", and Song Weilong's partner Ju Jingyi's "A Thousand Fragrances" is ready to go. In addition, modern dramas, youth dramas and other genres, Youku also has reserves in hand.
The competition in the drama market is becoming more and more fierce, and almost all genres have been excavated, which is an objective fact. But there is no way to break the situation, the market will always be tolerant of new things, and the so-called "new" and "change" are often not the subversive drastic changes that we understand in the past, but by a little change caused by qualitative change, thick and thin.
Dark horse dramas, in fact, are also the result of this long-term accumulation and then outbreak. Of course, this requires a keen observation of the industry, being able to capture "where to change", and patience to continue to walk through the seemingly unapproachable path when others are giving up.
So we have reason to believe that with the mastery of the methodology and a mature industrial creation system, Youku, the "No. 1 Label of Xianxia", will soon be upgraded to Youku, the "Dark Horse Label of Dramas", to bring more high-quality dramas to the audience.