Author / Suda
In 2014, because of the high-scoring web dramas such as "Soul Ferry" and "Hurry That Year", it was called "the first year of online self-made dramas".
After 6 years of ups and downs, the field of online self-made dramas has set off a "short drama tide", "Detective Chinatown", "Longling Labyrinth", "I am Yu Huanshui" and other high-quality network dramas that are out of the circle, all less than 20 episodes, with a "short and concise" attitude, giving the drama industry a strong impact, this year is called "the first year of short dramas", no exaggeration.
The "short dramas" we are talking about refer to mainstream dramas that shorten the total number of episodes to 20 episodes under the "episode restriction order" policy, and the single episode length of a few minutes or ten minutes of bubble noodles and femme dramas is not within the scope of the main discussion.
This year's "short drama tide" appeared in fact "planned for a long time", on the one hand, because the development of the industry is in trouble, the phenomenon of "water injection" of episodes is serious, the originality is insufficient, and the success rate of head episodes is getting lower and lower. Referring to the once popular Taiwan idol drama, it is the lesson of blood and tears, the number of episodes is injected with water, the story is plagiarized, and the ratings and investment are both declining, resulting in a vicious circle of the entire industry;
On the other hand, the post-95 and post-00 audiences are rising and gradually becoming the mainstream of the drama market, and the "back waves" who are immersed in short videos and soaking in Bilibili all day long are becoming more and more difficult to adapt to the rhythm of long dramas, and now the drama style dominated by the aesthetics of the "front waves" is also disconnected from its aesthetics.
At present, the attitude of advertisers has begun to become cautious, and the drama industry has actually entered a loosening period that can leverage the inherent interest model. The "short drama revolution" is about to come out, and there is no shortage of arguments in the industry about the development of the foreign short drama model, but in fact, short may not be able to "short" out of quality, "short" can not solve all problems. Copying that does not conform to the national conditions is destined to achieve half the work.
And as early as 2008, the average total number of episodes of each domestic drama was within 30 episodes, and now it is going to be "retro", or is it going to be a new model?
To figure out this problem, we must first understand why foreign dramas are short, understand how to learn from each other's strengths, and optimize the establishment of our short drama model.
Two short drama revolutions of the American drama
When it comes to the short drama model, we all know that South Korea and Japan have referred to the American drama model and carried out localization improvements. But in fact, the American drama is not short at the beginning, but has experienced two short drama changes, the first change is a clear reference to the British drama model, on the point of view, the British drama is the originator of the short drama model.
Before 1980, the traditional American television season was divided into low season and high season, the peak season was from September to April and May of the following year, and the low season was From June to August. Usually, traditional TV stations will produce new dramas up to 39 episodes to conquer the entire peak season, while the 13 weeks of the off-season are filled with reruns or other variety shows.
After 1980, with the rise of pay television, in order to conquer the market, they did the opposite, using the off-season of traditional TV replays, referring to the British drama model, playing a differentiated, well-produced short drama within 13 episodes, so that the limited budget played its greatest role, producing more types and more diversified episodes, immediately attracting a large number of viewers who lost interest in replay, "Sex and the City", "Brothers" and other popular TV series, quickly let hbo, showtime, Pay-TV such as starz occupies a place.
At the same time, the cost of traditional long-form American dramas is getting higher and higher, the success rate is getting lower and lower, and the investment risk is getting bigger and bigger, so the entire industry has begun to "slim down" the revolution. At first, it was only reduced to 20-24 collective volume, and later many production companies and TV stations tended to test the market with 10-12 episodes to assess whether the show was worth the next season.
There are many arguments that the reason why we can't copy the American drama model is that we don't have the viewing habits and censorship conditions of filming and broadcasting at the same time, and we can't form a seasonal broadcast model on which short dramas depend. However, the streaming giant represented by Netflix, the second short drama revolution brought to the Us drama, reminds us that we can not rely on habits and censorship, streaming media episodes are no longer based on audience feedback while filming and broadcasting, but releasing all episodes at once.
As we all know, Netflix is a Silicon Valley company with big data computing at its core. According to North American media deadlines, Netflix believes in its own "short drama" theory, believing that episodes with more than 10 episodes per season and more than 30 episodes in total have no value, which is one of the reasons why many Netflix series are canceled after two or three seasons. For example, Marvel's hit drama "Jessica Jones" and "Daredevil" cannot escape the fate of three seasons.
Generally speaking, more than 30 episodes of the series, the cost will become expensive, Netflix big data analysis believes that the shorter the number of episodes, the easier it is for the audience to enter the first view, constantly attracting new viewers on the platform. Unless it's a super hit like Stranger Things, Netflix will make an exception for a fourth season.
The HBO side, which began to switch to the streaming media business, has no season limit, but it has always been considered by the industry to have a limit of 10 episodes per season. The ace drama "Game of Thrones" does not exceed 10 episodes per season, and word-of-mouth dramas such as "Vice President", "Silicon Valley", "Watchmen" and "True Detective" do not exceed 10 episodes, while HBO is still between 13-20 episodes per season when the pay TV station is just starting out, such as "Six Feet Below" 13 episodes per season, and "Sex and the City" 12-20 episodes per season.
Although HBO episodes are getting shorter and shorter, former HBO boss Michael Lombardo once told North American media outlet Quartz that "the number of episodes in each season is determined by the story itself." "Usually, producers and writers agree on the number of episodes that fit the story, and the audience never wants to see a story that ends in a hurry or drags its feet.
Japanese drama subdivision audience model,
Korean drama confrontation and timeliness
Japan was the first country in Asia to learn the American drama model. After World War II, the United States, which participated in the reconstruction of Japan, had a great influence on Japanese culture, and it was during this period that the American drama model was introduced to Japan.
According to the view of the paper "Exploration of the Feasibility of Chinese Weekly Dramas", after more than 20 years of development, Japanese dramas established a mature spring, summer, autumn and winter "four seasons file" model in the 1970s, while Japan also invented a unique time-sharing model, which is divided into morning files, noon files, sunset dramas, golden files and late night files, which are more subdivided into audiences.
For example, the morning stall is mainly for housewives, but also includes breakfast meal time for office workers, because this morning time is very short, so the morning drama is usually 15-20 minutes. At that time, NHK TV introduced the domestic "A Xin", which is a typical morning drama, with a short single episode time, but the total number of episodes is as long as 297 episodes; the ratings of morning dramas are usually the highest, and many Japanese small flower actors are through morning dramas to ascend to the top and become national actors. For example, the apricot of "Thank You for hospitality", "Haenyeo" can be nian Lingnai.
The xifang drama lasts between 20-30 minutes, in addition to being aimed at housewives, it will also take into account the elderly and the young audience who come home from school, such as the pure love drama "Sand Timepiece" and the campus drama "Delicious Academy" will appear in the sunset time.
The golden slot is the longest, usually 19-22 o'clock, and like our prime slot, it is a national time slot, and each TV station will broadcast the most invested blockbuster episodes. The classic Japanese dramas "Symphonic Lover's Dream" and "Naoki Motozawa", which are also well-known in China, are all golden files, and the Ōkawa drama adapted from large-scale historical events will also appear in the golden file, because the number of episodes is longer, and only one will be broadcast a year, such as "Tokuhime", "Sanada Maru", "Hei Kiyomi", and "Yae No Sakura".
The late-night slot of Japanese dramas is the most distinctive time slot, with novel themes, large scales, and quite experimental nature, such as "World Of Wonders" each episode is 20 minutes, telling different suspenseful fantasy stories, each episode has a different style, covering a variety of elements. Tv dramas produced by streaming into the Japanese market are more like late-night dramas, but they are no longer limited by the broadcast time.
The advantage of the japanese drama market segment is that, on the one hand, it is conducive to tv stations to cultivate different production teams, constantly adapt to and grasp the audience psychology in their own fields, and the production of genre dramas is more industrialized; on the other hand, through the experimental places such as late-night dramas, it is possible to discover new directors, screenwriters and actors suitable for morning dramas and golden files.
All in all, Japanese dramas are not one-size-fits-all, all dramas must be "short", but subdivided audiences, housewives and the elderly may need more "companionship" long dramas, morning dramas and Dahe historical dramas are their first choices; while young people are more inclined to short dramas of about 10 episodes.
Korean dramas are very different from American dramas and Japanese drama models, and the ecology of The Korean TV drama market is that a number of production companies are in the game, it is difficult to be a single big, and rookies often fight small and are promoted to dark horses, and the competition is quite fierce. Moreover, Korean dramas are similar to Korean movies, and the creators attach great importance to timeliness, adding political and cultural current affairs hotspots to the script to incite public emotions; timeliness also includes keeping up with the feedback of the audience, which is also an advantage from filming and broadcasting. This point is indeed not very informative for domestic dramas.
What kind of skit mode do we need?
Returning to the domestic situation, the current sales model of the drama market and the production of short dramas are indeed a less cost-effective choice. But the short drama is indeed a very cost-effective experimental field, exploring and cultivating new directors and trying new genres. At the moment when user payment and advertising sales coexist, it is necessary to find a middle ground, give the creative end some voice within the scope of affordable cost and risk, and make the entire ecology diversified, sustainable and healthy development.
The operation mode of foreign video platforms is nothing more than to give a certain budget to the production company to produce content, and the production company allows the creators to produce content together to agree on the appropriate number of episodes according to the story theme itself.
In fact, the number of episodes on foreign video platforms is becoming more and more random, and the gap with movies is getting smaller and smaller, and some film directors have turned to video platforms to shoot dramas, more like making a long movie, which has a very cinematic texture, such as David Finch's "Mind Hunter", Wachowski Brothers' "Super Sense Hunting" and so on.
Of course, it is not one-size-fits-all, some dramas are suitable for long, and some dramas are suitable for short. Short dramas that are invested at a smaller cost can try more genres to meet a variety of different groups. At present, the domestic short drama genre is still relatively single, the suspense detective type occupies the absolute mainstream, and the urban theme that is close to the audience's real life is lacking.
What cannot be ignored is that there is also a part of the audience that wants the "sense of companionship" that is updated daily. Especially at present, most of the domestic audiences are still in a conservative psychological state, and the proportion of TV drama audiences who are willing to stick to the "sense of companionship" may be greater than that of foreign countries. Perhaps in the future, we will have a long episode model similar to the morning drama and the big river drama to satisfy this part of the audience.
A British producer once said that the golden status of actors is limited, and Benedict Cumberbatch of Sherlock does not want to spend time on the drama, and the shorter he participates in the series, the more controllable the cost. They all believe that shorter, more creative skits reduce the chance of bad episodes.
No matter what the model, in fact, the core is the need to change the ecological structure at this stage, and convert the right to speak to the hands of producers and screenwriters, rather than pursuing the star and IP effect of a hammer sale.