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"It’s real soil, but the more it grows, the more I like to watch it" and "It’s really dog blood. I watched it all night in order to appreciate the embarrassing acting skills." On social media platforms, netizens often comment on short plays like this.

How rustic was a short play with an episode of one or two minutes? Even Zhang Yu, a former employee of the short drama business department of a platform, has never escaped the magic of "earthy taste" before.

When it comes to the plot of the short play that impressed her the most, she described the deep burning from the perspective of the heroine, and the more she said it, the more excited she became. "In my last life, I didn’t understand his paranoid love, which led to the destruction of my family. The man I deeply loved also exposed the corpse for me. I woke up again, thinking, I must not fail this man again! But he became sensitive and suspicious, locked me up at home, and there were many misunderstandings in the middle. I became very active and told him over and over again that I really wouldn’t leave you. "

"The plot is really exciting," said Zhang Yu. While exclaiming the dog blood, she stayed up late to read it. "It just hooks up the desire in your heart." She introduced that the overbearing president fell in love with silly Bai Tian, the little white flower reborn and tore the evil woman, and the housewife countered the evil mother-in-law, all of which were common routines in short plays.

By 2022, short plays are changing.

With that competition upgrade of long and short video platforms,The short play is splitting up., one kind of one or two minutes, one episode, vertical screen, continue to earthy dog blood, the other kind, the duration of the drama becomes longer, focusing on 5-10 minutes, horizontal screen, trying to get rid of earthy taste.

The former market is relatively mature, and this year, long and short video platforms have bet on the latter. At the beginning of March, Youku’s short play released the "Swing Plan", suggesting that the single episode should last for 7-15 minutes; At the end of March, Tencent Video upgraded the micro-short drama accounting rules, suggesting that the single episode works should last for 3-15 minutes and be presented on a horizontal screen; Mango TV recently launched a mini-short drama, with a single episode lasting about 10 minutes. Even Aauto Quicker, who was the first to add short plays, announced the opening of 5-minute drama collection cooperation in early April, and the format was also horizontal screen.

Two distinct short play roads are competing for the audience. Who can win?

Let’s talk about the earthy route first.

An episode of one or two minutes, the plot is reversed with high energy, and the dog’s blood is earthy. When netizens evaluate it, it has a little meaning of wanting to stop, love and hate. They call the short play "electronic pickles" because its plot is ups and downs, which can stimulate dopamine to reach the intracranial climax in a few minutes, especially when eating.

Zhang Yu introduced that this route, a popular story template, is highly coincident with popular female online novels. After reviewing hundreds of IP short plays, she summed up three common routines.

One kind is true and false. For example, the hostess is the only daughter of the richest man. When she was a child, she was exiled outside. After going home hard, she was targeted by her father’s adopted daughter everywhere. At this time, the overbearing president appeared, firmly fell in love with the hostess, and eventually the fake daughter betrayed her relatives. "There can be many variants," Zhang Yu introduced, all aimed at achieving the effect of refreshing the face.

One is the revenge of rebirth. The mistress was always rejected by the tyrant, and was framed by her cronies and villains. After her rebirth, in order to save her life, she signed a contract with the overbearing president to make use of each other, and they fell in love after marriage. She added, "This kind, as soon as it comes up, has an explosion point, which is a sex scene and a contract."

One kind is a brain-hole. The creator is no longer satisfied with the ordinary overbearing president. For example, Zhang Yu said, "There is a story about a small president caring for his mother. The heroine is unfortunately pregnant and gave birth to quintuplets. By the age of 8, the child is cute and has superior IQ, and at the same time she has the strength to protect her mother." Some viewers also like to watch it. In addition, there is infinite flow’s rebirth, that is, every time the woman wakes up, she can meet the bully and stage different sadomasochism; As well as family ethics cool text, housewives counterattack, smooth killing of evil mother-in-law and other story templates.

Some of these stories contain ethical taboos. In Zhang Yu’s view, in fact, the fire is not sweet pets, but adult love, with sensory stimulation, which is playing the edge ball. When communicating with the film, the question that Zhang Yu is often asked is, why is it so rustic? Zhang Yu always has to repeat the explanation, "I don’t need it to have style, I just hope users don’t scratch it off.”。

The other quality route is more like a transformation of the conventional sweet pet online drama.

Take Tencent’s short play "Please don’t spoil me" with an account of over 30 million yuan. The heroine strayed into the world of her own novels and became a cannon fodder match. She had to stay in the cold palace for a hundred days before she could return to reality and escape the favor of the emperor. This is a common anti-routine setting in sweet pet dramas. An industry person close to the film said to Deep Burning that this was originally a regular sweet pet online drama, and then it was edited into a short drama. "In the online drama, it is general, but in the short drama, the dimension is reduced."

Recently, Mango TV’s hit short play "Oblivity" cost less than 4 million, and it also bet on two key words: sweet pet and anti-routine. In the story, the seemingly harmless man and woman, one is a Jianghu killer and the other is a master of the imperial court. They are respectful on the surface and forced to love and kill each other behind their backs.

Qingjie Zeng, its director, told Shen Burning that this kind of short drama is essentially a drama series focusing on the female market. "No matter what occupation the hero and heroine have and how much hatred they have, everything revolves around their love, not the real story."

From the content point of view,This kind of short drama is a refined "cut" version of the past sweet pet online drama. Whether it can stand out depends on how the film spreads sugar and whether the content is novel enough.

The audiences of the two routes are mainly female users, which are overlapping and different.

Zhang Yu’s platform used to focus on the local flavor route. She introduced that the audience of this kind of content is mainly women aged 15 to 35, concentrated in young women in small towns in second-and fourth-tier cities.

And an industry person close to Youku mentioned that the users who watch short plays in Youku are mostly young women aged 18 -24, and they are mainly in the second and third lines geographically, which is characterized by youthfulness.

Relatively speaking, the audience of earthy short plays is more sinking.

There are two routes in the short play, which are closely related to the nature of the platform behind it.

Short video platform should attract more viewers’ time, and providing short video dramas is one of the means. Relying on the talent team, short dramas are more grassroots and the content is relatively more rustic.

This kind of short play revolves around "people" and "accounts". The purpose of all short plays is to add powder to accounts.

Taking Aauto Quicker’s short plays as an example, the "Star Mang Plan" is specially launched for talents, and short plays are customized or co-created for talents. Although bilibili doesn’t invest much in short plays, his thinking is similar to Aauto Quicker’s, "Let UP owners shoot short plays themselves". A filmmaker introduced that short plays are more like one of the ways for UP owners to attract users.

The long video platform relies on the professional film and television team to make the original online drama content short and catch up with the change of audience’s fragmented viewing habits, and the short drama is relatively more quality.

This kind of short play revolves around the content. The relevant person in charge of Mango TV’s Damang Project told Deep Burning that Damang is engaged in professional PGC production, doing content-based "business" and positioning itself in "7-15 minutes horizontal screen".

In 2022, the two routes tend to converge.

According to the Notice of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) at the end of 2020, miniseries are divided into two categories. Simply put, miniseries involving platforms, institutions and professionals, with a cost exceeding 1 million, need to be filed in radio and television as long as they meet one of the conditions, while miniseries produced by ordinary individuals only need to be audited by the platform.

This means that Tik Tok’s short plays will only need to be reviewed by the platform if there is an opportunity, and almost all the short plays produced by Youai Tengmang need to be put on record.

Some people in the industry said to the deep combustion, "Tik Tok Aauto Quicker can also do some mysterious and suspenseful themes. Compared with the long video platform, the scale has an advantage, and you can make more crazy explorations.”。 However, he said that this is only a short window period, and "the audit will definitely become more and more strict."

Many creators mentioned that in Aauto Quicker, the auditing standards are stricter than before.

Secondly, the two routes also tend to merge in content. According to Yien’s report "Insight into the Trend of Video Content in 2021-Micro Short Plays", the horizontal screen of short plays is moving towards the mainstream, accounting for less than 20% in 2019, and it has exceeded 40% by 2021. The surveyed user data also indicates that 60% prefer horizontal screen.

Zhang Shuai, who is in charge of the short drama with earthy flavor, said that this kind of story is highly homogeneous and the market has shown a weak state. He cited, for example,The same theme, the same quality, "it exploded in the past with a high probability, but now it is difficult to explode", which is reflected in the income, with an average decline of 30%.

Continuous sensory stimulation raises people’s threshold. According to his observation, the short drama with local flavor has been upgraded, and the ancient sweet prose is becoming a new direction.

This is more demanding, more costly and more difficult to make than the short plays with modern style. He took the recent fire "princess royal in the Top" as an example, in the form of a horizontal screen. "In the past, the bully was always sweet, and the male and female masters were domineering, and the audience knew what to do next. However, the picture of this drama is beautiful, although it also gives people some thoughts of desire, but it also has a lot of room for imagination. The audience is jealous of the CP of the man and the woman. Under the atmosphere, there is a strong impulse to fall in love. "

This means that even if you take the short drama route with earthy flavor, you have to upgrade.

The final form of short drama is the result of users voting with their feet after a long exploration, which may finally mark the maturity of short drama.

On the two types of platforms, the film’s income mode is also different.

On the short video platform, for the film side, in terms of revenue, there are three ways: live broadcast with goods, brand implantation and account sharing. Zhang Yu said that it is actually the logic of e-commerce, that is, after the short drama became popular, the red man realized the goods by live broadcast.

At present, there have been successful cases, such as Aauto Quicker’s short play "The Man Is a Little Cold", which won the popularity of the woman. According to public reports, the number of fans has increased by 5 million, and the live broadcast ability has increased by 60 times compared with before.

A good short play does have the ability to hold people up. Qingjie Zeng also mentioned that after "Ignorance" became a hit, the number of Tik Tok fans starring the two actors increased greatly, which was rare in previous online movies. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Producer Yuna told Deep Burning that they tried to make short plays around artists, incubate idol brands, and then make idol-related derivatives. Short plays were an important starting point.

However, this model does not regard short plays as content, but a kind of MCN operation logic. For the film side, the difficulty of winning a red account through a short play is not less than the difficulty of incubating a short video account, and not all the films can share a piece of the action. Previously, the platform launched a short drama payment, and the user’s awareness of payment needs to be cultivated, and the splash is not big.

More film companies benefit from separate accounts. Zhang Shuai introduced that according to his experience, Aauto Quicker Xingmang’s account,The upper limit is about twice the production cost, that is, the cost is 500 thousand, and at most 1 million can be recovered.

On the long video platform, there are three ways of cooperation between the film side and the platform, including customization, joint production and account sharing. This is the model adopted by the long video platform since the birth of short drama in 2018, but after several years, the system has been optimized.

According to the multi-party communication of Deep Burning, due to cost control, the amount of short drama customization single project given by the platform has been reduced. In 2018 and 2019, there were projects with a cost of over 10 million. In 2020 and 2021, the cost of customization projects of many platforms was around 5 million, but in 2022, it was currently concentrated at 2 million to 3 million. Among them, the film side earned the production fee.

On the other hand, the platform has a big trend in the intensity of account sharing. Previously, many filmmakers mentioned that on the long video platform,There has been a "tragedy" with a cost of 1 million and a sub-account of only tens of thousands. Now the situation is relatively better.

Take Tencent Video’s "Ten Theater" as an example. According to a screenwriter, according to the new rules in March, the calculation of sub-accounts was changed from per time to long time, encouraging the improvement of the quality of short plays. "Users of head projects can get 2 yuan for every hour they watch. If the short plays have a total of 300 minutes, a user can get more than 6 yuan at most after reading the complete works." The overall policy of the long video platform has been promoted, and the proportion has increased compared with the past.

With the strong support of the platform, although not all films can make profits, most of them have small profits, which is also the reason why short plays can flourish.

Is this really a profitable business for the platform?

Zhang Yu introduced that the long and short video platforms have differentiated into two kinds of realization logic. The long video platform is the realization of content, and the realization method is the same as the drama series, relying on members+advertisements, and the short video platform is the realization of e-commerce, relying on e-commerce to bring goods. In her view, the content realization logic of the long video platform is difficult to get through.

This view has been verified by many platform people.

An industry person close to the membership system of the video platform told Shenzhan that although the short drama sub-account consists of two parts: "member+advertisement", in the actual sub-account income, member income accounts for the vast majority, and advertisements can be ignored. The income of members is mainly composed of two parts, one is the income of new members, and the other is the income sharing of old members, that is, the length of time that old members watch the play accounts for the proportion of the total length of consumption content during their membership.

Among the income of members’ accounts, the income shared by old members for watching time is "70% to 80%".

In other words, the main source of income for the drama account is the viewing time of the old members. Even if members watch the complete works of short plays, the total contribution time is only 100 minutes to more than 300 minutes, while watching an ordinary online drama for 40 minutes, obviously the latter is easier to kill time.

He said that unless the investment covers the cost,Relying on the model of membership+advertising, "no matter how it is calculated, the platform will lose money". This is also the reason why the short drama accounting strategy of the video platform is more and more inclined to the duration.

However, for the platform, controlling the cost can also slow down the realization problem to some extent. The relevant person in charge of the Damang Project said that the cost of short drama projects invested by Damang Plan ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions. Recently, the hot "Ignorance" has a ROI of more than 100%.

Can’t rely on advertising+members, and long videos also want to rely on e-commerce logic.

In terms of commercial realization, the relevant person in charge of the Damang project introduced that the platform temporarily borrowed some existing cooperation methods, such as theater title, hard and wide screen, single drama planting, joint production by copyright platform and joint production by audio book platform. At the same time, it is also working with Xiaomang e-commerce under Mango TV to open up brand business and content cooperation.

An industry person close to Youku said that Youku’s short drama is backed by Ali’s e-commerce gene, and subsequent short dramas are also trying to buy while watching.

However, the long video platform lacks e-commerce genes, and it is still unknown whether this model can work.

For the short video platform, although the realization of e-commerce has gone through, the live broadcast of goods is always mainly the income of people.

The important ways of realizing short plays include attracting investment. But regardless of the length of the video platform, this is not easy. A head creator who produced a lot of explosions on the short video platform told Shenhuo that they would not refuse advertisers, but in fact,Trading three or four projects, when you are lucky, there will be an advertisement.

The relevant person in charge of the Damang project said that brand customers have some concerns about short plays. For example, the content is short, the update time is short, the publicity cycle of your own brand is not long enough, and the stimulation and impression on consumers are not so deep. However, in his view, "the cost of micro-drama is much lower than that of long drama. With the emergence of explosive content and serialized content, the confidence of brand customers will also increase."

Not all advertisers are not optimistic about this model. A related person in charge of a marketing company told Shen Yan that after the drama was broadcast, it would cost 4 million to 8 million to do advertising cooperation for long dramas. The total cost of implantation and promotion of short plays invested in short video platforms is about 2.5 million. They have done the implantation of short plays, and the final exposure is 200 million+."The cost performance is quite high, so you can take the drama clips to the information flow and guide the e-commerce." However, he also admitted that the brand side did not know much about short drama implantation, and many people still hesitated.

This is a track where many predecessors have fallen. Many platform people who have communicated before are no longer engaged in short drama business, or have transferred their posts, or have left their jobs. Many industry people who tried short drama business in their early years have long avoided short drama because of the difficulty in commercialization.

This is an industry that is highly dependent on platform strategy. When the platform needs support, it can gain exposure and benefits. Once the platform finds that it cannot bring practical benefits, it may be shelved. At present, many producers who are making short plays are also uneasy. Once the platform policy is adjusted, the short plays in their hands will have nowhere to go.

Zhang Yu has left the short drama industry. With the support of the platform, there are indeed many filmmakers who rely on short dramas to make profits, but for the funded platform, "We used to make homemade short plays, and we lost as much money as we invested.”。

Qiu Qihu, CEO of Rabbit Culture, admits that any content category is highly dependent on the platform, but he also believes that the platform also depends on content companies.

They have been doing short plays since 2017, and they have encountered many situations in which the platform docking department disappeared when they were preparing to sign contracts with the platform. However, due to the content reputation established in the early days, even if we don’t do exclusive cooperation with a certain platform, under the controllable cost, "we get sponsorship from advertisers, which will bring advertisers the whole network exposure, and we can also make profits", he said.

Regardless of the length, the film and television business still depends on the content itself.

User needs are there, and commercialization is still being explored. It takes time for the short play to mature.

* The title map comes from pexels. At the request of the interviewee, Zhang Yu is a pseudonym in the article.

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This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account "Shenrancaijing" (ID: shenrancaijing), author: Li Qiuhan, editor: Jia Wei, published by 36Kr with authorization.