When Yicai contacted the producer of the short drama Lin Jing, she was exploring the filming site in Hengdian, and on November 22, her team had just finished a short drama, and on the 26th, her other short drama was started again, and she had already filmed three short dramas in the past month.
Lin Jing's working hours are very full, "We don't have time to get off work, we are about to start the film, and today we have to bring props and art to determine the scene," she told reporters, since the completion of the previous drama, she has begun to prepare for the next one, which is less than four days, and she has to pick actors and watch the scene, with very little respite, "In my eyes, this is an elimination industry, and if you don't work hard, you will be eliminated." ”
Hengdian has become a vertical store", which is a corner of the vertical screen short drama during this time. Lin Jing said that at present, there are about fifty or sixty short dramas working in Hengdian at the same time, but in terms of volume, the proportion of long and short dramas is about the same, and it is not as exaggerated as "vertical stores".
20 million in 1 day, breaking 100 million in 8 days, the excitement of the short drama has attracted the attention of capital, and people from all walks of life are trying to pour in. As a regular army in the traditional film and television industry to make short dramas, Lin Jing bluntly said that short dramas are not as easy to make money as the outside world imagines, although her income is more than double that of before, but this industry is "very hard", more difficult than the ordinary film and television industry, "I think our pay is proportional to our income." ”
Yicai also chatted with screenwriters, producers, and third-party observers of the short drama industry chain, and found that the short drama industry has bright external figures, in fact, the profit is in single digits, and the cost of streaming to the platform accounts for 80% or even higher of the consumption income, and the average shooting cost has also risen from about 10-300,000 last year to 30-600,000 or even more, and after removing the cost of scripts and platform commissions, the proportion of short dramas that really make money is very small.
Although it has recently faced rectification and intensified involution in the industry, more hot money is still pouring in as an emerging industry short drama.
Lin Jing and the team's start-up scene.
The wedding party also came in.
In the eyes of industry insiders, short dramas are actually games about traffic, and the first people who paid attention to this field were people in the industry who were familiar with traffic gameplay such as advertising, e-commerce, and games.
Liang Lili is the founder of the *** short drama Xi room, she was previously engaged in Internet information flow advertising, in the first half of last year she found that almost every advertising circle group is asking about short dramas, "We saw that this keyword appeared very frequently, very curious to go to research, figure out many patterns, found that this industry can break out quickly." Soon she did the first live broadcast on the whole network about the distribution of short dramas.
Short dramas are generally called mini program dramas, because the basic channel is in the small program, in the view of the Internet industry, short dramas are mainly the way to play on the Internet, by finding users in the traffic pool of Douyin and **, attracting users to recharge and pay.
From the perspective of the screenwriter's content side, many short dramas are some "cool dramas", introduced in the coming year, the theme is either for some domineering presidents that girls like, or for the God of War that men like, "Mainly for the sinking market, now everyone is a fast-paced life, and entertainment also pursues fast-paced, so I don't have so much patience to watch long dramas." ”
Although the market has been hot since the second half of last year, more people have seen short dramas, or many short dramas have exploded out of the circle this year, with a production cycle of 100 episodes in 1 week, and the box office figures from 10 million to hundreds of millions are eye-catching.
According to public data, in August this year, the revenue of the popular short drama "Wushuang" exceeded 100 million yuan 8 days after it was broadcast, setting a record for the highest recharge of a short drama. Since then, "Oops!The Queen Mother Comes to Work" broke 12 million in 24 hours, and there were even short dramas that broke 20 million in 24 hours, and the short drama circle seems to be full of the myth of "earning tens of millions a day".
A picture of the short drama "Sharing the Cake" on social platforms.
According to iiMedia Research, China's online short drama market will show a hot trend in 2023, and the size of China's online short drama market in 2023 will be 373900 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26765%, and the market size is expected to reach 100 billion yuan in 2027.
According to the data released by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the number of micro-short dramas recorded in 2021 will be 398, and the number of records in 2022 will be close to 2,800, a year-on-year increase of 600%. In the first half of 2023, more than 480 micro-short dramas will be launched on various online platforms in China, exceeding the number in the whole of 2022, which is equivalent to an average of 27 parts.
Liang Lili found that the gameplay of short dramas is actually very similar to games, buy volume and then monetize, in her circle, the game, e-commerce and social industries are the most into the short drama, "The industries with the largest consumption in Internet advertising are e-commerce and games, so these two industries have the most sensitive sense of smell for traffic gameplay, and the gameplay is also the best." ”
Not long ago, at the investor exchange held by the game company Kaiying Network, the company's management said that there was an internal project team to explore the layout of short dramas and interactive video games. Lin Bin, deputy general manager of Kaiying and senior vice president of the game publishing business group, said in an interview with Yicai that Kaiying first came into contact with short dramas as advertising and promotion materials to shoot, and by inviting head KOLs to endorse and shoot short dramas, combined with the original IP plot, the number of game short dramas on the whole network exceeded 500 million times at that time.
Last year, when we were promoting and promoting, we prepared the form of a short drama, made a small plot of a short drama according to the content of the IP, and went to Hengdian to shoot for a week. Lin Bin revealed that this short drama cost at least one million yuan, because it was used as an advertising material, and KOL was invited to participate instead of ordinary actors, which pushed up the labor cost, and the martial arts class also had to hang Weiya to increase the cost.
Lin Bin said that at present, Kaiying is still mainly engaged in games, but will also explore making short dramas, "We feel that this is also an Internet content form, and many users have short drama content needs, so this is also a point for us in the future, we have the marketing advantages of the Internet, as well as the understanding of users, so we can develop this business form." ”
In addition to these bigger head players, due to the low threshold of short dramas, people from all walks of life are pouring in to dig gold in the industrial chain.
Including many weddings, they have come in, and those who do the Internet and catering industries also want to invest in filming and share market dividends. He Jie, a film and television producer from Chengdu, told Yicai that everyone has seen the outlet of short dramas.
He Jie's previous company has been doing horizontal screen web dramas, and is currently doing vertical screen short dramas, she has contacted many people who are interested in short dramas, and she is not clear about the gameplay and mode of short dramas, just because she "has four or five hundred thousand dollars in her hand to do short dramas", she wants to invest and find He Jie for consultation.
After entering the short drama industry in the coming year, I have come into contact with many screenwriters, and I can read about 30 books a day, and he told Yicai that screenwriters from all walks of life have - finance, IELTS teachers, civil servants, state-owned enterprises, etc., as well as previous online writers.
I met an author who did a particularly good job, he used to be in finance, and he entered the short drama industry in July, and he didn't understand anything at the time, and then he watched it every day, wrote it every day, and even went to the market users, and went directly to the park to ask those aunts and uncles how the plot was, and talked to them, so his current script exploded. "Sigh for the coming year.
He said at the time that the short drama had a great impact on him, because at that time, it was only about 5,000 yuan a month to do finance, and now he may simply write a script, at least 40,000 or 50,000 yuan. Said the coming year.
If you don't make money, no one will do it."
Can skits really make money?In the coming year, he told Yicai that at the end of last year, there were only more than 10 million per day, and now there are 50 or 60 million, and the market has already broken 10 billion, "If you don't make money, no one will do it."
Lin Jing has made movies and TV series before, and she found that at the beginning, people in the circle around her had a chain of contempt for short dramas, and they would feel that short dramas were "low", "When I first came into contact with short dramas, I looked down on this industry a little, but later I found that I was the same whether I did long dramas or short dramas, and after making money, I wouldn't care about this problem." With the development of the industry, more and more people are accepting it, "mainly to make money".
In the short drama industry chain, there are many practitioners in the screenplay, producer, actors, venues and other links, at least everyone is making money.
As the editor-in-charge, he will receive scripts every day in the coming year, and he said that the manuscript fee for a newcomer is 1Starting at 50,000, if the quality is good, there will be a premium rating, and newcomers can get up to 250,000, on this basis, add a share, "If it becomes a hit, such as 20 million, the follow-up share can be up to 2% of the consumption, and this screenwriter can almost get 400,000 before tax." ”
Lin Jing said that he earned more than twice as much as before when he made short dramas, "It all depends on the share, in the past, I could only say how much money I earned per episode as a producer, and the share has nothing to do with the producer, but I am the chief producer of this kind of short drama alone, and I have more right to speak." ”
Actors also earn more. Lin Jing said that the income of actors engaged in short dramas largely depends on whether they have a hit. The ** of an ordinary actor a day is about 4,000 yuan, but if there is a short drama that is popular, it may reach 7,000 yuan or even 30,000 yuan a day, "Some people have filmed 15 dramas and exploded 12, we definitely want to use this kind of actor, as a producer or manager, I am more confident to invest, at least it will reduce the risk a little." ”
A very cruel fact is that there is no shortage of actors in the industry, Lin Jing mentioned that among the nearly 3,000 actors he knows, about 2 3 are not filming, and short dramas feed a lot of actors who are not filming. "Now the male protagonist of a horizontal screen short drama, if it is not a traffic coffee or a big artist, it will be 100,000 yuan at most, and he has to shoot for 20-30 days, and he has to cooperate with the post-publicity and so on, but if he acts in a short drama, the shooting will take 7-8 days, and there will be at least 20,000 yuan, and there will be more popular dramas. ”
In terms of selecting actors, Lin Jing mainly looks at acting skills, and the second most important thing is to be able to endure hardships, and the heroines in these dramas she produced were tired and cried.
It has been 10 months since Lin Jing officially came into contact with short dramas, but he has been doing it for a long time in the industry. She said that this industry is actually very hard, "In our case, there is nothing to get rich, I think our efforts are proportional to our income, because we are indeed more difficult than the ordinary film and television industry, and we normally work for 25 hours." ”
Lin Jing introduced that he and the actors generally set off at the same time at four or five o'clock in the morning, and the director set off after five o'clock, "basically maintain the continuous rotation for a long time, we are just rushing for time, you don't know what kind of accident will happen on the spot, once this is the case, it will be a vicious circle, we can't afford to overdue, and all the labor and so on for a day are too expensive." ”
However, although the short drama is hard, the cycle is short and the task is heavy, and the results are very fast, Lin Jing introduced that the general shooting cycle of short dramas is 6-10 days, and the normal cycle of a drama from the early stage to the end of the review is about 45 days.
This is precisely the reason why capital is optimistic about the short drama format, compared with the traditional long **, the production cost of short dramas is low, the production cycle is shorter, and it is also an addictive good business with high repurchase. He Jie said.
The short drama also saved film and television cities such as Hengdian and Xiangshan. "I often chat with the group of people in Xiangshan, and they will joke that if it weren't for the skit, Xiangshan Film and Television City would be dying. Lin Jing said with a smile.
Now Hengdian has set up a cultural and creative park for short dramas, Lin Jing said that this is a studio specifically for short dramas, there are some existing furnishings, and it is particularly profitable, "Each room is calculated separately, the cheapest room is 3000 yuan a day, the expensive is 7000-8000 yuan, many groups go to shoot a day, and there are overtime fees, an extra hour is another 500 yuan, which really feeds a lot of people." ”
The short drama also revitalized the ** reading software like Dianzhong. At present, Dianzhong Technology is already the leading player in the short drama industry, and it is hard to imagine that just two years ago, the company had weak growth, and failed to list on the GEM for the second time in 2020, lagging behind the industry. In 2022, Dianzhong Technology will lay out short dramas during the transformation period, creating several popular works with an income of more than 100 million yuan, and successfully "turning over".
The cost of streaming accounts for more than 80%.
Although there are people making money in all links, from the perspective of the return on investment ratio, the return on investment in a short drama is not high, of which the cost of investment accounts for 80% or even higher, and as the market heat rises, the market is becoming more and more "volume", and the shooting cost of a drama has also doubled, and many short dramas are in a state of loss.
The cost of short dramas is mainly in the stream, and the industry generally believes that the ROI (input-output ratio) reaches 12 is an average standard, while the income from top-ups is divided by 12 is probably the amount of money to be delivered. There is no fixed proportion of casting, but changes according to the data of the work, "For example, if the show is very good, the platform will keep investing, if the data is not very good, the investment will stop when it reaches an amount, and the maximum base can reach 90%." He Jie said.
Taking the recharge income of 10 million as an example, its investment cost probably accounts for more than 8 million. "Then counting the script, production costs, as well as paying channel fees, CDN bandwidth costs, etc., it is still difficult to make money, unless the show can explode, and the ROI is relatively high. Liang Lili said.
As with most content products, the probability of a short drama being a hit is not high. According to Lin Jing's experience, in the short drama industry, the income of small hits starts at about 5 million, and the cake in the industry starts at 10 million, and it is already a good drama if it can reach 10 million. In the coming year, it is believed that 50 million is a big hit, but the probability of this phenomenon is very small.
Liang Lili observed that the industry's explosive rate is about 7%-10%, "The probability of explosive models is very similar to that of e-commerce, and the explosive rates of each company are not the same, some may shoot 3 popular 2 models, some may be 3 popular models out of 10, and some may be 7 popular models out of 100." ”
Kyushu Culture, a leading platform company, once said that the company launches 50 to 60 short dramas every month, each costing 20 to 300,000 yuan, of which 70% can protect the capital, the hit rate is 10% to 15%, the street hitting rate is 30%, and 10% is a net loss.
Even as a short drama "Wushuang", which is a hit that broke 100 million yuan, the profit is not high, and its producer, Li Tao, founder of Xi'an Fengxing Company, once said in an interview that the short drama relies heavily on investment expenditure, and the so-called breaking 100 million refers to the overall income, of which the traffic cost is more than ninety percent, including manpower and shooting costs, and the net profit after deduction is about several million yuan.
Li Tao once revealed that as the producer of 14 popular short dramas, the company's overall income from short dramas is less than 10 million yuan, and as the founder and chief director, he has less than one million yuan in cash on his account.
Wushuang" short drama ** interface.
Liang Lili calculated an account, usually the minimum guarantee of the script will be 1-100,000, and an additional 1%-2% of the turnover will be added. The specific cost of the script fluctuates according to the screenwriter's ability, such as 1-20,000 yuan for beginners, 8-100,000 yuan for popular works, and some scripts may also involve IP adaptation costs. In terms of production costs, the approximate standard of the industry last year was 10-300,000 yuan, and this year it has almost gone to 30-600,000 yuan. In the coming year, I think that the urban type may be low, and the ancient costumes will be more expensive, and it will cost 60-800,000 or even higher if you shoot well.
In addition to the content fee, it also involves the payment of channel fees, which WeChat Mini Programs have been charging since August this year, and are currently charging a technical service fee of 10%, of which 5% will be returned as advertising money. In addition, Douyin has also launched a mini program, which currently charges 07%。
After removing the overall cost, the profit margin is about 5%-7%. Liang Lili said.
In the boom of short dramas, traffic platforms such as WeChat mini programs and Douyin may be the biggest winners, "so it is also these traffic platforms that are actively promoting the development of short dramas," Liang Lili said that the advertising industry's peak daily investment amount of paid short dramas this year reached an average of 80 million-90 million, and the peak of investment in June and July last year was about 10 million.
In the coming year, I think that short dramas have been popular since the beginning of this year, but at that time they had not yet entered the public's field of vision, "At that time, it would make a lot of money than now, and since then it has become more and more 'volume'." ”
Lin Jing said that last year was not so "volume", * not so high, now it is really a price hike, the equipment is very expensive, the labor is also very expensive, a year ago the cost of shooting a small program was 200,000 yuan, even if it was too much, now it can go up to about 10 million," Look at a banquet hall, know that we are a small program to use, before it may be 2000 yuan a day, now the trustee is looking for 4000 yuan a day for half a day, the overtime fee is calculated separately, a private room for eating 300 yuan an hour, we shoot for 14-15 hours, just went to see a cliff, before it was empty, after people changed it themselves, **4500 yuan a day. ”
Because there are more people doing it, in order to shoot better, the special effects and other aspects of the service will be more sophisticated. Lin Jing said that the cost of filming ancient costumes by himself must be controlled at least at more than 480,000 yuan, and the cost price of the Xianxia drama that has just been completed in the upper part is 820,000 yuan, "I don't make dramas below 300,000 yuan, I can't guarantee the quality, and I don't want to damage my reputation." Now Lin Jing only does high-quality dramas, and she believes that spending a little more money on production will be more beneficial and stable for the later stage.
Doing short dramas explodes, a week or a month or two of financial freedom, this situation may not be common in the industry, it is better for us to go step by step and be solid," Lin Jing said, "I don't want to recharge the amount of money, my goal for each drama is to return to the capital, and being able to protect the capital is the concept we have always adhered to." ”
In order to diversify the risk, investors will also invest in more than a dozen dramas at the same time. "Just like e-commerce, they will also evaluate, maybe 10 products a week to go to the stream, to see which ROI will be a little higher, generally its probability is also 10 out of 2-3 products that can be raised, the short drama is the same, generally they will start shooting 10. Liang Lili said.
Is there a chance for latecomers?
In the past, the short drama was indeed without a threshold, and it was a new eyeball, but now its threshold is getting higher and higher. Lin Jing said that people from all walks of life are coming in, and supervision is also following up, but as regular soldiers, they are very protective of change.
He Jie believes that short dramas have recently become a trend, there are good and bad, there are more people doing it, and the market is actually very chaotic, but recently radio and television have begun to supervise, "In fact, it is also very beneficial to us, because it cracks down on some illegal and vulgar short dramas, and also prompts the producer to produce better film and television works." ”
Everyone found that if they didn't make money, many of them would slowly quit, and those who were really powerful would stay. Liang Lili said.
The domestic short drama market has recently received close attention from regulatory authorities. On November 15, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television stated that it would once again carry out a one-month special rectification work in response to the uneven content of online micro-short dramas, the frequent chaos of the operation model, and the mixed industrial ecology, focusing on the orientation, title, content, aesthetics and other aspects of online micro-short dramas, and increasing the handling and intensity of illegal online micro-short dramas.
This is not the first time that the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has taken action against the governance of micro-short dramas. Since late November 2022, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has organized and carried out a three-month special rectification work on mini-program online micro-short dramas. As of February 2023, more than 25,300 micro-short dramas have been offline on the whole network. Since March 2023, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has supervised multiple platforms to clean up more than 350,000 episodes (pieces) of vulgar and harmful online micro-short dramas, and disposed of 429 Mini Programs and 2,988 accounts.
In the next step, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television will also speed up the formulation of the "Detailed Rules for the Creation and Production of Online Micro-short Dramas and Content Review", and study and promote the integration of online micro-short drama apps and "mini programs" into daily institutional management.
I hope that the supervision will become stricter and stricter, because we are not involved in any bloody violence and the like, but more in pursuit of texture, we are a regular army, and many short drama producers and directors used to work as camera assistants for others, and we also want to formalize a little more. Lin Jing thinks.
Liang Lili is more optimistic about the future of the industry, "In the short term, these measures will force back many people who come in to make quick money, but in fact, it does not have much impact on some leading high-quality companies." ”
In the case of more "volume" and stricter supervision in China, will it be a good choice for short dramas to go overseas?Although apps like ReelShort have become popular overseas, and many reports have mentioned that going overseas is very hot, Liang Lili found that in fact, the whole environment of overseas short dramas is not very clear compared to China, and there are many uncertainties about going overseas.
At present, the entire ** in China is mainly on WeChat applets, and the whole link is not so complicated to watch short dramas through such a carrier, but if there is no such carrier overseas, you may have to go to channels such as APP," Liang Lili said that the threshold for going to sea is higher, involving translating scripts, understanding local preferences, finding local actors, venues, etc., and the cost of shooting a drama overseas is about 200,000 US dollars, which is much higher than that in China." And foreign actors may not be as hard-working as Chinese actors, filming this drama is actually very fast-paced, and the environment is not necessarily very good. ”
With the overall threshold getting higher and higher, do the latecomers of this track still have a chance?Liang Lili told Yicai that any latecomer on the track has a chance, and now is a little bit earlier than the previous stage, maybe after more regular troops enter the game in the future, more heads will emerge.
The market of short dramas can be compared with the previous online drama market, I have always believed that it can be played, everyone is watching short **, paid short dramas are actually short ** The content has become more coherent and more plotty, and at the same time, there are many sinking demand for watching dramas that have not been met. Liang Lili believes that short dramas, as an emerging industry, have also solved the employment problem to a certain extent, and she lamented that there have been no new things on the domestic Internet for a long time, such as short dramas, which can allow everyone to enter the game and do growth in the industry.
In June this year, Lin Jing posted a circle of friends, "Take the helm for yourself again, my wave is coming again." The copywriter wrote.
CBN).