Produced by Tiger Sniff Commercial Consumer Group.
Written by Zhou Yueming.
Edited by Miao Zhengqing.
Title Diagram Visual China.
Wang Liuliu, who graduated from UCLA, never dreamed that he, who was talking about Hitchcock's artistic techniques in a filmmaking class a year ago, is now most concerned about how to make the 1.85-meter American actor who plays the werewolf and the white actress have three plot reversals and conflicts in one minute.
Wang Liuliu, 26, became a skit producer, and yes, it is the same overseas skit (produced by a Chinese company for overseas markets) that fascinates countless American housewives in China today. According to Wang Liuliu, since July this year, with the explosion of Reelshort, half of the projects she has participated in have become short plays. At that time, when Hollywood had just started a general strike, the team was disbanded, and the crew was suspended, Wang Liuliu looked at the rapidly drying up wallet and decided to try this industry that claims to be able to make money quickly.
There is no need to repeat the description of how the short drama became popular overseas. The story of reelshort, a short drama platform owned by Chinese**, with a monthly turnover of up to $5 million, once topped the US iOS entertainment list, and surpassed TikTok has long been talked about.
Stimulated by the story of wealth, a large number of people began to focus on the sweet cake of short dramas going to sea, especially those who had tasted the sweetness in the domestic short drama craze. In their eyes, the so-called short drama going overseas is nothing more than turning the existing model into a European and American version, and they are confident in their familiarity with the short drama routines and the proficiency of the projection mode, and they think that it is inevitable to grab the cake.
However, when the tide recedes, some people start to find themselves swimming naked. A large sum of money was swept away by the wave of short dramas going to sea, and it didn't make a splash.
The wealth bubble of short dramas going to sea is being punctured.
Unexpected costs.
If there are no more than five million, don't touch the short drama that goes to sea. This is Qi Lei's biggest emotion after losing millions.
Qi Lei is the first group of people in China to earn real money in the short drama industry. He first earned the first pot of gold by distributing short dramas on major short ** platforms, and then expanded his team and began to get involved in the production of short dramas.
In Qi Lei's view, skits are a good business because of its clear pattern, fast feedback, and simple chain. "In China, you can know whether a drama is profitable or not within a week of being launched, and I thought that the situation overseas was also very different. ”
On the surface, the various modes of overseas short dramas are indeed very similar to those in China.
For example, in terms of the payment model, the overseas short drama platform also has two payment paths: single episode unlocking and subscription mode.
In the single-episode unlock mode, users can watch the first 10 episodes or the first 20 episodes for free after swiping on the short** platform or social platform, and then need to jump to the short drama app to buy coins to unlock one episode at a time. In reelshort, buy 15The $99 coin can probably watch a short drama of about 60 episodes, a total of 1-2 yuan per episode, and the unit price is not much different from the domestic mini program short drama.
The subscription model is similar to the common way of **platform, after the user recharges to become a member, he can play any ** platform within a certain period of time. Goodshort's subscription system starts from 99$99 to $399With a range of $99, the pricing isn't low.
Of course, there is another advertising model that is also very similar to the domestic one. If you don't want to spend money to unlock it, you can ** ads in exchange for episodes, but the upper limit of reelshort ads to unlock episodes per day is 20 episodes, and if you want to watch the full episode for free, you have to wait a lot of time. Of course, the platform's advertising revenue will also rise.
In addition, the theme of the hit drama is also very similar to that of China.
Several popular dramas that have been talked about by everyone before, "The Double Life of the Husband of a Billionaire President", "Billionaire CEO".'s obsession (hundreds of millions of presidents are addicted)" is a domineering president theme that often explodes in China, and the plot also pays attention to the routine of opening lightning strike + abuse + counterattack + suspense, and the domestic audience shouted "right taste" after watching it.
The similar model and familiar routines made Qi Lei and other domestic short drama practitioners full of confidence in going to sea, but they also fell into the pit because of this.
The first problem it faces is the high cost.
According to industry statistics, the cost of producing a European and American short drama of acceptable quality is about 1 million to 2 million (more than 150,000 US dollars), and the cost of some localized scripts is three times that of domestic short plays.
In addition, the high cost of overseas investment also caught Qi Lei off guard.
According to industry insiders, the cost of overseas short dramas accounts for 70% of the total cost, and the overseas channel fee is high, and if you cooperate with the app through Google, you need to pay 30% of the cost to the Google platform.
It is worth noting that, compared with the commonly used mini program model in China, it is more common for overseas to use APP as a content platform. This also brings more difficulty to domestic teams who are familiar with Mini Program streaming, because the APP model means higher conversion requirements (compared with domestic users who directly log in to Mini Programs, overseas users need to **short drama APP and log in** to complete the conversion chain).
According to industry insiders, if the original mini program launch model is followed, the rate of return is generally very low. In some cases, teams that are familiar with overseas traffic delivery but have not been exposed to short dramas have a stronger effect than domestic short drama teams.
Qi Lei gave Tiger Sniff an account: if the production cost of the drama is 2 million, accounting for 30% of the cost, the total cost of a drama will be about 6.7 million, and this is just a simple cost composition, and in many cases the investment will be more.
Now a lot of people are working for the platform. Qi Lei smiled bitterly. After a large amount of streaming fees are sprinkled, the platform makes a steady profit.
Capacity limitations.
But what restricts the development of overseas short dramas even more is the scarcity of overseas production teams and the scarcity of dramas. According to industry statistics, the current number of English-made short dramas for the European and American markets is concentrated between a dozen and more than 20, and this part of the content can be watched in about 20-40 hours, which is still far from the content reserve of thousands of domestic head short drama platforms.
There are several reasons for this:
First of all, the development stage of overseas short dramas is still in the early stage, and the upstream industrial chain has not yet been matched.
According to Wang Liuliu, there are many Chinese students who graduated from overseas film and television schools like her in the team currently shooting overseas short dramas in Hollywood, Los Angeles. They understand both the Chinese market and overseas film and television production, and are the best candidates for the upstream industry chain, but although a group of people have entered the game, the talent pool is far from catching up with the market demand. This is not the case for those with Chinese backgrounds, not to mention overseas local film and television professionals, who have fewer channels to contact China's cooperation needs.
In addition, the Hollywood strike that began in July has affected the talent of skit dramas even more. Many local professionals have been suspended from work during this period, making it more difficult to set up a skit production team.
In addition to the scarcity of talents, the production time of overseas short dramas is also much longer than that in China.
Episodes that may be available in a week or two in China may take up to a month and a half to two months overseas. But Wang Liuliu told Tiger Sniff that this has reached the limit of the overseas production team. In many cases, only one week of a month's preparation time is their filming time, and in order to save time, they will even work on the selection of venues, one venue should be able to show many scenes at the same time, so as to save the effort of transitioning scenes and the idle time of the actors.
**The scarcity of the chain not only causes the production cost to rise, but also restricts the explosive generation rate of the short drama platform.
If the number of productions does not go up, the room for trial and error will be greatly reduced, and the feedback will be slowed down. You must know that one of the reasons for the success of domestic short dramas is that this model has achieved the "small single quick response" in the film and television industry, but this advantage has not been fully exerted overseas.
Although the domineering president drama is popular, the themes that Europeans and Americans like still have to be explored a lot. Zilei said. For example, themes such as "Son-in-law's Counterattack" and "Heroine's Weakness" were found to be that Europeans and Americans did not buy it after testing. And behind a large number of tests, there must be enough episodes** to support it.
* The decrease in the test space due to the increase in quantity, which leads to the reduction of the explosion rate, is the key constraint of the industry. Zilei said.
It is worth noting that some data from the skit platform already reflects this problem.
According to industry statistics, the retention rate of overseas short dramas is generally around 33% to 40%, which is 5% to 10% lower than that in China. In his opinion, the lack of episodes and the lack of continuous hits are one of the reasons for the low retention rate.
However, in the eyes of industry insiders, the problems caused by the first chain may be greatly alleviated next year.
For example, in terms of production costs, some teams have begun to try to change the face of domestic short drama AI into overseas faces.
According to industry insiders, after using AI face swapping technology, manufacturers can find actors who can perform in China, and then choose their faces at will. After a set of processes, even if the AI face swap ** is 200,000, the overall production cost is lower than that of overseas self-made. If the cost of overseas self-made is 1 million yuan, the cost of domestic dramas is 500,000 yuan plus 200,000 yuan of AI technology, and it can also save at least 300,000 yuan. (However, this model may also suffer from a lack of localization.)
In addition to using AI technology to try to solve the problem of production capacity. According to Wang Liuliu, Tiger Sniff, at the end of this year, dozens of crews in Los Angeles have started filming at the same time. In her opinion, Hollywood itself has a complete film and television industry base, and with the influx of practitioners, the production capacity problem will be solved soon.
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