In 2020, "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth", which will be broadcast online on iQiyi's "Fog Theater", have become popular, and they have swiped their presence in the reality suspense drama market, and "Fog Theater" has also become a benchmark for the best theater layout, which has received widespread attention and discussion. After four years, "Misty Theater" has launched 16 works, how has the market feedback and word-of-mouth performance of these works? Today's film and television industry observation takes stock of it.
Overview of the suspense drama produced by "Fog Theater".
In the first year of 2020, the Misty Theater launched five suspense dramas, with 9 points of "The Silent Truth" and nearly 9 points of "The Hidden Corner", two "masterpieces" of "God Theater", casting the golden sign of "Fog Theater" in the hearts of the audience. In 2021, four new dramas will be released, and the number of episodes will decrease slightly. However, in 2022, the Misty Theater will enter a year of "drama shortage", and there will only be two suspense dramas to meet the audience. The decline in the number is due to the impact of the epidemic, and the production and distribution cycle of dramas has been extended; Second, compared with other types of dramas, suspense dramas have encountered some difficulties in creating due to their own subject matter characteristics in the context of tighter censorship standards. By 2023, with the end of the epidemic and the recovery of the domestic drama creation environment, the platform and creators have also re-explored the way to create suspense dramas that meet the policy requirements, therefore, this year's Misty Theater has achieved the number of five new dramas**, and responded to the audience's expectations and waitings with multiple suspense content including "suspense + criminal investigation", "suspense + science fiction", "suspense + emotion" and "slow suspense".
In addition to the fluctuation in the number of new dramas released by the Misty Theater in the past four years, its ** volume and reputation have also experienced ups and downs. According to Yunhe data, the average 30-day episodes of the five dramas in 2020 exceeded 20 million, of which "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth" were higher than 40 million, and the Douban scores of three dramas were in the high word-of-mouth range of 7 to 9 points. At this stage, the Misty Theater has a high degree of creative freedom, and the drama series is based on the suspense track of realistic themes, and the content quality is excellent and the elements are rich, which has the strongest freshness for the audience, and has also formed its own label effect. Therefore, the word-of-mouth and volume performance of the drama are generally excellent. However, the good times did not last long, in 2021, the average episode v30 of half of the four dramas in the Misty Theater fell below 20 million, only "Who is**" exceeded 40 million, and the Douban score of all dramas did not exceed 7 points, and the Douban score of "Who is**" was only 62 points, which forms a strong contrast with the high heat indicated by the high ** amount. In 2022, the data performance of the dramas broadcast by the Misty Theater is similar to that of the previous year, with Douban scores hovering around 6 points, and "The Daughter Who Comes Back" is also in the same condition as "Who is", and there is a phenomenon of high ** amount and low rating. The main crux of the similar dilemma of the Misty Theater in the past two years is that there have been some problems in the content creation of the Misty Theater itself, which has led to a high level of popularity in the early stage of the series and a decline in the middle and late stages of the plot, resulting in a decline in word-of-mouth. Fortunately, after some adjustments, the Misty Theater has regained its feeling in 2023, and the word-of-mouth of three of the five dramas that will appear in 2023 has successfully broken through the 7-point file and 8-point file, and the average episode v30 of the three dramas is higher than 25 million, which shows that the overall quality of the drama has improved, which has a lot to do with the transformation of the content creation strategy of the Fog Theater, as pointed out by Wang Xiaohui, chief content officer of iQIYI, the current focus of iQIYI's content creation is no longer solely "explosive" as the core, and pay more attention to details such as character portrayal and resonance seeking, and the current and future direction of Misty Theater will also focus on the stable precipitation of excellent works rather than "trying their luck in the drama of the explosion". However, considering that there are no episodes with an average of more than 40 million V30, it may largely be due to the fact that other platforms have also increased their layout in the suspense drama track, especially Tencent**'s launch of "X Theater" in April 2023, which diverted the vertical audience of suspense dramas and intensified the market competition pressure faced by fog drama venues.
The high-quality content exploration of the "Fog Theater" suspense drama
An overview of the suspense dramas produced by the Misty Theater in the past four years, among which the Douban score of more than 7 points can be regarded as works with a good reputation, and the episodes with an average V30 of more than 2500 can be regarded as relatively popular, the following table lists the works that meet these two standards at the same time, based on the analysis of these works, you can get a glimpse of the commonality of the Misty Theater in producing high-quality content on the suspense drama track.
IP empowerment" is the basis for the development of high-quality content for suspense dramas in the Fog Theater, in terms of quantity, more than half of the dramas launched by the Fog Theater in the past four years are IP adaptations, and from the perspective of quality, all high-quality dramas with a Douban score of more than 7 points and an average of more than 25 million V30 are high-reputation IP adaptations, including "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth" adapted from the two major IPs of the suspense master Zijin Chen, and "The Decameron Game" adapted from Keigo Higashino**. These suspense dramas based on word-of-mouth IP have naturally become the focus of attention of fans of the original work after they are launched, accumulating a group of original fans and expanding the discussion of the drama on this basis.
In addition, the polyphonic narrative structure is a major feature of the content creation of high-quality suspense dramas in the Misty Theater, which breaks the linear time and presents the case from multiple angles, breaking through the traditional suspense drama narrative structure, creating a more complex narrative effect and a suspenseful "atmosphere". "Decameron Game" uses a dual narrative to build a double time and space, starting from the beginning and end of the crime, juxtaposing the "kidnapping game" to defraud the ransom ten days ago and the ** investigation of Lu Jie's death ten days later, which cleverly caused many viewers' "misreading" and created a richer suspense atmosphere. "The Silent Truth" narrates the investigation of the case by Yan Liang, Jiang Yang, and Hou Liangping in three time and space, which not only enriches the rhythm and level of suspense, but also enables the audience to independently stitch together the truth through the dismantling and retrospection of multiple time and space; "Thirteen Years in the Dust" uses a serial murder case to start a cross-generational crime-solving story, but does not choose one of the main time and space to advance the plot like most suspense dramas, but uses cases to connect time, so that characters and clues are intertwined, echo each other, construct cause and effect between the two eras, and gradually solve various puzzles that appear with the development of the plot. These dramas "play with flowers" with polyphonic narratives, which strengthens the audience's immersion in watching the drama and the protagonist to investigate and chase the murderer together, so that many viewers are still unsatisfied after watching the drama, and post detailed posts and analysis posts in Weibo Chaohua and Douban groups to express their love.
The loss of the suspenseful content of the "Fog Theater".
In the list of Misty Theater, there are also some dramas with two data that are only one of them, and they already have the potential to be "explosive dramas" but miss out on more audiences, which is really regrettable, why these dramas have a high ** and low reputation or high reputation and low ** phenomenon is worth studying.
Who is **", with an average of nearly 45 million episodes of V30, set the highest record in the Misty Theater, but at the end of the episode, the audience complained that the character collapsed, and the Douban score fell from 7 points to 6 points. From the beginning of the series, the character was set as a hexagonal warrior with an explosive IQ, but in the last two episodes, Hu Shanquan suddenly scribbled online and confessed, which was actually a delirious psychosis who had never appeared in the plot before, and the fragmentation of the character and the sudden closure of the case caused criticism from a large number of viewers. "The Daughter Who Came Back" has an average of v30 of more than 30 million, but the score has dropped from 8 points to 6 points, the protagonist Chen Youxi was obsessed with investigating the truth of his friend Xiaoxiu's death in the early stage, but found ** in the later stage but couldn't choose it, Liao Suifang took the terrible devil route in the early stage, but inexplicably turned to protect Chen Youxi in the later stage, and the inexplicable slap in the face of the two characters made many viewers scratch their heads. The reversal is indeed a major attraction for suspense dramas, but blindly pursuing reversal without giving a reasonable foreshadowing, the plot will only slide into the abyss of character collapse and unfinished, and it is difficult to be recognized by the audience even if the ending is forcibly returned. Compared with other types of dramas, the audience of suspense dramas may pay more attention to the rigor and rationality of the plot logic, which is an issue that the creators of the Misty Theater need to pay great attention to.
The word-of-mouth drama "Moses on the Plains" is a typical "slow suspense" drama with weak suspense and heavy characters, the drama does not take the "** reasoning" of traditional suspense dramas as the core, but takes a ** as the trigger point, showing the turning point and integration of the life trajectories of the relevant little people, and successfully won the first Douban 7 points of the Misty Theater since 2020 with the delicate and moving description of the fate of the characters. Although the reputation is not low, the average V30 of the show is only 6.67 million, which shows that the audience who can enjoy the series is relatively narrow. From an innovative point of view, slow suspense dramas reject the routine creation of suspense genres, abandon the blessing of tense plots and hunting cases, and dig deep into the emotions and human nature of the characters, which is an active exploration of the performance boundaries of suspense dramas. However, "slow suspense" is "not cool enough" for some traditional suspense drama audiences in the Fog Theater who are accustomed to stimulating cases and plot reversals, which directly affects the level of **. In order to attract a wider audience, the slow suspense drama of the Misty Theater needs to maintain the depth of "characters" in content creation, while increasing the concentration of "suspense".
Unknowingly, iQIYI's "Fog Theater" has been with the audience for four years, during which it has contributed a lot of word-of-mouth masterpieces to the audience, but it also inevitably presents some problems. With the current audience's higher requirements for the plot logic and deep value expression of suspense dramas, the future "Fog Theater" needs to continue to explore the advantages and innovations of its own content output, steadily play the signboard of "classic suspense", enrich the reserve of dramas, and strictly control the quality of drama content while striving to launch new content categories and forms of suspense dramas, and further consolidate iQiyi's advantages in the suspense drama track.