Author |Guo Zhaochuan.
Edit |Weber.
Fast forward to 2024, and the ecological differentiation of the industry is more obvious.
From the perspective of the domestic short drama industry, "I Was a Stepmother in the 80s" created by the Mimeng team at the beginning of this year has been frantically harvesting traffic on major platforms, with only 10 days of shooting time and 80,000 yuan of post-production cost, in exchange for a daily recharge of 20 million yuan, and a brilliant result of exceeding 100 million yuan.
But at the same time, the short drama industry is becoming more and more "rolled". According to industry insiders, there are even staff members related to different short dramas who died suddenly due to the intensity of super squeezing, and all the auxiliary personnel have become "tool people" and "consumables".
The trend of short dramas going overseas should be popular, and the domestic short drama craze complements each other.
I'm going to start an 8-day project in Georgia. ”odungerl.b, eternity x producer Ao Dun Gele revealed in Xiaguang Talk, "In the industry, it is normal to shoot 99 episodes in 8 days. In the short drama overseas industry, this is already a "big project", and the faster project can be filmed in almost 5 days.
What is it that is gathering the new potential energy of short dramas going to sea and concentrating on the head of the industry at a speed visible to the naked eye?
The Xiaguang Talk Short Drama Overseas Theme Salon invited 3 guests to interpret and analyze the industry experience through different perspectives, clearing the fog for us and directly touching the real status quo of short dramas going to sea.
Source: Provided by the guest.
The short drama in 2024 will go to sea, and it is in an era of big waves and sand.
Although the short drama overseas industry has always been very "volume", this year's "volume method" is also very different from last year's.
Nowadays, short dramas have been domesticated into a highly centralized mode of industry by domestic short dramas. Overseas short dramas have also become more high-quality and customized products.
Not only is the industrialized filming process very shocking, but also its production methods have "conventional" routines, and the maturity of the script of the overseas short drama is far better than at the beginning.
Everyone started with a set of domestic hits.,But all the books I saw this year are original.,It's a lot of scenes that adapt to native speaker(in line with the localization context).。 Odun Gele said.
When the short drama first started to go to sea, as a producer, she also got a script similar to a "small composition" style with a long speech and lack of focus.
But now, what you can get your hands on is already a very standard film and television script. It includes detailed notes of professional scenes, on-site scheduling, actors' performances, etc., and a discerning person can know at a glance that it is produced by professional film and television screenwriters.
As soon as I read the book, the script decomposition of this script was done, several scenes were taken in the building, a few scenes were filmed in the car, and a few scenes were shot on the street at a glance, and the overseas scenes and actors could be matched on the same day. ”
Source: Provided by the guest.
These mature scripts even have a clear correspondence with the main audience: "At a glance, you can tell what the target audience is, whether it is a teenager or a housewife in her 30s - the audience is very accurate."
The emotional mobilization of each episode is almost an unconventional "three-board axe" type operation, and the focus is on "giving the impact of this emotion".
Before, when we read the script, we didn't necessarily have this level when we read ten. But now it's basically thrown over.,Almost eight of the ten books are of a very high level.。
Similarly, the production threshold for short dramas to go overseas is getting higher and higher.
Due to the need for a large number of new dramas as content filling, a large number of production teams are busy all over the world. For the sake of cost and risk dispersion, the production level of short dramas is also divided into three, six, nine and so on.
For works that are generally used for the purpose of "filling in the library", the shooting location will be in China. As a result, a large number of so-called "Hengdian European and American sheds" were born. Especially for short dramas with a majority of indoor dramas, the requirements for the scene are relatively low, and the indoor scenes are basically built by the team themselves.
I learned that a team rented a vacant villa in Guangzhou and hired foreign actors to build the set for filming. Fu Peng, the person in charge of Silver Bullet Investment, who pays attention to the online short drama track, told Xiaguang Agency, "The cost of overseas filming is about 150,000-200,000 US dollars, while the cost of shooting a drama in China is about 600,000 yuan, which is only half of the cost of overseas shooting." ”
For scripts with high expectations for "hits", the producers will basically choose overseas as the filming location for the short drama.
In terms of the choice of overseas filming locations, "English-speaking countries are still dominated by LA (Los Angeles), and if the budget is a little tight, English-speaking countries like Georgia can be considered to have better industrial workers." Ao Dun Gele told Xiaguang Agency, "If the cost is a little tighter, Thailand can also make English dramas." ”
Source: Provided by the guest.
Various platforms are also trying overseas self-made dramas produced in China, but now there are not many domestic self-made dramas that finally run out of the market. He Zexi, director of operations of Kyushu Culture's overseas business department, told Xiaguang that although overseas shooting has a longer production cycle and higher cost than domestic shooting, it is relatively controllable and the shooting quality is higher.
In fact, the biggest problem in filming dramas in China is not the scenes, but the actors. He said, "The real foreign actors in China may not be actors, but most of them are e-commerce models." ”
From the perspective of Chinese people, foreigners are blonde and blue-eyed. However, when it comes to the European and American markets, the accents and looks of domestic and foreign actors are completely unable to meet the needs of localization.
In addition, the first batch of overseas short dramas actually started to be filmed in China, which led to the actors on the platform being some "familiar faces".
Our production capacity is very strong, and basically the foreign actors who can reach the level of professional actors have already been filmed once, and they will not be considered again. Odun Gele said.
Source: Provided by the guest.
The so-called "reckless era of skits going to sea" is thought to have long ended, or never existed.
The "bonus period" of the grass stage team in the short drama going to sea may have appeared briefly in the middle of last year, but now it has ended, and the window left for such savage players is now getting narrower and narrower.
The small amount of investment is basically blocked on the track to the sea." Fu Peng, CEO of Silver Bullet Investment, told Xiaguang Agency. "I've also met a lot of people who want to get in, but after getting to know the basics of everyone, most of them have been persuaded to quit. ”
He believes that the development of short dramas going overseas so far, especially "creating a platform for overseas short dramas", is not a task that small teams can easily embark on.
Short dramas are more "money-burning" when they go to sea, because they have a completely different underlying logic from the gameplay of domestic short dramas.
Domestic short dramas are still based on the mini program ecology as a whole, and they are actually a very cash-flow business - if they fail to achieve the expected high ROI on the first day of investment, most of them will be directly abandoned and reinvested.
However, most of the overseas short drama models are still based on the logic of independent APP platforms, so the income can only be a long-term payback cycle, and it is completely impossible to use the "seven-day payback" model of domestic mini programs to set in.
In addition to a longer payback period, the cost of overseas production of short dramas will also increase.
First of all, the time period for the polishing of the book will be long.,You need a screenwriter with a background in English life.,You also have to understand the rhythm of the short play.。 Secondly, the filming time will be longer, because the production efficiency of overseas local production is completely incomparable to the shooting efficiency of Chinese crews.
Source: Provided by the guest.
It may be that in China, some mini program short dramas can quickly return to their costs, but considering the overseas platform tax, the revenue model of the start-up short drama platform, the difference in the cost of filling the short drama database, etc., the opportunity to go overseas to the short drama platform APP is basically reserved for the "regular army".
Xiaguang Club learned through industry insiders that for the early small-scale short drama "reckless practitioners", it is also the same "nine deaths and one life".
They groped in the dark, and there were a lot of inefficient streams for a long time in the early days - millions of dollars were lost on advertising fees, and the customer retention rate was extremely low, and they couldn't run at all. ”
Some small players who can make profits and make money have tried to promote short dramas through overseas social software, and only then have they achieved traffic "running through" through social gameplay and earned their first pot of gold.
I want more people to know what's going on here. This practitioner told Xiaguang Club that after making profits from overseas short dramas, he is ready to quickly withdraw from this field and return to the main business of long-term profits.
He believes that players who go overseas in short dramas should be more sober, rather than indulging in "leek-cutting flickering". At the same time, he also hopes to "establish a copyright material library" in the future, so that the industry can return to a normal business format.
If you have the mentality of making a wave of quick money, there was a bonus period in some areas before, or there were opportunities if the content was particularly good, but this is not the norm for overseas short dramas. He Zexi, director of operations of Kyushu Culture's overseas business department, also told Xiaguang Agency.
Judging from his observations, it is very difficult to enter the short drama market in a "lazy short and fast way", because it is no longer the window period.
Now capital, platforms, and professional producers have been deeply involved. Everyone is still fighting for concentration and professionalism - including the efficiency of spending money, the efficiency of operations, and the sophistication of content, and it is more difficult to win. ”
Everyone on the street is short of excellent works, and they (who do pirated remakes) are not lacking. Fu Peng told Xiaguang Society, "But their traffic is basically some garbage or tail volume, and bold players may also have gained a wave overseas, but this will not last long." ”
Odun Gele also believes that "basically the players who can make sea skits must be very professional when they go to this table." There really are no reckless players. - The main thing is that I can't afford to lose, and if I lose that money in a book, it's all dollars. ”
The gameplay of short drama script piracy, remakes, domestic films with English subtitles, AI face swapping, etc., seen on major social networks**, still occasionally appeared among early players, but now it is nearing the end.
For producers in the industry, the production process is actually relatively easy, and it has now entered the process stage.
In the final analysis, the core competitiveness still falls on the reserve of excellent scripts and IPs. In other words, for a good short drama going to sea, its core value still lies in the story.
We feel that the core is still the script. Odun Gele said.
A good script determines the ultimate success of a short play, at least 60%-70% of the impact. He Zexi also said, "In the future, short dramas can be screenplayed-centered, and good screenwriters have really high returns in the Kyushu system." ”
At present, most of the types of Chinese overseas short dramas are still concentrated in urban sweet pets, that is, content for female audiences. Even if there are themes such as werewolves and vampires in the English-speaking area, the core idea is still urban love, and the so-called werewolves and vampires are just differences in character identity settings.
Source: Provided by the guest.
Specifically, even under the big type of urban love of female frequency, there are differences in the localization routine models of the European and American markets and the Southeast Asian market.
Short dramas such as the return of the angry little daughter-in-law from blackening are very marketable in Southeast Asia, and they also have a sense of picture impact. But it doesn't work in Europe and the United States, which have no sense of the spiritual core of counterattacks and special volumes, and they may be more inclined to bloody and interesting or light-hearted themes. Odun Gele said.
Basically, when she gets the script, she can simply judge whether the show has the potential to be a hit, as well as the core highlights of the plot and the direction of casting, which will eventually affect the focus of the future after it is put into the market: "Money still has to be spent on the blade." ”
Source: Provided by the guest.
In the future, the key short drama revenue will still be concentrated in the European and American markets. The mature payment habits and high unit prices in Europe and the United States are very advantageous.
Only when the content, script and story are fully screened in the early stage, can the follow-up investment be targeted, fully amplify the advantages, and improve the probability of producing "explosive models".
In addition to the script, the choice of actors is also very crucial: "The short drama industry is very actor-friendly, and the whole temperament, tonality, including CP matching effect of changing a male lead is completely different." It really completely determines life and death, and if the actor is not chosen well, it will be all for nothing. ”
The short drama industry has entered an increasingly standardized "era of seating".
Overall, 2024 is still a year in which the trend of domestic short dramas going overseas continues to expand, and industry insiders are relatively optimistic about the overall scale and expectations of the industry. Under the influence of the rapid development of AIG, innovative models of short dramas are also emerging, and even a variety of cooperation models such as e-commerce products implanting short drama shots have also emerged.
In 2024, there will be large capital and more head players entering the game, and the top 5-10 who can run out may be able to reach tens of millions of turnover, and even the top few can reach the average monthly turnover level of 20 million-30 million. He Zexi told Xiaguang Society.
Short dramas going overseas are undergoing a reshuffle, the Matthew effect is becoming more and more obvious, the production capacity is gradually maturing, and the content ecology will be presented by more and more professional production teams. Frankly speaking, those who go to sea for short dramas need to have the spirit of pony crossing the river, and the short drama track is becoming more and more "rolly", and they need to bow down to the game to test the depth.