“who g**e you permission to quit?(Who allowed you to resign?) ）”so? i am the ceo. what are they gonna do？(So what?) I'm the President. What can I do? Kasey Esser, who was reading the script, and the other actors burst out laughing. According to the script, the domineering president he plays is "wall-knocking" heroine in the office. Even though he has filmed several similar "Chinese-style local short dramas", Ethel still feels a little uncomfortable when he looks at such a "thunderous" plot. "These scripts are a bit vulgar, but they are funny, so we all shoot them in a more relaxed mood. ”Ethel told us. The 34-year-old grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and went on to study exercise science at the University of Evansville. After graduating, he opened a fitness studio in Los Angeles, studied acting in his spare time, and also participated in some low-budget short films, but did not receive much attention. Unexpectedly, this unknown amateur actor became popular with his Chinese-style local short drama. In 2023, he successively starred as the "werewolf" male protagonist in "Fated to My Forbidden Alpha" (My Forbidden Love with Destiny Alpha), which exploded in the overseas market, and the domineering president in "Goodbye, My CEO" (goodbye, president), and suddenly gained many fans from all over the world and became a big actor in the short drama circle. 
Portrait of Cassie Ethel and stills from "Goodbye, President".
"Every few days I get new film offers," Ethel said, "and skits give me more opportunities to shoot and get closer to being a movie star." "What changed Ethel's career was the popularity of Chinese local short dramas in the European and American markets. The so-called short drama is a kind of drama with a single episode of 2 to 3 minutes long, roughly composed of 50-100 episodes, most of the content is adapted from popular online articles in the past, with "Mary Sue", "Boss", "sadomasochism", "cool text" and other online text routines as the basic background. Its duration and content are more consistent with the form of short **. In the past few years, short dramas have quickly swept China's major short ** platforms. In the past year, these local short dramas have also begun the process of "going overseas", and after changing overseas local actors, they have moved into the overseas short drama market without changing the soup, and quickly conquered a large number of overseas audiences. According to SensorTower, an American mobile application data analysis company, in 2023, the total number of top short dramas going overseas on the platform Reelshort will reach 28.23 million times, with a net turnover of 56.71 million US dollars. And before 2023, its ** volume is almost zero. With several hit short dramas, this one was created by "Chinese** (300364SZ)'s short drama platform launched by Crazy Maple Studio once surpassed TikTok in November 2023 and ranked first on the US iOS entertainment list as a free app. Almost at the same time, GoodShort under "Xinyue Times", Flex TV of "Anyue Technology", ShortTV of "Kyushu Culture", and DramaBox of "Dianzhong Technology" are also squeezing into the North American and Southeast Asian markets. According to the data of the overseas service agency "Xiangzhi Go to Sea", in November 2023, these platforms also have a monthly income of nearly one million US dollars. However, unlike the beginning of the scale of domestic short dramas, short dramas are still a "new thing" overseas and face many challenges. Chinese companies have shown great ambition to go overseas for short dramas, but they have not been able to attract more overseas capital to enter the short drama industry. For investors and short drama platforms that have entered the game, after the short-term traffic explosion, how to continue to attract users at a lower cost, copy popular dramas, and monetize traffic are also problems that need to be solved. On the **earthy skit, the earthlings seem to have reached an agreement. But from the perspective of the development of the industry, short dramas going overseas is just the beginning. 
The "counterattack" of Chinese short dramas in the North American marketHow popular are Chinese short dramas overseas? In July 2023, Reelshort's two short dramas - "The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband" and "Fated to My Forbidden Alpha" (My Forbidden Love with Destiny Alpha) ran out of 31.6 billion and 12.5 billion ** amount. These two dramas are both filmed and produced by overseas Chinese teams, the former focuses on the wife of the boss; The latter male protagonist is a "werewolf", which is not only an ordinary image in daily life, but also incarnates as a wolf on a full moon night, telling the forbidden love between humans and beasts. 
Stills from the two-sided life of a billionaire husband" and "My Forbidden Love with Destined Alpha".
A month after the broadcast of "My Forbidden Love with Destiny Alpha", Ethel received messages from viewers from all over the world. "We even had viewers from India, Brazil, Thailand and Mexico, and it was only when more and more fans left me messages saying that they had watched my show and liked me very much, that I realized that the show was a hit. With several hits, Reelshort earned a total of $5.4 million that month. At its peak, in November 2023, on November 11 alone, its net income reached 45$90,000. As of Nov. 17, Reelshort's cumulative net income has exceeded $22 million. As a result, the stock price of Reelshort's parent company "Chinese**" soared, reaching a seven-year high of 35 on November 2298 yuan. In the previous month, its stock price was still hovering below 15 yuan. Chinese** was the first to go public in 2015, becoming the first digital publishing stock. But its profitability has been criticized. Since its listing, the cumulative loss of Chinese ** has exceeded 2 billion yuan. In the past few years, Chinese** has chased many winds such as artificial intelligence, AIGC, digital economy, virtual reality, and metaverse, but none of them have changed its business difficulties. After 2022, Chinese** began to bet on short dramas, and in mid-2022, it launched reelshort for overseas markets, fighting a turnaround battle. Not only Chinese**, but also during the same period, Palm Reading Technology, Tianwei Video, Huanrui Century, Zhongguang Tianxue, Gravity Media, etc. have risen and stopped. Among them is the interactive game "Finished! I'm surrounded by beautiful women! The reason for the explosion has further ignited investors' enthusiasm for the short drama market. Prior to this, many local ** platforms and investors in the United States believed that "Chinese-style local short dramas" would not work in the European and American markets. Wang Jingzhe is the founder of Naughty Egg North American Studios, and will start producing short dramas in April 2023. In 2021, Wang Jingzhe, who majored in film and television production, graduated and entered the American film and television production industry. At that time, there was already a consensus in the industry - more people will use mobile phones to watch dramas in the future. After gaining experience, Wang Jingzhe began to try to cooperate with the platform to develop a vertical screen short drama, but was rejected. "Americans think this kind of drama is a bit low, and what they want to do is a vertical version of Netflix, taking the high-end route. ”Wang Jingzhe said. With this in mind, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the founder of DreamWorks USA, and Meg Whitman, the former helm of Hewlett-Packard, experimented with the launch of the short streaming app Quibi, an attempt to make high-quality skits. Its programming includes the two-Emmy Award-winning play "Unleash Rayshawn," which tells the story of a black Iraq War veteran trying to get out of his predicament. Each episode of the show is about 10 minutes long, and the budget for a single episode is $1 million. As a result, the start was unfavorable, and the first month of Quib's launch was only 2.9 million, and it was announced that it would be shut down half a year later. 
Caption: Stills from "Rescue Rayshawn".
Network Wang Jingzhe thinks:"[They] didn't figure out why people were watching vertical skits, and they didn't know what the story, the subject matter, and the narrative were appropriate for the skis, and they still used the old-school Hollywood thinking for their content. ”Jia Yi, the founder of Reelshort, also said in an interview with China News Weekly: "When making mobile Internet products, the first thing to think about is 'who is my core user'. Secondly, you need to use the most core content strategy to match your core users, and finally choose the most appropriate monetization method. I think Quibi is completely wrong on all three points, but we want to find a whole new path from them to do it. "On the question of how to make a short play, Reelshort has also gone through several twists and turns. is different from the short dramas that are mainly launched on mini programs in China,There are no mini programs overseas, so overseas companies can only rely on building apps to output content, and how to attract and retain users is a problem faced by all platforms. In August 2022, after reelshort was launched overseas, at first it only directly put domestic local short dramas with English subtitles on the platform, and these translated dramas did not meet the taste of overseas audiences in terms of plot and lines, and the response was mediocre after the broadcast. After a few months of operation, the ** volume ranking has basically stabilized outside the top 1,000. In June 2023, Reelshort began to change his thinking and decided to localize the adaptation of the script, using European and American actors, using a Chinese production team, and shooting locally. Most of the short drama scripts are adapted from Chinese online texts. The duration of each episode is about 2 minutes, and a drama ranges from 50-100 episodes. Viewers can free** the first few episodes, and the rest of the episodes need to be unlocked by watching ads or paid**, and the collection of paid dramas is about 10 cents per episode**. At present, on Reelshort, there are all kinds of themes such as "The Domineering President Fell in Love with Me", "My Poor Ghost Husband Turned Out to Be a Billionaire", "Bai Yueguang She Got Married", "Werewolf" and so on. These settings, which are already familiar to domestic audiences, have gained a lot of ** after being reinterpreted by European and American actors. The strategy of FlexTV, which went overseas at the same time as Reelshort, is to first focus on the Southeast Asian market, and after winning the first place in Thailand in October last year, it will further increase investment and harvest Europe and the United States. Goodshort, ShortTV and other short drama platforms that later joined the overseas team have been much smoother, firstly, there is experience to learn from, and secondly, companies such as Kyushu Culture have accumulated a lot of experience in short drama production in China, and they have quite a lot of experience in how to grasp the "explosive point". Since most of these short dramas are produced by overseas Chinese teams, Chinese practitioners in North America have also become very popular. Xie Xiangwu, a producer at Unreal Imagine, a Los Angeles-based film and television production company, has been busy lately. At the end of 2022, under the introduction of Chinese friends in the industry, her company began to shoot short dramas. "Now there is a great demand for good productions in the short drama market, and almost all of our original advertising and short shooting businesses have been replaced by short drama shooting. Wang Jingzhe's team originally focused on short film production, and in April 2023, it will also start to produce overseas short dramas. From the beginning of the exploration and attempt, to the current maturity, Wang Jingzhe already has a team dedicated to shooting short dramas. 
The birth of a short drama that went to seaWang Jingzhe told us that there are probably two ways to cooperate in the filming of overseas short dramas, one is that the short drama platform builds its own shooting team, and the other is outsourcing. Generally speaking, the platform will determine the theme and plot according to the user's preferences and judgment of the market, and then the producer will find a screenwriter to complete the English script. The script is the heart of a short play. At present, most of the scripts used in the U.S. market for adapting short plays are Chinese online texts. In the past 20 years, types of networks** such as boss, sadomasochism, and Xiuzhen have bred a large number of readers overseas, providing an IP reserve for adaptation of short dramas. The romance-themed "female frequency" theme is the most popular, and the audience is mostly women between the ages of 25 and 45. There are also a lot of people around Ethel who watch short dramas, "Most of them originally read online texts and have a high acceptance of short dramas." There is a lot of pressure on everyone these days, so these light-hearted skits are easily popular. In Xie Xiangwu's view, the explosion of short dramas does not mean that the aesthetics of European and American audiences are changing, "These audiences have always been the same people, they used to watch soap operas, and now they watch short dramas." "But not all popular IPs can become short dramas. "Most of the popular online articles in the United States are the products of Chinese online texts going overseas, which is equivalent to the level of China's online texts ten years ago, with large scale and uneven quality. directly make these online articles into online dramas, and the audience will not buy it. Wang Jingzhe said. After getting the script, the team will make local changes to the script. It is understoodMost of these scripts are written by domestic screenwriters and delivered online. On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 20,000 notes on similar topics such as "recruiting short drama screenwriters" and "receiving short drama scripts", and there are even special short drama screenwriter training classes. Generally speaking, the script for going to sea requires an all-English script, which is also higher than that of Chinese. "Revising the script is a difficult process, not only to retain the essence of Chinese short plays, but also to meet the requirements of European and American audiences. Before filming began, Wang asked them to watch at least three Chinese short plays in order to find a "feel" for 80 percent of his skit crew. Only if the script is approved by everyone in the team will the follow-up filming and production be carried out. In the world of short dramas, the "breaking point" is the primary consideration, followed by the character design and world view. "This kind of creative process is actually a bit anti-human, but we have to do it, because the skit requires it, and the user only watches the cool and explosive points, and we have to strengthen it. Jia Yi mentioned in the interview. 
Overseas short drama filming site
Naughty Egg North American Studios Xiaohongshu account.
The shooting cycle of short dramas is very tight, and it takes about two weeks to complete the filming of 50-100 episodes. Ethel had to shoot 10 to 12 pages of script every day and work more than 12 hours straight. The scenes of the short drama are much simpler than ordinary film and television dramas, and Ethel's overlord drama is mainly filmed in the villa rented by the crew. For him, adapting to a vertical screen is harder than understanding the script. In vertical screen skits, the camera is basically only aimed at the character, and he must make his movements and expressions more exaggerated in order to meet the requirements of the picture. "In the past, there could be a lot of people on camera, but now there are only one or two people, so we have to run around and switch positions with the actors. "For many overseas producers, shooting vertical screen short dramas is also an unprecedented attempt. Xie Xiangwu, who has six years of experience in film and television production, did not complete the workload on the first day of shooting. In previous film and television productions, horizontal screens accounted for the vast majority, although Xie Xiangwu brushed a lot of domestic short dramas on the Internet, but in terms of production, she is still very unfamiliar with vertical screens. During the filming, Xie Xiangwu found that the lenses and actors' movements that were designed at the beginning could not be used. Dialogues that could have been done in one shot had to be done in several shots, and traditional sets were no longer suitable. "In landscape mode, there are many ways to enrich the picture, but in portrait screen, people occupy a large area, so you need to add foreground and background to superimpose layers. Xie Xiangwu explained. Compared with China, overseas audiences have different requirements for the picture, Xie Xiangwu told us that domestic crews generally use large light to brighten the whole picture, but in the United States, the use of light should have layers and changes in light and shade, "The audience wants Hollywood-level visual effects." "However, the higher viewing requirements correspond to lower production costs. Respondents saidCauseDue to limited budgets, it is difficult for short drama platforms and investors to find suitable local filmmakers, so most of them choose to work with Chinese film and television teams. Wang Jingzhe made an analogy, for $1 million, the Chinese can make three short dramas; And the Americans can only make one. "Chinese buy stories, dig deeper into topics, and find traffic passwords, but the American team, on the contrary, is more willing to put resources on stars, and the cost will be higher." "Some of the actors in the crew are from the local actors' union, and some are contracted actors under the production company. At first, his salary for each drama was about $5,000 to $10,000, "Now that I've become a star of the short play, I can have a better salary." "Beginning in May last year, the Writers Guild of America launched a strike campaign against streaming platforms; In mid-July, it developed into a larger strike, including the actors' union. "Many teams have no drama to film, everyone's eyes are on strike negotiations, and our short drama can develop so rapidly in one year, and it is also a benefit of double strikes. Wang Jingzhe explained that due to the strike, many people could only shoot non-union **, which led to an influx of many excellent filmmakers in the short drama market. But many American filmmakers have a hard time adapting to the current pace of skit work. Ethel bluntly said that he was not suitable for the work of the Chinese crew. On the one hand, the Chinese are more "rolly", on the other hand, the investors also hope to shorten the construction period, and every crew is working overtime to catch up. Once he was in the filming period, he would work more than 12 hours a day. It also made him feel like he was just a "tool man". The cost of the short drama projects undertaken by Xie Xiangwu ranges from 100,000 to 200,000 US dollars, and the crew of 20 to 30 people will have about a month of pre-preparation and post-production, and the post-production can be completed in 7 days at the earliest. "In Los Angeles, there are no more than ten teams that do well. Xie Xiangwu judged. The demand for filming short dramas is still increasing rapidly. In the past month, Wang Jingzhe's team has been receiving it almost every day.
Three or five cooperation intentions, when interviewed by us, he has been working for a week, until 11 o'clock in the evening"There are many people who want to go to sea, but the production team is not enough, and there are many porridge and few monks, because the budget is too low. ”The filming of short dramas is not as "profitable" as it is reported on the Internet. "If you can really earn millions a day, it's also a platform. Wang Jingzhe calculated that the profit of the production team undertaking a short drama accounted for about 5% of the investment. 
The crumbling skit "Sprout".From the perspective of overall development, short dramas are still in the early stages of development in overseas markets, but many problems have begun to arise in the industry. Ethel, who became popular with several popular skits, receives new skit invitations every few days. Looking at the scripts handed over, he found that many of them had similar plots and settings. Skit platforms are all getting together to do one thing - replication success. 
Caption: A short drama pushed by the reelshort page.
Internet.
On Reelshort, werewolf-themed short dramas occupy almost half of the country, and the other half are bosses, and these short plays even have the same cover poster. On another overseas short drama app GoodShort, the theme of the recommended drama series is also dominated by the boss. Some employers once asked Xie Xiangwu to "shoot (other dramas), but to avoid copyright issues." Xie Xiangwu could only smile helplessly. When a large number of investors poured into the skit industry, copy-paste became the fastest way to make money. "Now everyone is filming werewolves and bosses, but too much homogeneous content will only intensify the competition, and low-quality works are difficult to get out of the circle. Xie Xiangwu said. While "taking shortcuts", the industry is also looking for lower production costs. Some domestic short drama companies are considering sending Chinese short dramas to overseas markets after AI face swapping, trying to make two profits in one drama. But Wang Jingzhe is skeptical of this approach: "In the United States, the racial issue is an untouchable red line, and replacing the face of a yellow person with a white face is completely self-defeating." "Different from the large investment in domestic short dramas, more and more overseas short drama investors seem to be looking forward to completing the product at a lower cost and then making it online as soon as possible. But behind the low cost means shoddy manufacturing. Wang Jingzhe said: "Now some platforms will bet their hopes on the producer, the script is not good, expect the producer to change it well, and if it doesn't work, they will expect the later stage, which is completely a misunderstanding." No matter how beautiful such a work is, it is a bad story and cannot attract the audience. "How to sustain the heat is also a big problem. According to the data of Appgrowing Overseas Observation, while Reelshort launched popular short dramas one after another in July 2023, the daily advertising volume on iOS and Android exceeded 400 groups, and in November, the single-day advertising volume once exceeded 1,000 groups. At the same time, Reelshort also made a "second creation" of the series on TikTok and YouTube to promote it. With such a cast intensity, it is difficult not to see the work. But as of February 21, Reelshort has dropped to 21st place on the US iOS entertainment chart, TikTok is back in first place, and Neiflix is in third place. The craze for skits going overseas seems to be just a flash in the pan. At present, the number of new overseas short drama platforms such as Reelshort and Goodshort is basically about two per month, far lower than the number of 30 40 domestic short drama mini programs. Not only that, but it is difficult to reproduce the popular model. The reelshort homepage still recommends the popular dramas of half a year ago, while the new dramas are mediocre, and most of the ** numbers are around one million. Ethel admits that although the skit has attracted a lot of attention, the audience is really limited. There are also many people around him who watch dramas on the platform and complain about short drama advertisements. "In the U.S., we can't quite accept being interrupted by an ad while watching a show, and if we need to watch a dozen seconds of ad to unlock the plot, we'd rather not watch it. Wang Jingzhe thinks"The popularity will decrease, but the skit will always be there. Now that platforms and investors are becoming rational, the entire industry will stabilize. ”But the high cost also makes the platform more cautious about new themes, after all, the boss and werewolf are products that have gone through a year of experimentation before they were selected by the market, and no one dares to gamble on a future with new themes. As a result, the rich head platforms began to improve the quality and explore new themes, while the small platforms could only wait and see. Although there is no clear route for short dramas to go overseas, Wang Jingzhe still believes that the short drama market is a blue ocean overseas. "There is still a lot of room for short dramas to be explored, the male frequency has not yet been developed, and various types of dramas such as comedy are also waiting for us to explore. In February this year, the werewolf boss short drama produced by Wang Jingzhe's team received an invitation to be screened by the TCL China Grand Theater in Hollywood. The team members were excited and at the same time felt a little dreamy. "Originally, I wanted to cut the short drama into a vertical screen feature film and try it at the film festival, but I didn't expect it to be shortlisted. They feel that this is a good opportunity for American companies to pay attention to Chinese short dramas, but Wang Jingzhe is also worried, in his opinion, if the American film and television industry rejuvenates this year and local capital enters the short drama market, it will cause a dimensionality reduction blow to short dramas produced by Chinese. In January, NYSE-listed MEGA Matrix announced the successful acquisition of FlexTV, a platform company, to enter the short drama market, kicking off the prelude to the entry of U.S. stocks into overseas short dramas. After the completion of the merger, FlexTV has reached a strategic cooperation with Guangzhou Film Bank Tianxia Cultural Communication, a holding subsidiary of Insai Group, and plans to build a full-chain marketing service platform for short dramas going overseas covering streaming, advertising placement, brand customized dramas, talent marketing, account generation operation and other links. In just a few months, short dramas have successfully entered the field of vision of local capital in the United States, Wang Jingzhe noticed that many platforms and American companies have taken action, "This year may be the node of American short dramas going overseas, and when local capital enters the game, it is the time when the game really begins." Hotspot Engine Program