Wang Ma fell down, and Xing Ye stood up

‍‍There is a gap between "wild" and "regular" short dramas. "Wang Ma"'s short dramas attract audiences with fast plot twists and curious settings, while "Star Master"'s "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" shows the advantages of "regular" short dramas. The popularity of short dramas shows that the audience has a great demand for fast-paced and high-conflict content. High-quality and low-quality short dramas each meet the needs of different user groups, and they do not constitute a direct competitive relationship.

Recently, there have been two major events in the short video industry that have shocked the entire Internet. On one hand, there was the alternative collapse of "Wang Ma", and on the other hand, there was the high-profile entry of "Star Master".

"Wang Ma", born in the 2000s, became an internet sensation with her series of short videos titled "Reborn as a Nanny in a Domineering President's Short Drama". Currently, the video has been viewed nearly 2 billion times on the Douyin platform alone. She has continued to attract attention recently because of the incident of backstabbing a worker. Whether Wang Ma's series of short videos are short dramas has also been a subject of controversy among netizens.

"Master Xing", who dominated the film and television industry in the millennium, and whose original nonsensical comedy occupied half of the Hong Kong film market, is now back in the public eye with the short drama "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf". "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" officially started airing on June 2. The first episode had over a million views within one hour of its release, and over 35 million views within three days of its release.

Two people who seemed to have nothing in common now stood at two extremes of the short play and "met" on the same stage.

In the past, due to the rapid development of the industry, people often overlooked the gap between the "wild" and "regular" short dramas. Now it is time to take a look at it.

1. Short dramas "regular army" beat "wild" in seconds

In the stories of "Wang Ma", we often see frequent stereotyped character conflicts and contradictions within a few minutes, huge plot and character reversals, and various bizarre settings. Whether the relationship between the CP breaks down due to misunderstanding, or one party uses self-destruction to ask for forgiveness from the other party in order to repair the relationship, or the roles suddenly swap identities, and the butler suddenly becomes a rich young master...

Obviously, the same plot and exaggerated acting have been tried and tested in popular short dramas, and are even familiar to the audience.

For example, in "I was a stepmother in the 1980s", the heroine "Si Nian" was going to marry a second-married pig farmer in the countryside, but she didn't expect that the other party was a handsome man with abs and two children. Another example is "Boss Li, You Got the Wrong Wife", the heroine "Jiang Sheng" mistakenly slept with the big boss "Li Tingyan", and when she woke up and fled, she left her best friend "Lin Xiaoxiao"'s resume in the room, and eventually developed a "three-person cohabitation" life.

This type of short drama mainly takes a "wild approach", relying entirely on dialogues to express character settings. The camera images are not as sophisticated as regular film and television works such as movies and TV series, and rely entirely on artificially created conflicts and bizarre plots to attract users.

But in "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf", the audience gets a different experience.

Compared with the vertical screen format commonly used in short dramas, "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" adopts the traditional horizontal screen shooting. In addition to giving the audience the feeling of following the traditional film and television content, the horizontal screen format also avoids the disadvantage of vertical screen shooting due to the limitation of screen space, which can only use a large number of close-ups and close-ups of characters to connect and promote the plot. In addition, the horizontal screen shot can also present multiple characters, scenes and environmental elements in one picture, thus enriching the visual perception.

In terms of the plot, although "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" does not have the bloody plot of "wild" short dramas and the typical characters that can be identified as the positive and negative camps at a glance just by the background music, the overall plot is compact and the pace is brisk. The first episode only takes 5 minutes to complete the explanation and advancement of multiple clues at the same time.

In addition, the biggest difference between "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" and other short plays is that it has a profound theme and a lighthearted and humorous style. The most representative is the lines in "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" that are full of metaphors and irony.

In particular, lines such as "the shooting at Sam's house", "nuclear waste water discharge at Kimura's house", "Warwick was fired", and "Tikotoko was banned" in the play, although they are not directly related to current affairs on the surface, netizens surfing on 5G can still understand the "connotation" in one second.

In terms of production, the resources leveraged by Stephen Chow's "entry" are also very different from short dramas such as "Wang Ma".

The initial team of "Wang Ma" is a typical "dorm startup project". Apart from the fact that they are from the journalism major, they have nothing to do with film and television production. After shooting short videos and becoming popular, they gradually expanded the team with the help of the Internet celebrity agency. Therefore, the success of "Wang Ma" is more like a result of a casual attempt that was accidentally selected by the market.

The production team of "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" includes producer "Master Xing", producer Yi Xiaoxing and director Ma Shi. Among them, Yi Xiaoxing, as a producer, created popular online dramas such as "Never Expected" and "Report to the Boss" before the short video platform became popular, and still has a considerable influence in the field of online videos.

Although director Ma Shi is not well known to ordinary netizens, he is also a professional who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy and holds titles such as director, screenwriter, and cartoonist, and has many theater works and online video works.

As for the main cast of "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf", there is not a single "amateur". Shi Yuanting, who plays the male lead, not only has his representative work "Northeastern Transfer Students", but has also participated in the recording of many variety shows. Xia Ruoyan, who plays the female lead, has participated in the well-known variety show "Guess Guess Guess Guess", and has appeared in many film and television dramas.

In addition, comedians such as Tudou, Jiang Shimeng, Xu Zhisheng, Pai Xiaoxuan, and Zhang Baiqiao, who have successfully become popular through comedy variety shows and short videos in the past two years, also play supporting roles in the drama.

Whether it is the story plot, production team or cast, "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf", which has taken off the halo of "Master Xing", is still far superior to ordinary bloody short dramas. This is also the most obvious gap between the "regular army" and "wild ways" of short dramas.

2. Celebrities and famous people enter the market, forcing the industry to upgrade

For the short drama industry itself, the participation of well-known actors and directors is no longer a new thing.

Last November, the famous director Wang Jing led his team to shoot the short play "The Billionaire Silly Prince" in Hengdian. In addition to being the chief director, Wang Jing also invited an experienced team of directors, including Zhang Min, the executive director who had worked with Wang Jing on works such as "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber". According to statistics from the Jingzhe Research Institute, Yang Rong, Li Xian, Bai Jugang, Fei Qiming, He Hongshan, Guan Xiaotong, Lou Yixiao and other well-known actors have participated in the short play.

In fact, since short plays became a new industry trend, people generally believe that celebrities and famous people entering the short play industry are taking advantage of the market opportunities to make money. This subjective judgment has some truth, but it does not mean that we should ignore the positive impact of professionals entering the short play industry.

To give a simple example, the "China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report" shows that as of December 2022, the scale of short video users has reached 1.012 billion. Among these 1 billion short video users, more than half of them have watched short dramas and instant noodle shows of less than 3 minutes in the past six months, among which users under the age of 19 (born after 2003) account for more than 50% of the viewers. According to the Meiland database, compared with TV dramas and online dramas, the audience of short dramas is more concentrated in the young female group.

The data from ByteDance shows that the audience of "Golden Pig, Jade Leaf" is mostly in the 24-30 and 31-40 age groups. In addition, from a gender perspective, males account for 78% and females account for 22%. This means that a large portion of the main audience of "Golden Pig, Jade Leaf" are "people who grew up watching Stephen Chow's movies."

Obviously, with the market appeal of stars and directors such as "Master Xing", the celebrity effect can be fully utilized, allowing more groups who are not the core users of short dramas to start paying attention to the content of short dramas, thereby helping to expand the scale of the short drama market.

In addition, the participation of fan groups has also played a spurring role in the short drama industry. Take "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" as an example. When "Star fans" "pick faults" with the standard of "Zhou-style comedy", they are actually using Stephen Chow's past classic works as a reference, which to some extent also improves the market's judgment standards for short drama content. At the content production level, it is using market forces to force the short drama industry to upgrade.

In addition, the participation of the "regular army" in the film and television industry has itself played a role in clearing up the mess and promoting the good in the industry.

Since the short dramas became popular, the industry has been in chaos, among which shoddy production and vulgar plots have always been common phenomena, and there are even risks of capital trading. There are two main reasons for these problems.

First, the relevant practitioners themselves lack professional knowledge and production capabilities, as well as the awareness of legal operations. For example, the "Wang Ma" whose character failed, although the main creator has certain talents and the content he produces can obtain good traffic on the platform, but the core team lacks work experience and commercial practical experience, and the management is arbitrary without any regulations. To some extent, it is also the performance of a makeshift team, and there is a possibility of failure at any time.

In contrast, the "regular army" represented by Master Xing has been in the film and television industry for many years, and has mature rules and bottom lines for both content production and legal operations. Although there is no guarantee that the "regular army" can quickly produce content that is suitable for the short drama market, it can at least promote the entire industry to move towards standardization spontaneously.

On the other hand, although the short drama industry has suddenly become popular, the entire industry is still in its early stages of development, so market supervision is not yet perfect.

However, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television recently issued the "Latest Work Tips for Micro-Short Drama Filing", which emphasized that from June 1, 2024, micro-short dramas will be subject to classified and layered review, and micro-short dramas that have not been reviewed and filed will not be allowed to be disseminated online. According to Sina Technology, the release of "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" was also delayed because it was waiting for the filing number.

Overall, the launch of "Golden Pig and Jade Leaves" not only represents the "regular army", forcing the industry to upgrade from the content production level and promoting the scale of the industry at the market level, but also reflects that the short drama industry is moving towards standardization under the continuous improvement of supervision.

It is a slight exaggeration to say that "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" has, in a certain sense, witnessed an important turning point in the short drama industry.

3. What kind of skits do the audience need?

The popularity of short dramas is really inexplicable. In the eyes of many content producers, short dramas have neither art nor profound ideas, and they just cater to the gossip and curiosity of some users.

However, it is precisely because of this "inexplicable" phenomenon that it is worth thinking about: What is the value of short plays? What kind of short plays do audiences really need?

Long before the birth of short video platforms, there were short dramas "exclusively for" Internet users, such as "Hip Hop Quartet" and "Never Expected". In the early days of these works, the settings were very simple and the actors were unknown, but they gained a lot of fans with their humorous plots and the actors' personalized interpretations.

Including the stage when users shifted from video websites to short video platforms, there were also series such as "Chen Xiang 6:30" that were crudely produced but well-liked by users. Therefore, although the level of production determines the starting point of short dramas, it does not mean that low-quality short drama content has no market.

In fact, from the details of the short dramas that became popular through short video platforms, we can see that short video users have always been very tolerant of video quality.

In 2019, before China officially entered the 5G commercial era, short videos shot by smartphones were far from high-definition, and the images were often blurry, as if separated by a layer of fog. But even with such video quality, the number of short video users in my country has reached 648 million, accounting for 75.8% of the total number of netizens (data from the 44th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet).

Even today, netizens casually record their lives, and a short video without composition or dialogue may suddenly become popular and receive sky-high traffic. The reason is that people's requirements for short videos are far less than those for traditional film and television works, or the audience does not really care about as many things as in the past.

Just like in low-quality short dramas, the shooting scene is in the real estate sales center, the actors may not even speak Mandarin well, and the costumes and makeup are not delicate enough. These "hard flaws" in production can be seen at a glance by the audience, but they are still willing to continue watching, largely because the fast pace, strong conflicts, and frequent reversals of the short dramas bring a continuous "cool" feeling to the audience.

Just like in the era of self-media, Mi Meng's "poisonous chicken soup" deeply touched the hearts of some netizens, and thus she became the "traffic queen". In the era of short dramas, people also need such "placebos" to add some fun to their dull work and life and relax on the spiritual level. Mi Meng's successful "resurrection" in the short drama industry is also the best proof of the "refreshing" value of short dramas.

Compared with low-quality short plays, the high-quality short plays brought by "Star Masters" provide another dimension of value. They are profound in conception and well-made, and use the industrial strength of the traditional film and television industry to raise the ceiling of the entire industry, allowing people to see that short plays can also be "fine".

However, high-quality short plays and low-quality short plays do not constitute a direct competitive relationship, and each is needed by different users. Just like some people like to eat sweet rice dumplings, and some people like to eat salty rice dumplings, everyone on the short video platform has different preferences for content, so naturally there will be a variety of short play content available to the audience.

Therefore, the popularity of low-quality short dramas has tapped into people's demand for "cool" content, and the participation of "Star Masters" has brought more attention to the short drama industry and opened up a new market for it.

Looking at the current short drama market, content producers represented by "Wang Ma" and "Xing Ye" and short video platforms together constitute a new content supply chain. In different segments, "Wang Ma" accurately captures the short drama user group for the platform, laying the foundation for the short drama market, while "Xing Ye" provides content chips for the platform to tap into the greater value of the short drama market.

It is foreseeable that with the standardization of the industry and the continuous improvement of supervision, more "Wang Ma" and "Xing Ye" will emerge in the future to provide sufficient content supply and traffic value for the platform. However, no matter how the short drama industry changes, the audience will always be inseparable from the platform that can provide diversified content.

Author: Xia Xia