Watching long videos through hit dramas: The "rebirth" of the industry, who has leveraged the mood of the times?

This article deeply analyzes how the long-form video industry can create hit series that resonate with the audience by grasping the mood of the times. Taking Youku's anti-fraud series "New Life" as an example, the article explores how long-form video platforms can meet the audience's spiritual needs through content innovation and theatrical operations. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Every era has its own social emotions, which flow on the riverbed of literature, film, television and art, and finally rush into the ocean current of "era".

In 2024, the anti-fraud drama "New Life" launched by the domestic long video platform Youku topped the daily list of Netflix, a global streaming platform. In the narration of five "scam victims", the drama allows the audience to slowly piece together the mysterious life of the male protagonist Fei Ke like playing a script-killing game. There are no major cases in the drama. Each scam is about people and things in the lives of ordinary people that seem ordinary but are terrifying when you think about it carefully. It has also triggered many discussions among netizens: "Is the greed in human nature a human weakness?" "After playing a social identity for a long time, do people still remember who they are?"

Coincidentally, in 2008, a comedy show called "$2 Beer" on Fox TV in the United States suddenly became a dark horse in terms of viewership. The show tells the story of the unyielding struggle of small blue-collar people. After the subprime mortgage crisis broke out, these realistic and empathetic stories were called the "aspirin" of the American spirit.

In this era of increasing uncertainty and intensified differentiation among circles, "industrial saccharin" and "popcorn" can hardly continue to soothe the anxiety and confusion of ordinary people; those film and television works that reflect reality or can guide individuals to explore "inwardly" and grow upward are often deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

With their realistic core that connects with the times and the present, these works break through the boundaries of human circles and become a rigid demand for national spiritual consumption.

Judging from the drama market since the beginning of 2024, whether it is "New Life" or "Fanghua", "emotion of the times" is one of the key words in the creation of major themes.

On the supply side of the industry, long video platforms have the motivation to seize the "emotion of the times". iQiyi, Youku and Tencent need national hits to increase their influence. After all, high-quality content will always be the foundation of the survival of content platforms.

When both supply and demand align on the demand for "national hit dramas" and reach a dynamic balance, the hit drama of the era may be just around the corner.

1. The secret code for a hit drama: focusing on reality and responding to the mood of the times

Since 2023, national hit dramas have frequently appeared. In addition to the playback data, the standards for hit dramas have been upgraded. Sohu Entertainment collected the opinions of 50 industry media people at the beginning of the year. In addition to data support, there are several consensuses on the standards for hit dramas - national popularity (cross-circle, breaking the circle), the characters or actors in the play are out of the circle, the topic of discussion, quality and reputation, spontaneous dissemination by people around, etc.

Youku's "News Queen" made "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" a sticky note on the desks of many young people. iQiyi's "Storm" boosted the sales of "The Art of War".

The trend of frequent hit dramas continues to this day. "Fang Hua" became a hit at the beginning of the year, followed by "Pale Fire" and "Rebirth" which were released one after another.

So far, Youku's new drama "New Life", which has topped Netflix's daily list and Maoyan's weekly drama popularity list, has the potential to become a phenomenal boutique drama in the first half of the year with its realistic texture of anti-fraud themes, Snowstorm Manor-style reasoning setting, and the online acting skills of all the cast members.

In recent years, long video platforms represented by iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video have given up the pursuit of the number of dramas and have embarked on the path of high-quality content. According to the data from Lighthouse Professional Edition, the number of effective dramas in the online drama market in 2023 is 294, a decrease of 10.6% from 2022, but the total playback index of feature films in the market has increased by 7.7% against the trend.

The high-quality content of long video platforms brings more diverse aesthetics and value orientations to the audience. In the past, when Korean dramas touched the audience with realistic lines such as "winter clothes can easily show whether a person is poor or not", the "disguised poor" in domestic dramas still lived in finely decorated model houses... "Plot routines, stereotyped characters, and overall suspension" were once the complaints of domestic dramas.

If we review the national hit dramas since 2023, we will find that whether it is ancient costume drama, family drama, urban drama, or suspense drama, they generally have a strong sense of reality, reflect reality, respond to the current mood of the times, and arouse empathy from the audience.

A senior observer of the film and television industry told NoNoise that the supply of high-quality domestic dramas has increased in the past two years, and the aesthetic level of domestic audiences has risen. When a drama is evaluated as having the texture of a movie and reality, and when a villain actor is commented as "not acting like a role, it is recommended to investigate it strictly", the drama is considered good.

A "Z Generation Movie Preference Survey Report" shows that Generation Z prefers movies with rich plots, profound content and the ability to arouse emotional resonance.

Youku's "Pale Fire" not only covers the domestic violence issue that has attracted much attention from the society, but also innovatively quotes long passages of poetry to soothe the anxious hearts of the audience; the hit drama "New Life" not only explores the human nature behind the scam, but also involves hot topics such as PUA, marriage fraud, pig killing, and insider trading.

▲Source: Stills from "New Life"

From an industry perspective, "New Life" not only brings traffic and reputation to Youku, but also lets everyone see that hitting the mood of the times has always been the innovative direction of Chinese-language dramas, and it is the password for long-form video platforms to break the audience's aesthetic fatigue through content innovation.

As the media commented, the reason why a hit product becomes a hit is that it often hits the problem that ordinary people cannot solve in reality. This is the key to unlocking the public social emotions.

2. How do long video platforms capture the mood of the times?

How to provide high-quality content based on insight into audience emotions? In the collective exploration of leading platforms, "theatrical" operation is one of the key words.

In the suspense field where brand theaters are competing fiercely, iQiyi has the Misty Theater; Tencent launched the X Theater last year; Youku upgraded the suspense theater to the White Night Theater this year, with ambitious reserves. In addition to the already aired "Pale Fire" and "Rebirth", there are also dramas such as "Border Water Memories", "Dust Storm", "Black and White", "Wilderness", "Breaking the Cocoon 2", and "Snow Labyrinth", behind which are well-known creators such as Zhang Yimou, Cao Baoping, and Gao Qunshu.

Youku has integrated the orientation of paying attention to the emotions of ordinary people into its blood. For example, the popular "News Queen" last year is a rare hardcore workplace + female independence theme in recent years; at the beginning of this year, the female group portrait drama "Xihuazhi" also achieved impressive data performance. Under the appearance of ancient idol + farming, this drama not only uses pastoral elements to provide the audience with a paradise, but also the advanced creative perspective of women helping each other and reducing the "male gaze" in the drama also meets some of the spiritual needs of the current audience.

The producer of the drama, Yan Bei, once said to the screenwriter He Fang during a conversation, "I don't want to do a traditional house fight. I don't want you to poison me and I to trip you up. Everyone has times when it's not easy and when we make things difficult for each other. We all have our own little thoughts, but when we encounter problems, we will definitely help each other solve them. This is also a reflection of the spirit of modern women."

In retrospect, although there were no top actors and popular IPs to establish a large traffic market, Youku still managed to lead this ancient idol drama out of the siege by accurately grasping the mood of the times. During the broadcast of "Xi Huazhi", Yunhe's highest broadcast market share reached 17.4%, and it ranked first in the effective broadcast list of feature films on the entire network in April 2024.

"New Life", which also sparked widespread discussion, the aforementioned film and television industry observer told "NoNoise" that the cost of this drama may not seem very high, but the platform's casting is very accurate, and the director tries to explore the nature of "deception" through reality. It not only reflects social reality, but also has a metaphysical analysis. "It is a modern fable."

Among the three major long video platforms, Tencent has always been blessed with big IP and traffic, iQiyi's realistic themes have already become distinctive, but ancient idol dramas are still its shortcoming; and Youku has clearly given a different solution to this proposition.

Through the above analysis of the themes and content expressions of major dramas on long video platforms in the past two years, we found that exquisite texture + small characters + national sentiment are becoming the stable core of Youku's content innovation, which is the beginning of differentiation.

Youku's exploration provides another idea for the domestic film and television industry, which is eager for hit dramas. In the combination code of hit dramas, big IP and big stars are never necessary conditions. Only by respecting the audience's IQ and sincerely responding to the collective spiritual needs can we have the opportunity to hear the audience's inner "click", that is the sound of attention being unscrewed.

Judging from the content innovation ideas of long video platforms such as Youku, specific social issues may change, but there is still a greatest common denominator that can be explored between realistic works, such as the pursuit of beautiful things, universal emotions that soothe people's hearts, inward exploration of human nature, self-awakening, individual struggle... These are all areas that can arouse empathy among ordinary people, just like "Rebirth" repeatedly questions whether greed is the weak point of human nature.

3. Behind the hit dramas of the times is the outlet for the emotions of the times

Objectively speaking, the birth of a hit product of an era is the result of the right time, right place and right people.

The threshold for capturing the mood of the times is not low, and the core is advanced insight.

Social sentiment changes rapidly, which poses a huge challenge to long video platforms. It is a long and arduous task to gain insight and discover content that can stand the test of time.

It often takes two to three years for a TV series to go from project initiation to release, and even longer for a movie. Well-known director Lu Chuan once spent several years polishing a script about family planning, but after the introduction of the policy to encourage a second child, social sentiment changed, and the years of hard work became a sunk cost.

In this regard, Yan Bei, head of Alibaba Entertainment Galaxy Studio, said that TV dramas are made for audiences two years from now. For long drama scripts, "what is ahead of the times must be the ideology, not a specific line."

The advanced insight spanning two years means that the creative team must have their own predictions about social sentiment and the direction of public opinion. Only in this way can they hit the nail on the head on social psychological trends and cognitive hotspots.

At present, under the influence of external factors such as macroeconomics, epidemics, and geopolitics, individual value rankings, national sentiment, and social issues have all seemed to take a sudden turn compared to four or five years ago.

It is difficult to summarize people's current emotions in a few words or sentences. We can refer to the recent "anti-Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" storm - more and more contemporary workers refuse to empathize with "white, rich and beautiful" women, and letting ordinary people "see themselves" in the drama has become an important criterion for evaluating the quality of a drama.

Similar identity awakening is more strongly manifested in the field of women's consciousness awakening, from girls helping girls in "Dream of Red Mansions" to you can become a better self in "Hot and Hot", to women not caring about the judgment of the outside world in "Cherishing Flower and Zhi", women's growth difficulties and consciousness awakening are continued in film and television dramas.

When a work has a deep connection with the times and ordinary people, as TV drama researcher and critic Li Xingwen said, "all the joys and sorrows of the world and all kinds of social conditions can be included in the writing of the drama." I believe that more hit dramas of the times will emerge.