"Escape from the British Museum", how did it become so popular?

Recently, "Escape from the British Museum" has become a real hit in the short drama market this year, but besides the excitement, there are also constant controversies about it. It is becoming increasingly difficult for short dramas to go viral. What enlightenment does "Escape from the British Museum" bring to us?

No one expected that the real hit in this year's short drama market would be "Escape from the British Museum".

This is not a short drama in the traditional sense of the audience. It was jointly produced by self-media blogger Jianbing Guozai and Xia Tianmei, and the content is only three episodes. As one of the most popular short dramas this year, as of now, the three episodes of "Escape from the British Museum" have received 8.401 million, 6.29 million and 5.444 million likes on Douyin respectively, and the video playback volume of each episode on Bilibili has reached more than 5 million.

But despite the excitement, the controversy surrounding it has never ended. For example, the immature shooting techniques, the internet celebrity MV-like style, and the fragmented camera language all indicate that this is not really a mature short drama.

However, nothing prevents it from being widely popular. The reason is that it came at the right time.

In 2023, nearly four years have passed since the emergence of the prototype of short dramas - Kuaishou short dramas.

As the industry clears up, small figures gradually withdraw, and short dramas gradually become large-scale. In the first half of 2023 alone, various platforms launched 481 new short dramas - you know, the number of online dramas in the whole of last year was 451.

Some people are deeply obsessed with the pleasure it brings in a short period of time. "I can't stop scrolling once I start, and before I know it, I've spent 400 or 500 yuan." Others see the hidden business in it. On Xiaohongshu, there are many hot posts such as "Teaching you how to write a short play," "Short play story structure analysis," and "The days when writing short plays made money." Topics related to short plays have been viewed more than 2 billion times.

There is no doubt that the short drama industry is experiencing its best moment after experiencing ups and downs. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for short dramas to break out of the circle, and it is even more difficult to make a profit.

This is an interesting "time difference". No one will deny that short dramas are still a boiling blue ocean, but the industry is expanding and the standards of success are changing. A new round of changes is brewing, and the popularity of "Escape from the British Museum" may just be a signal.

01 Is the popularity of “Escape from the British Museum” just a coincidence?

At the beginning of the year, TikTok blogger "He Xiangbei Betty" filmed her experiences at the British Museum with quite complicated feelings.

"When can we make an animated film called Escape from the British Museum? The various cultural relics are revived in person, escape from the British Museum and go home for the New Year, and tell the Chinese patriotism and historical stories from their perspective."

Eleven days after the video was posted on TikTok, the netizen "Youliyanzhi" left a comment about this story idea, hoping that it could become a reality one day.

Just like the "Ladies' Dignity" that netizens spontaneously fabricated many years ago, "Escape from the British Museum" is also a fictional work that embodies many aesthetic changes and earnest expectations of the audience.

But the difference is that "Ladies' Dignity" finally remained in the imagination stage, while "Escape from the British Museum" has the opportunity to become a reality. The video creators Jianbing Guozai and Xia Tianmei left the words "wait for me" in the video. No one knew that the gears of fate began to turn. Half a year later, "Escape from the British Museum" was officially launched.

This is a short play with only three episodes, each lasting only two to ten minutes. The story is about a Chinese male reporter, Zhang Yongan, helping a Chinese jade pot with winding branches and patterns escape from the British Museum and return to China.

But unlike the ideal expectations of everyone, the reputation of this short drama has been hovering between the two extremes since its broadcast.

On a popular level, "Escape from the British Museum" is certainly interesting. A jade pot escapes from the British Museum with great difficulty, looking for his family and the way home. The plot arrangement seems to be open to interpretation at every moment: Why was the little jade pot chosen as the protagonist? What is the meaning of the name of the male protagonist Yongan? What is the deep meaning of every sentence of the little jade pot? The audience becomes Leeuwenhoek again, looking for hidden clues in every shot.

Its most obvious advantages are its natural sense of story, conflict and topicality.

But for more viewers who are eager to watch a complete short play, the expectations and regrets are equally strong: originally thought it would present a cultural relic's adventure of returning home, but "Escape from the British Museum" is more like an Internet celebrity-style MV. The slightly sparse information density, coupled with mediocre camera design, rough dubbing and performance, and the rhythm full of Internet celebrity style, make some viewers feel that as a short play, it really lacks the ups and downs of a drama.

However, no matter what, one fact that cannot be denied is that "Escape from the British Museum" has truly become popular.

In the fable of the Tower of Babel, people are alienated because of language barriers. The same is true in the world of short dramas. Compared with the popularity of a hit long drama, the popularity of short dramas often seems to have natural barriers. As 2023 is about to enter the fourth quarter, the only works that have really left their names in the short drama market seem to be "Twenty-Nine" and "Xu Yan".

Compared to the real national hits in long videos, if we look deeper, short dramas are nothing more than a spread from long videos to short videos, and their influence has never gone beyond the upstream and downstream of the industry.

This time, some people who have nothing to do with the show also started discussing it.

On Weibo, #The prototype maker of the jade pot that escaped from the British Museum speaks out#, #The Sixth Princess' talk about escaping from the British Museum went viral#, and #Chinese reporters asked sharp questions about the lost cultural relics from the British Museum#, and the interpretations of the work, interpretations, influences, and politics rolled up.

On TikTok, the trend of imitation has also been set off. The trend of anthropomorphizing cultural relics has spread from short dramas to all kinds of bloggers in beauty, appearance, and drama, and the slogan "I want to go home" resounds across major platforms.

02 Short play: Raise your child in wealth or poverty?

The sudden emergence of such a work always rekindles people's expectations: short dramas are still popular and ordinary people can still play with them.

Because, to some extent, the underlying logic of "Escape from the British Museum" is different from the short dramas that have formed templates on the market today.

Short dramas are still dominated by three major players. On long video platforms such as Tencent Video and Youku, short dramas with a single episode of 10 to 15 minutes are the mainstream. The model is mainly based on profit sharing and platform customization, and the overall production cost is relatively high. "Provoke", "The Maid of a Wealthy Family", "Xu Yan", etc. are all products of this model.

On the short video platforms of Douyin and Kuaishou, there are only a handful of 10-minute dramas, and short dramas of less than 3 minutes are the general trend. This type of short drama gave birth to well-known short drama masters such as Jiang Shiqi, Yizhilu, and Yuer. Their short dramas are often more linked to commercial content. That is, relying on the commercialization system of short videos, they first become famous through short dramas, and then form a unique business cycle through live broadcasting, advertising cooperation, customized short dramas, etc.

Relatively speaking, mini-program short dramas seem to be the most unimpressive, but they are the ones that make the most money under the surface. The length of a single episode is generally about 1 minute, and the number of episodes is around 100, or even longer. The subject matter is no different from the earthy short videos that we are familiar with in those years. Generally speaking, the first 5 to 10 episodes of a series can be watched for free, and subsequent content requires continuous payment. On average, 1 yuan can only watch 1 episode of the short drama.

The choices are becoming more diverse, and the production is gradually becoming more refined. Especially since the beginning of the year, more and more new players have begun to enter the market, including Lemon, Changxin, Wuyuan, Free Cool Whale, and even Chen Sicheng's Yitong Media, which officially announced this summer that it would cooperate with Douyin to produce a short drama derivative of the movie "Her Disappearance".

Their common characteristics are specialization, standardization, and the most important and simple point - money.

Zeng Minghui, the person in charge of the short drama label of Ningmeng Film and Television, mentioned in an interview that the production of the short drama "Twenty-Nine" was almost cost-effective and there was indeed no excessive pursuit of profit. Its greater role is a stepping stone for cooperation with Douyin.

The benefit of having deep pockets is that short drama creators can finally show off their talents, and the market is rapidly moving towards high-quality works. For mid-level creators, this also means that the internal competition in the short drama industry has further intensified.

Yu Ke, the head of the drama center of Kuaishou Entertainment, has always believed that "small wins big" is the gene of short dramas. "The opportunity of short dramas lies in their low cost investment and short production cycle. Their conciseness and flexibility give us an advantage in the entire content track. From a financial perspective, this advantage means that the cash flow returns very quickly; from a content perspective, the content iteration speed is very fast."

But nowadays, you rarely see news about mid-level creators getting rich overnight. The reshuffle is getting faster and faster. Drama blogger Ouyang mentioned in an interview, "Since June last year, ordinary creators I know, even big Vs with tens of millions of fans, basically don't touch short dramas unless they have a background in the film and television industry."

In contrast, more and more projects are beginning to take the high-profile approach, pursuing high investment and high quality.

"I am optimistic about the future of short plays, but we need a long-term plan. We need to prepare at least 10 million yuan in funds to be able to persevere to the end." Short play screenwriter Zhang Wumao once mentioned this point of view.

But the crux of the matter is that short dramas that attract players by being short, flat, small-scale and with fast returns, due to their excellent production standards, have their time and costs increased, and the competitive advantage of the short dramas themselves is weakened.

A typical example is that, as of now, the revenue share of Tencent Video's short drama "Zhao Reprov" has accumulated to more than 17 million, and the amount is still increasing. This achievement is already enough to top the short drama revenue share market, and it is also the highest record in the micro-short drama field in the first half of this year.

But the typical signal revealed by the industry is that compared with the frequent emergence of multiple tens of millions of revenue sharing cases in the past year, this news does not bring such a strong sense of excitement to the industry. In the final analysis, the cost of short dramas has risen, but its revenue sharing box office has not made a big breakthrough - you know, as early as 2021, the revenue sharing amount of "Da Tang Xiao Hu" had exceeded 13 million. Last year, short dramas directly entered the era of tens of millions of revenue sharing, among which "Please! Don't Spoil Me" won a total of more than 32 million revenue sharing amounts with three seasons of content.

This high-investment model will inevitably cause resources to tilt towards leading companies, and small companies that do not stake enough will soon face a crushing blow.

Under this premise, the emergence of "Escape from the British Museum" has more room for interpretation. The sentiments of self-media bloggers and the enthusiasm of secondary creators are the key to its success. Or it can be said that the entire drama is a work "from the masses".

The creators Jianbing Baozi and Xia Tianmei are both ordinary drama bloggers. According to the three episodes of stories, the cost is definitely not much compared to the current trend of short dramas that cost tens of millions of yuan. But the overall revenue and communication effect are amazing.

New Douyin data shows that since the release of the trailer for "Escape from the British Museum", the number of fans of Jianbing Guozai and Xia Tianmei on Douyin has increased by 2.69 million and 1.14 million in the past seven days, 270,000 and 390,000 on Xiaohongshu, and 630,000 and 430,000 on Kuaishou, with a cumulative increase of over 5.55 million fans.

The hope left is that the rules of the game seem to have returned to their original state. So much so that everyone is fantasizing: Can the short drama industry produce another "Escape from the British Museum"?

03 Will there be another “Escape from the British Museum”?

There is never a shortage of new stories in the world of fame and fortune, and the survival of the fittest is the norm in the film and television industry. Short dramas, which once had a relatively low threshold to entry, will eventually face high-dimensional competitors in the entire drama market.

Compared to the painstaking production of "Twenty-Nine", "Escape from the British Museum" is obviously more exciting. But the other side of the coin is that the popularity of "Escape from the British Museum", in addition to the content itself, also comes with some coincidental stories that can be called the right time, right place and right people.

This year, "return of cultural relics" has always been a hot topic. Around the time of the release of "Escape from the British Museum", news of the theft at the British Museum began to ferment in China. The Global Times formally made a request to the British Museum, and the topic #Please ask the British Museum to return Chinese cultural relics free of charge# became a hot search.

All of this makes the popularity of "Escape from the British Museum" a product of chance.

This is a road that cannot be copied.

But apart from luck, the content conception, topic planning and video expression of "Escape from the British Museum" leave a lot of room for reference.

Finding themes in the original short video ecosystem of the platform has always been the first rule of short dramas on Douyin and Kuaishou. However, one of the characteristics of online content is that it has a strong ability to imitate and copy. After a work is successful, dozens of works are likely to emerge like mushrooms after rain. This is also the main reason why keywords such as domineering, counterattack, and face-slapping constitute the basic features of short dramas in the early days of the short drama boom.

Even though today, companies of all sizes are competing for the top spot, and more and more "aircraft carriers" are entering this small river, short dramas have not seen any fundamental changes in terms of subject matter.

The popular themes of Kuaishou short dramas change almost every 3 to 6 months. In the shortest time, the popular themes have even changed on a monthly basis. Sometimes a short drama is shot this month and released next month, and it will become outdated.

The trends of hits vary from year to year. For example, in the first two years when short dramas just emerged, sweet pet dramas adapted from low-cost IPs were very popular; in 2022, ancient style works represented by Zhizhu began to soar; now, the overall atmosphere of long and short video platforms has returned to the category of sweet pet dramas in 2021.

2022 was the year when the rise of short dramas was discussed the most. This year, there was "The World of Aunts" focusing on the story of silver hair, "Don't Mess with White Pigeons" with upgraded aesthetics, and the eye-catching short dramas of ancient idols "Xu Yan" and "Nian Nian Wu Ming"... That year, the high-quality production was mentioned repeatedly, and everything had the vitality of wild growth. It is precisely because of this that short dramas have gradually become a force that cannot be ignored in the film and television industry.

But this year, production costs have further increased, and the content influence is no longer the same as before. Just like "Twenty-Nine", it is just a modification and upgrade of the old rules of tearing up the scumbag, catching the mistress, and counterattacking and rising, and it can get unexpected results.

Chen Yafei, the director of Mango TV's short drama, mentioned in an interview that from 2019 to now, no more than 10 projects have been rated as S-level by their internal evaluation, and no one has been wrong so far. "No matter how the subsequent links add points to a script that is not very good, it is very difficult to succeed."

As a result, more and more practitioners have begun to advocate "focusing on content rather than production".

Yu Ke said that compared with the trend of high-quality short dramas, he is more inclined to advocate quality, "because high-quality means that the entry threshold will be higher and the scale of industry practitioners will become smaller. I hope that the short drama content track will no longer be the 28th rule or even the 19th rule, but should be 46th or 55th."

To some extent, the popularity of "Escape from the British Museum" is a reflection of its quality. Especially when the plot comes to the end, more plots are presented by the creators in a more cost-saving pure text form. However, the deafening lines such as "Chinese people don't do sneaky things" and "One day, we will go home gloriously and honorably" still make the third episode of "Escape from the British Museum" the best episode since the short series was launched.

In the final analysis, each art category has its own unique content ecological logic. The charm of short plays is that they are easy to start, flexible, and free. Opportunities are open to everyone. As long as you act in time and make them carefully, anyone can get a ticket. With a little more effort, you can have a place in the industry.

This also determines that short plays are destined not to be a game for a few people.

Refining the essence through trial and error is the only way for almost every industry to develop. The standard of winning is always changing, and nothing is determined yet. Everyone hopes that "Escape from the British Museum" is not the final outcome.

Author: Pomegranate, Editor: Yuejian

Original title: Who is praising "Escape from the British Museum" too much?

Source public account: Xinentropy (ID: baoliaohui), insight into business variables and exploration of the essence of business.