when short plays are chasing "cool" and "new", "high quality" should always be desired
2024-09-01
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□wang penghui (hunan normal university)
on august 30, the short drama "i open a supermarket in ancient times" was removed from the entire network and permanently sealed due to vulgar and indecent content. in recent years, the short drama industry in the chinese market has emerged, and people have paid more attention to this industry. according to data from guanyan report network, in 2022, the scale of short video users in my country will reach 1.01 billion, with a usage rate of more than 90%. hot money is targeting new outlets and increasing investment in the short drama industry. in order to seize the market and attract click-through rates, the short drama industry uses "novelty" and "coolness" as bait to accelerate story narration and intensify plot conflicts, and is therefore bound to the vortex of low-quality and extensive content production.
with the enthusiastic investment in production factors, the content of the short drama industry has exploded. in order to stand out from a large number of homogeneous works, short dramas continue to innovate plot narratives, new themes continue to increase, and excellent works emerge in an endless stream. the "coolness" and "novelty" pursued by the short drama market fit the inner needs of the real audience, but over-commercialized market operations will lead "short drama works" to the wrong path of "short drama commodities". the society needs short dramas to relieve the highly tense spirit, and also needs novel narrative angles to break away from the original homogeneity, but it also calls for high-quality "short drama works". short dramas can also become high-quality cultural products.
the label of "shuang" never means being criticized or denied. art is the easiest way to obtain alternative satisfaction. the repressed emotions and desires in reality can also be vented freely under its cover. shuang drama is a cultural product tailored by the film and television industry for contemporary social groups with stress loads and fragmented time. it builds a place for the audience to relax and relieve themselves. it operates the plot with the primitive pleasure of revenge, so that people don't have to worry about the twists and turns of the plot when they exit real life and enter entertainment. when artistic rhetoric replaces rational narration, the repressed emotions of "self" in reality can be immediately output in disguise through the emotional catharsis of the protagonist of the plot.
in pursuit of hits, producers are keeping a close eye on novel topics. god of war themes are popular, and other genres such as time travel, counterattack, and rebirth are also favored by creators, starting a seven-day production sprint. in order to quickly arouse users' further audio-visual desires in the few seconds that users stay, producers choose a large number of eye-catching materials and styles, abandon logic with exaggeration, replace scrutiny with conflict, and drive out fullness with one-sidedness. a large number of non-professional means of production driven by profit have poured in, so elements such as contrast, edge, and pornography have gradually infiltrated the production of short dramas in order to stand out in the nearly saturated market.
in less than one minute, short plays can present conflicts, reversals and suspense, which is a significant advantage of the short play industry compared to traditional horizontal screen films and television, but it is inevitable that stories will be compressed and deleted. in order to ensure the online rhythm and amount of information, many short plays choose to delete unimportant characters and stories during production, and connect the key points of excitement with characters, so that the "excitement" that originally required twists and turns to obtain can be taken directly, and the contrast satisfies the audience's curiosity and makes the audience laugh in a funny way. a large number of plays that have not been finely polished rely on the current hot topics to achieve a new worldview, resulting in the problem that the logical trend cannot be self-consistent, and even the problem of distorted values, and the blind pursuit of "excitement" and "newness" causes discomfort to the audience. at the same time, short plays have low cost investment and short production cycle, and the standards for props, photography, costumes, editing, special effects, and actors have been lowered again and again. the industry also jokingly dares not call its short play and film and television achievements "works", but only dares to regard themselves as "commodities".
people's current love for short plays is a test for short play producers. how to accurately seize the opportunity and take advantage of the favorable conditions to create excellent short plays that everyone loves to watch? how to break the "19 rule" between the industry's self-proclaimed hits and the total production volume? how to make short plays move from "commodities" to "works"? casting a wide net and producing more in pursuit of quality is never the right answer. the creation of excellent literary and artistic works should be based on the characteristics of short plays, choose the appropriate volume of plays, reduce the convergence of following trends, move closer to excellent works that record the times and reflect the psychology of the social masses, get rid of the extensive management of the short play industry, optimize the combination of various production factors of literary and artistic production, apply them to the production of small-scale short plays, and produce literary and artistic works that the public loves to watch.
