the end of a long play is already a "short play"?
2024-09-04
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after micro-short dramas gradually became a strong competitor for the audience of long dramas, the short-formization of long dramas and the refinement of short dramas are considered to be the future development direction of the competition between long and short videos. "mo yu yun jian" has become a strong proof of this judgment.
stills from "ink rain and clouds" (2024).
when discussing this drama, many people always mention yu zheng's keen judgment on the drama market and audience preferences. some even think that if "story of yanxi palace" in 2018 ushered in the first year of "cool dramas", then this year's "mo yu yun jian" marks that the drama market has entered a new stage of short dramas instead of long ones.
"story of yanxi palace" and "mo yu yun jian" are discussed together, on the one hand because both are typical "yu zheng dramas", and on the other hand because the core of both dramas is "revenge dramas". however, when we look closely at the differences in the drama and audio-visual language between the two, we will find that the clear and relatively full character settings and relatively complete narrative logic in "story of yanxi palace" are replaced by fragmented strong plots and labeled characters in "mo yu yun jian". emphasis on emotions over logic, and emphasis on labels over characters are precisely the most common characteristics of micro-short dramas. the short-play of long dramas is more like applying the creative ideas of micro-short dramas to the creation of long dramas, in order to meet the viewing habits of audiences who are accustomed to the narrative style of micro-short dramas, so as to gain sufficient market competitiveness.
stills from the short play "i was a stepmother in the 1980s".
in this process, how did the short-form long drama become popular? as a new popular cultural product, how will such a long drama affect the development of the film and television drama market? what about the story, where will it go?
written by pazilia
long play, short play:
mutual restraint and mutual promotion
the rise of the short drama market may be accompanied by the decline of the long drama market. this can be seen from the overall decline in the number of online drama broadcasts and tv ratings each year. in the past, there were many dramas with over 100 million, 800 million or 900 million online broadcasts, but this number has gradually declined in the past two years. last year, a drama with an average of more than 50 million episodes became a top drama on the platform, while this year, a large number of dramas starring "traffic" stars have an average of only more than 10 million episodes.
in the past, many viewers’ dissatisfaction with long dramas mostly stayed on “water injection” and “lengthy”, but now many viewers’ evaluation of long dramas has become “ugly”. therefore, abandoning long dramas and turning to other media has become the choice of more and more viewers. of course, the ability to turn to other media itself is also because the development of media technology has given the audience more choices. social media and short videos have made watching movies and watching tv no longer one of the few entertainment options for the audience. content based on the internet and smart media is more in line with the media consumption needs of contemporary audiences. when our time has been cut into countless fragments, short videos with short duration, fast pace, high information density and diverse content will naturally be a better choice. from this point of view, it is undoubtedly an inevitable result that short dramas developed with the help of short videos will snatch the audience of long dramas.
"speedy society: fast movies, spoilers and new consumer culture", written by toyofumi inada [japan], translated by guo qiwen and yang shiyu, zhejiang people's publishing house, april 2024.
the advantage of short dramas is not only that the form is more in line with the development trend of the media, but also that the content can cater to the changes in the audience's aesthetics more quickly. the short production cycle and relatively loose audit standards mean that short dramas can not only reflect market changes more quickly, but also mean that the content can be more "flying", that is, the plot and character settings can be more exaggerated and have a stronger sense of the internet. themes such as time travel and rebirth that cannot be filmed in long dramas can be seen everywhere in short dramas. even if it is the same story type or ip source, long dramas will make a lot of adaptations to the story due to factors such as audits. sometimes even the original name may be changed. for example, the novel "black lotus strategy manual" was adapted into a tv series and changed to "eternal night star river". in the short drama, words such as "black lotus" are important settings, and it is normal to appear in the title of the drama. obviously, when the core story is almost the same, short dramas with direct settings and strong emotions are fresher and more attractive to the audience.
in contrast, long dramas lag behind in content and form. objective factors such as production and review make it take a longer period from shooting to broadcasting for long dramas. if it is calculated from the script planning stage, this time will be even longer. this also means that even if you try to cater to market trends during the creative stage, it may have deviated from market demand by the time it is broadcast. the rule of "shoot what is popular" applies to all creative fields, but the production cycle of long dramas can easily lead to "crowded shooting" and then "crowded broadcasting", which has already missed the best time point and is criticized by the audience for content homogeneity.
stills from the short drama "full funding 2".
sometimes the same drama can have completely different results when aired at different times. when the first season of "longing for love" was aired last year, it used "1vs. n" (one woman and multiple men) as a promotional point and became the biggest winner of the summer season. however, this year's second season has become a representative of "female abuse drama" and "crazy drama" - even though the two seasons were filmed and produced at the same time.
the loss of audiences from the long drama market to the short drama market has obviously made film and television companies have a strong sense of crisis. therefore, learning from short dramas has become an inevitable choice for long drama practitioners. "mo yu yun jian" is just a very representative one. similar to many long dramas that borrow from the short drama format, the "short drama" of this drama is manifested in telling a story with a strong sense of "coolness" in the audio-visual language of the short drama style.
"the way of popularity":
strange, familiar
french sociologist tarde once said: "everything is either innovation or imitation." professor hu yong of peking university has a more specific explanation of this point: humans expect to see familiar and comfortable patterns emerge from novel but not too novel situations. therefore, things that can set off a craze are often things that can achieve a delicate balance between familiarity and strangeness. applying this point to film and television dramas means that the audience expects to see a story that caters to their imagination told in a novel shell.
"the way of popularity", written by hu yong, beijing united publishing company·huajing times, november 2022.
when talking about the short-formation of long dramas, many people would mention that the biggest change in this type of long drama is the enhanced "sense of pleasure", especially the "mo yu yun jian" mentioned above. even mao jian bluntly said, "(yu zheng) has made our emotions comfortable on a physiological level, and has turned us into cultural roughnecks who just want to be pampered." therefore, the common view is that the reason why short dramas and short-formed long dramas are popular is because of this sense of pleasure, and success can be achieved by satisfying the audience's need for pleasure.
but as we have discussed many times before, the entire "cool culture" originated from the "cool text" on the internet, and the cool drama is more like a drama style formed after combining the cool feeling familiar to the audience with film and television dramas and innovating the drama. as an emotional value, "cool culture" pursues an immediate and pure pleasure, helping the audience to achieve a certain symbolic satisfaction for wishes that cannot be realized in reality. the cross-media narrative of "cool text" and "cool culture" has caused the "cool literary view" based on online articles to spread rapidly in the field of popular culture, and then a large number of "cool dramas" have appeared in the drama market. "story of yanxi palace", "celebrating more than years", "the son-in-law" and other dramas with outstanding market performance can all be classified as "cool dramas".
stills from "joy of life" (2019).
in other words, the enhanced sense of excitement in long dramas is essentially just the result of the cross-media narrative of "exciting culture", while short dramas remove the foreshadowing and progressive parts of long dramas, retaining only those contents that can quickly stimulate the audience's emotions to help the audience achieve a kind of relaxed, flat moment of joy. from this point of view, the short-play long drama is to build branches in the story to enhance the emotional stimulation of the plot to the audience, but the core is always the "exciting culture" that the audience is most familiar with. therefore, whether it is a boutique short drama or a short-play long drama, it is just trying to tell the content that the audience is familiar with in a form different from the past. this may also explain why the audience accepts the dramas that have made breakthroughs in form so quickly and why these dramas have such high popularity.
if we only look at the current broadcast effects, the long drama that has been shortened is successful in the market and business, but if we put it in the context of tv drama development, we will find that this type of drama obviously lacks "stamina", or in other words, has a poor "long tail effect".
when evaluating the broadcast effect of a series, we usually divide it into the average episode during the hot broadcast period and the cumulative average episode. the former demonstrates the market performance of the series when it is broadcast, and the latter is often used to illustrate the long tail of the series. in recent years, the series with prominent long tail effect are still "old dramas" represented by "journey to the west", "bright sword", "the legend of zhen huan", "nirvana in fire", and "do you know it should be green, fat, red and thin", which also means that the audience is most willing to watch the classic dramas of the past repeatedly. however, many popular dramas today are more like some kind of fast food, which are particularly lively when they are broadcast, but it is difficult to have a "aftertaste" after the end.
still from "the legend of zhen huan" (2011).
comparing the old long-tail dramas with the recent hit dramas, we can find that the recent hit dramas have shown stronger topicality, or in other words, between complete stories and topics that can bring heat, these dramas choose more stimulating topics. this change is the inevitable result of media development.
after the story becomes a "micro-narrative"
overdeveloped media and ubiquitous information have made our lives and society in a state of overactivity, which has reduced our tolerance for boredom. therefore, in order to capture the audience's attention, content creators can only constantly stimulate the audience so that the audience does not have the opportunity to be "bored". perhaps this can also explain why the audience likes faster-paced tv series more and more. in addition, short video marketing has become an important way of marketing dramas, which also means that dramas need to have content that conforms to the characteristics of short video communication in order to attract more audiences to "enter the scene". therefore, strong plots, high suspense, and labeled characters become the inevitable result of drama creation. these changes in long dramas are ultimately manifested as "micro-narratives" in han bingzhe's words - he believes that this kind of narrative "is empty and replaceable, and it is no different from accidental gender, and it does not have gravity and moments of truth." obviously, such "micro-narratives" themselves cannot have the long-tail effect of "repeated viewing".
"the crisis of narrative", written by han bingzhe [germany], translated by li mingyao, citic publishing group, may 2024.
the change in narrative has given stories a new form. robert mckee once pointed out that stories are not only the most prolific art form of human beings, but also compete with all human activities for every waking moment of people. "stories are essential equipment for life." human beings' strong desire for stories has given rise to stories in various art forms. movies, tv series, short dramas, and even short videos are all trying to share stories of various styles with us.
in the past, characters were often considered the core of a story. novels, movies and tv dramas all told stories about one or more unique characters. it can be said that characters are the most unique and charming existence in a story. therefore, we remember hamlet, don quixote, baoyu and daiyu (jia baoyu and lin daiyu), scarlett, and anna karenina. even modernist narratives that abandon time and structure still leave many impressive characters.
popular cultural products represented by tv series also retain a narrative model centered on characters. a major feature of the long-tail dramas mentioned above is that the main and supporting characters are extremely full and have a lot of room for in-depth exploration. therefore, the audience will not only "watch" these dramas repeatedly, but also make or watch "secondary creation" texts and videos based on these dramas. however, with the impact of online articles and short dramas on the long drama market, the creative thinking of film and television companies has changed, and personality has replaced characters as the part that practitioners value more.
the character setting seems to be a kind of summary of the character, but in fact it makes the character tend to be somewhat flat. if the character is more like a complete biography of a person's life story, then the character setting is more like a label attached to the corresponding role, which makes the character's characteristics more intuitive while weakening the complexity of the character. when the complexity of the character is eliminated, the richness of the story is naturally weakened. we can see a character with revenge as his goal completing one goal after another, but we rarely see why this character becomes him/her, and it is difficult to distinguish this character from the revenge characters that have been popular in the past. in other words, such a character can easily become a "tool man" to promote the plot. it seems to string together the whole story, but it may just be a "hollow man."
《黑暗荣耀》（the glory，2023）剧照。
when discussing the weakening of the long-tail effect of long dramas, some people think that this is because short dramas disperse the audience, giving them more choices instead of just watching a few fixed ones. however, such discussions have, to a certain extent, overlooked the impact of the narrative transformation of long dramas on the quality of the series. factors such as competing with short dramas and catering to the needs of short video audiences have made "micro-narratives" more and more common in long dramas. this change seems to be in line with a certain market trend, but in fact it may harm the story. when the story is forced to become thin, linear content and the characters become empty symbols, the appeal of long dramas will naturally decline.
from this perspective, the transformation of long dramas into short dramas seems to be a paradox. on the one hand, it seems to be an inevitable choice for long dramas to survive. on the other hand, it seems to further reduce the long-term development space of long dramas. for the film and television industry, how to achieve a balance between the two seems to be a problem that must be solved. but for the audience, we just want more high-quality works. whether it is a long drama or a short drama is no longer the core issue.
author: pazilia
editor/xixi
proofreading/liu jun
