Wen | Deep-sounding Zuyang
Last year’s short play, which was soaring all the way, is still "YOLO" in the Spring Festival this year.
In the past Spring Festival, short plays took 800 million yuan in just eight days, accounting for one-tenth of the box office of the Spring Festival movies. When Spring Mountain School, Stealing Photos and Sora are hot searches, short plays still hold up a public opinion position: the Spring Festival explosion "I became a stepmother in the 1980s" has become the focus of hot discussion from the leading actor to the behind-the-scenes trader, and the short play "Big New Year’s Day" in Tik Tok has ignited the "divorce AA system", and the star’s appearance in short plays has once again triggered discussion.
Not only at home, but also overseas short plays during the Spring Festival are in full swing. On the first day of the new year, TopShort, a short drama platform owned by Jiashu, surpassed Netflix in the Japanese iOS bestseller list. Guohai Securities Research Report predicts that the future market space of short dramas will exceed $30 billion.
Although the Spring Festival has passed, the power of the short drama Spring Festival file continues. The short drama concept stocks in the A-share market are all red, and many stocks such as Xinyada, Guomai Culture and Huayang Lianzhong have daily limit. The platform is also constantly overweight, and short plays are becoming more standardized and refined. Recently, bilibili is experimenting with short plays with monthly subscription, and Tik Tok has increased the recommendation of small programs. Aauto Quicker will upgrade the Star Mang short plays this year, which will lower the threshold for creators and increase their income.
At first glance, short drama seems to be a rare growth industry this year, but in fact, most practitioners are cautious about it. When the industry flies through the expansion period, the logic of the tuyere changes quietly, and then it is bound to be a more bitter battle. At the end of the Spring Festival, "Deep Ring" interviewed Wang Xiaoshu, the founder of Jiashu Technology, and discussed three major issues in the short play:
What is the development space for the business model of short plays?
How will the production factors of short plays change?
The short play is still in the wild period, where is the real opportunity?
How will the business model evolve?
There is an unwritten law in the commercial market: after any new track is popular, the capital with a keen sense of smell always gives feedback first. Film and television, reading and comics have all experienced the peak period of financing. On the other hand, short drama, since its birth in July 2021, has seen the daily limit of short drama concept stocks from time to time, but we rarely see the financing behavior of short drama companies.
In Wang Xiaoshu’s view, this is a problem of "business model"-at present, short play is a relatively good and healthy business with relatively good cash flow. In other words, if it’s just a short play of small programs, there is no need for financing.
In fact, according to the different sources of development and business logic, short plays are generally divided into two categories: one is short plays with small programs, which gain users’ attention by investing in streams. After users jump into small programs, they use "plot hooks" to attract users to pay, which is more traffic-oriented in nature. The other category is the boutique short drama released by the platform account. Traditional film and television companies and MCN institutions have settled in accounts and released short dramas on the short video platform, and users can watch them for free, mainly relying on brand implantation.
From this point of view, the business model of short plays has been relatively rich as a whole, including user recharge, information flow advertising and brand implantation. At present, users’ top-up is still the mainstream income mode, and it also contributes the most. In the future, Wang Xiaoshu believes: "There is more free space. In terms of income composition, advertising and brand income will increase substantially this year, and the combined data of the two may exceed the user’s recharge."
Small programs and short plays on the line around the Spring Festival
Indeed, the growth momentum of information flow advertising and brand implantation can be seen in this year’s Spring Festival file.
Last year, "Oh, the Empress Comes to Work", "Mr. Fu’s vest can’t be hidden after the flash marriage" and "Wushuang" were blessed with three explosions, and the advertising of short drama information flow continued to climb up ten million or even over one hundred million. By the Spring Festival this year, the market is even more "rolled up". According to the new wrist report, during the Spring Festival, many platforms gave high-quality traffic and rebate support, and the traffic of Tik Tok short drama applets exceeded that of WeChat short drama applets.
The Spring Festival is the peak period of user activity, and short plays bring their own eye-catching physique, which strongly stimulates users. Advertisers who have always followed users’ attention naturally can’t sit still. During the Spring Festival, they "packaged" a number of short plays in one breath, which gave them a sense of existence.
Judging from the incoming brands, the Internet platform is still a big producer of short plays. For example, Tmall exclusively named three short plays of Aauto Quicker during the Spring Festival, I Open a Bar in Dasong, Yuanyang Duane, and Super Working Family. The short play All the Way Home starring Song Muzi has the exclusive title of JD.COM Automobile.
Short play implantation
Jiashu short play is also cooperating with some brands at present. Wang Xiaoshu told "Deep Sound" that for brand owners, compared with TVC advertising and long drama implantation, the core advantage of short drama lies in "certainty".
First, the preparation and production cycle of short plays is short. Whether shooting or communicating with brands, efficiency is the first criterion. Wang Xiaoshu said that sometimes the screenwriter takes his laptop directly to the brand side to modify, how to implant the picture and what new requirements are there. The two sides communicate in time and can finish the modification in one day and satisfy the brand owner.
Secondly, short plays have less investment and higher cost performance. Under normal circumstances, the production cost of a short play is several hundred thousand, which is similar to the price of shooting a TVC advertisement, but the return rate of a short play is much higher than that of a TVC. A short play with more than ten episodes has a rich product implantation scene, and the brand can be continuously exposed, continuously deepening the audience’s cognitive impression.
Third, short plays are data-driven. After the brand is embedded in the short play, the exposure, the number of interactions and the brand search index are all quantifiable, and the brand owner has more effect indicators to refer to, and he can be "aware" every time he puts it in.
How do various factors of production change?
The development of the above business model is inseparable from the prosperity of content.
The short drama industry has been growing all the way, and two timing nodes are particularly critical. One is that in April 2022, Tik Tok released the launch and jump of WeChat applet, which directly boosted the short play to usher in a huge wave of outbreak. The daily income scale of the short drama industry has rapidly increased from several hundred thousand a day to ten million or more, and the ceiling of growth has been punctured. The other is the influx of professional production companies and MCN institutions, which has raised the professional level of short drama production.
Looking at the Spring Festival movie list, the producers behind it are almost all traditional film and television production companies, and many short plays are adapted from popular film and television IP.
Among the 10 short plays of Spring Festival staged by Tik Tok, "Go beyond it! A Juan is a derivative of the animated film The Lion Boy, which is produced by Beijing Wonderful, a subsidiary of Baina Qiancheng. "It’s windy on my way home" is adapted from the drama "Go to a windy place", which is produced and produced by Huace Film and Television. The game in disguise is a derivative short play of the movie "Put all your eggs in one basket", which is also the first time that a bad monkey has produced a short play.
Aauto Quicker’s short play "Wake up! The master behind Lord castellan is the original team of costume light comedy Protect Our Lord castellan. Guo Xiaoting and Andrew starred in the short play "Super Working Class", and the producer behind it was the other city film industry, which once produced "The annual meeting can’t stop! "Warm" and other movies.
In the small program drama market, we saw the news of the entry and preparation of the famous director team and film production company at the end of last year. Last Friday, the first short play "Violet Robbery" produced by Wanda Pictures and Lehua Entertainment was broadcast on the small program.
After the traditional film and television industry institutions entered the market, they also forced the content production of short plays to usher in iterative upgrading.
The most intuitive change is the adjustment of the talent structure in the industry. Wang Xiaoshu said that almost all the main producers in the short drama market have migrated from long dramas. After these new and truly good talents came in, the original production pattern of the industry was squeezed-the previous head was reduced to second-rate, and those who were not good at learning were directly eliminated.
Taking screenwriter as an example, Yan Min, the founder of short drama insider, once revealed that many screenwriters of short dramas were transformed from network writers, which made many short dramas more like video versions of online texts than traditional film and television production. However, with the specialization of production, Wang Xiaoshu observed that the main screenwriter who wrote well now became the screenwriter who originally wrote long plays, and after the transformation, he was "quite active" in the short play market.
Secondly, the production cost of short plays has been significantly increased. According to Wang Xiaoshu’s memory, the cost of shooting a short program in the early years was around 100,000 to 200,000, and then it gradually doubled to 400,000 and 500,000, and most of the soaring costs were used in shooting and production.
"For a 500,000 film, it may cost 100,000 yuan to buy IP and ask for a screenwriter, and the remaining 400,000 are all shot in seven to ten days."
According to "Deep Sound", according to the production links of short plays, the actor’s expenses account for the bulk of the cost. According to insiders, most of the leading actors are quoted at 3,000 to 5,000, and the head actors have reported tens of thousands of yuan a day. Li Qingling, the head of the micro-short drama business of Gumai Jiahe, once told Shenxiang: In the past, short drama group performances were calculated by the day, but now the price of each group performance has risen to more than 1,000 yuan.
With the blessing of professional teams and the continuous influx of hot money, the corresponding result is that the short drama has moved from the past earthy video of the grass-roots team to refinement and quality.
For example, the most direct change brought about by the rising price of actors is that the face value of actors is more "able to fight". One of the reasons why "I became a stepmother in the 1980s" swept the short video platform is that the hero looks like a collection of Wallace Huo and Sean Xiao.
"Short plays are the product of visual communication. From the user’s point of view, he actually doesn’t care about your cost, but only cares about whether it looks good or not." Wang Xiaoshu said.
I became a stepmother in the 1980s.
Another major upgrade is also reflected in technology. Virtual production, which has been mentioned repeatedly in the long drama market, is now being applied to short drama production.
Produced by Chuangyi Technology (the behind-the-scenes team of Liu Yexi), "Two Lives" is the first short play with virtual production, and 60% of the content is produced by virtual production. The city street view and aerial ropeway in the story are virtual assets. Xie Duosheng, co-founder and chairman of Chuangyi Technology, revealed that the cost of the whole drama is between 5 million and 10 million.
The short play going to sea is not as simple as imagined.
Undeniably, after professional producers entered the market, the cost of driving short plays soared and content production became more difficult. At this time, overseas was regarded as a new blue ocean by many entrants. In the second half of last year, China’s short plays violently drifted to the other side of the ocean, "harvesting" overseas audiences, but also set a highlight moment.
ReelShort, who entered the game earlier, boosted the data explosion growth in June last year with The Double Life of My Billionaire Hubband. After that, the new frequency was stabilized at 2 monthly shifts, and explosions continued to be launched. In November last year, Reelshort pushed TikTok to the first place in the US iOS entertainment list. ShortTV went online in September, 2023, and started to increase rapidly. At the end of September, ShortTV was ranked in the TOP10 of Google Store Entertainment Free List, and it was located in TOP1 for five consecutive days. TopShort, an overseas short drama platform of Jiashu, mainly focuses on the Japanese market, and has produced more than a dozen works. On the first day of the new year, it ranked higher than Netflix in the Japanese iOS bestseller list.
Both TikTok and Netflix are eco-level Internet head players. TikTok is not listed, with a valuation of over 100 billion. Netflix has been deeply involved in streaming media for more than 10 years, with a market value of 260 billion US dollars. The short drama platform, which is just in its infancy, can play against the giants for a short time, which is enough to see its influence in overseas markets.
Overseas explosive short play
But in fact, we see that these growth moments are not sudden behaviors, but the results of the long-term resource accumulation and market education of the short drama platform.
The parent companies or founders behind ReelShort, ShortTV and TopShort all have rich experience in online writing. ReelShort’s parent company, Chinese Online, launched the interactive visual novel platform Chapters from 2017, covering major countries and regions around the world. Wang Xiaoshu, the founder of Jiashu Technology, came into contact with the net in 2018, and then entered the short play platform TopShort, which has produced more than ten short plays before surpassing Netflix.
In the past, the online articles went to sea, which has cultivated a large number of overseas audiences’ cognition and preferences for tyrants, sadomasochism, Xianxia and other types, and accumulated a number of audiences for short plays. At the same time, the web IP also provided a rich and market-proven source reserve, which also laid the foundation for the subsequent short play.
Despite the past experience, in Wang Xiaoshu’s view, short play going to sea is not a short-term thing that can get excessive returns. All companies that do short play going to sea are not interested in the present, but in the opportunities in the market in the next three to five years.
Specific to the practical link, the short play going to sea is not as easy as expected.
For example, at the production level, practitioners must first face the differences in user habits at home and abroad. When TopShort first entered the Japanese market, it directly copied the domestic short plays and themes into the App, but Japanese users did not pay the bill. After that, TopShort began to try local production, and found out that Japanese users liked the theme of "cheating" through trial and error. However, in the short play market in China, "cheating" is only a negative behavior of the story characters, not the main line of the story, but in the Japanese market, it needs to be thoroughly written and filmed to adapt to users’ consumption preferences.
Secondly, China’s short drama companies need to do infrastructure construction to make original short dramas overseas. There is no category of short plays overseas. Directors, screenwriters and directors need to be trained from scratch, and even the most basic translations need to be re-found. Wang Xiaoshu revealed that TopShort visited a large number of Japanese companies in the early stage of its establishment and found many partners before setting up a local team in Japan. When shooting and producing, it is normal to light up and write scripts and communicate with local creators repeatedly.
TopShort short play
In addition to production, casting is also an important part of short plays. After the interconnection between WeChat and Tik Tok in China, short plays broke out. However, it is difficult to find similar breaking nodes overseas.
There is no ecological base for Applets in overseas markets, and there is no super app like TikTok, so the traffic is relatively scattered. However, the advertising materials posted to social media platforms such as Facebook and Tiktok need to be downloaded by users, registered and logged in before they can watch them, and the intermediate link is long, which is likely to cause traffic loss.
From this point of view, it is difficult to copy the story of overnight wealth in short plays overseas. Practitioners also need to be careful before entering the game-whether the level of content creation, risk-taking ability and the preferences of overseas audiences can get used to it, and whether the logic of creating vertical-screen short plays by domestic investment will be accepted by overseas audiences.
The following is part of the dialogue between Shenxiang and Wang Xiaoshu, the founder of Jiashu Technology:
[About business model]
Deep ring: What do you think is the turning point of the sudden outbreak of the short drama industry?
Wang Xiaoshu: The biggest turning point, I think, should be in March, 2012, when Tik Tok released the launch and jump of WeChat applet. The daily income scale of the industry has roughly changed from several hundred thousand a day to 10 million or more within half a year.
Because if it is hundreds of thousands a day, it is actually a business of 100 million to 200 million a year. But when it quickly broke through the ceiling and reached 10 million, it directly became a business of billions a year. Later, from a few billion to this one hundred and twenty billion, I think it has become a natural growth relatively. Therefore, Tik Tok’s intervention and efforts led to a rapid outbreak of short plays.
Deep ring: Now many listed companies are doing short drama business, but I see that startups in the short drama industry actually have no financing behavior, unlike when everyone was reading or making cartoons.
Wang Xiaoshu: I think generally speaking, it (short play) is a relatively good and healthy business with relatively good cash flow.
Of course, there may definitely be changes in the future. For example, if you do APP or AI, its business model will change, and financing may appear one after another. If it is a business model of pure small program payment, most of the company’s cash flow should be quite positive.
Deep ring: nowadays, almost all online companies are doing short plays, and the audiences of short plays and online content are also very coincident, and the payment mode is also very similar. It is also called online PPT, and short plays eat up the online market?
Wang Xiaoshu: At present, the impact is not too great. Short plays are mainly incremental markets. Generally speaking, the number of users who consume video is far greater than the number of users who consume text. In the past, we calculated that the whole novel market may be almost 10 billion a year. Short plays have now reached 30 billion to 40 billion, and it is definitely not squeezed out by this 10 billion.
However, if consumers’ consumption time is regarded as a whole and the overall consumption time has not changed, in terms of the distribution of time, after the rise of short plays, it may be that more people have moved from fragmented ultra-short videos of 15 seconds and 20 seconds to short dramas with relatively long narratives, that is, people who casually brushed short videos in Tik Tok before began to watch short plays, which has little to do with novels.
Deep ring: Because the online text is also paid and free, and now the mode of making money by watching short plays is still paid, do you think there will be any room for it in the future?
Wang Xiaoshu: I think there is a lot of free space. I think advertising revenue and brand revenue will definitely increase substantially this year. Advertising revenue is similar to the income brought by the information flow of effect, and brand revenue includes various implants in the early stage. From the perspective of composition, it is also possible for advertising and brand revenue to reach or even exceed user recharge.
Many people think that you can only make an APP for free, but this is not the case. There are many short drama theaters and a large number of short drama accounts in Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker platforms, and the penetration rate of this model far exceeds imagination. Last year, Aauto Quicker released data that the daily life of short drama users exceeded 260 million. In fact, such a large number of users have watched short dramas for free on Aauto Quicker, which is equivalent to the bottom of the pyramid. The chassis space is very large, and there are many opportunities for mining and screening.
Deep ring: Now there are many opinions that the money of short plays has been earned by the platform. In fact, not only the short play industry, but basically every industry is saying that it is working for Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker. Do you think this kind of benefit distribution is reasonable? Is it possible to change?
Wang Xiaoshu: I think in fact, in terms of business, there will be changes. For example, many short drama companies choose to go to sea this year. In essence, this is a process of exploring a better business model, whether to sell it at home or overseas. This is the problem of business model. I think short drama is a free market. You can freely choose whether to invest or not and where to make money.
However, from the perspective of profit composition, I also think that the income of content creators in the short drama industry is relatively small. This little is relative to movies, which are all about shooting a 100-minute story video, and users pay the bill, but the proportion of making movies may encourage creators more.
Of course, we have also seen some industry changes. For example, Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker have scheduled short plays, which actually encourages content creators to produce high-quality content for the platform. Although the business model is still free, I think it is also a subsidy. How to understand it? The left hand of the platform earns advertising fees by selling free short plays, and the right hand takes out part of the advertising fees to subsidize free short plays. Then the free short plays actually constitute the user base of some paid short plays. I think this cycle is established. Of course, the specific performance depends on the strength of the platform itself.
So I think it should be fine. I think the distribution of the whole profit pattern is dynamically evolving and constantly changing.
Deep ring: I just mentioned that the income composition of short plays includes recharge income, advertising income and brand income. I want to discuss with you again. Where are the difficulties and opportunities for brand implantation of short plays now?
Wang Xiaoshu: Recently, we are also doing a brand short play of a big company. In the process of doing it, we feel that the key lies in the docking of the two sides’ consciousness. We pay more attention to recharge, so advertisers have no demand for recharge, and more hope that its short play will be exposed to a greater extent; Or the brand owner wants to participate in the top-notch performance, then the problem may be that the schedule is relatively tight. In fact, it is understandable. After all, people on both sides of the content side and the brand side do one thing together, and mutual cognitive methods need to be run-in.
Brand owners still recognize the value of short plays. For them, it costs hundreds of thousands to shoot a good commercial, and the short play with similar price is more cost-effective. There are many stories in 100 minutes, so the exposure of the brand is sustainable and the user’s impression will be more profound.
At the same time, because of the way of short play, it is very suitable for publishing from media accounts, no matter whether its own brand account is rising or the brand customized short play is quoted by other platforms, the brand side thinks this is a good deal.
Deep ring: Like short drama implantation and long drama implantation, do you feel that the demands of the brand will be different?
Wang Xiaoshu: It’s not bad. Just kidding, I think short plays have a better sense of service, because we are now cooperating with brands to brand short plays, and the cost of a short play is several hundred thousand. Many brands will pay the full amount in advance, and then we will have a high degree of cooperation, whether we are directors, actors or screenwriters.
Secondly, I think the core is still fast, and it is done quickly by itself, and everyone runs in quickly. Sometimes our screenwriter takes his laptop directly to the brand to make changes. What do you say you want to do and what are your needs? We can make changes normally, and we can finish them in one day, and then satisfy the brand.
So overall, the cycle is short, the investment is small, and the effect of the service is still visible-how much exposure does my account have, how many interactive likes and comments, and will the brand’s search index be improved? These can be quantified. Compared with long plays, short plays are more certain.
Deep ring: Is it more often to directly connect with the brand, or will it be grafted on that platform?
Wang Xiaoshu: Platform. The current advertisers are basically platforms. Because we are also exploring this business model, the biggest advantage of Internet platform companies is that they are still relatively familiar with it. From the perspective of doing business, it is faster to make a list of platforms, and the platform itself has many sub-brands. If all these sub-brands are made in one round, it may be more than a dozen, which is guaranteed in quantity and sustainable. Most consumer brands are difficult to batch.
【 About production factors 】
Deep ring: Are there any important key nodes in your process of making Jiashu?
Wang Xiaoshu: I think "starting to do" is the first. I started writing in July, 2001. I was mainly writing free novels the year before, but I really felt that the best time for free novels had passed. At that time, tomatoes had great advantages, so I was confused about finding directions. Later, I saw this opportunity to combine our own story genes and abilities with trends such as new media and short videos.
Secondly, I think the production and upgrading of the whole content began last year, and many strong people joined in, which will make my understanding of the whole short play more film-oriented. Because at the earliest time, in fact, everyone’s requirements for video were not so high. After the professionals came in, the whole thing was quickly raised, and we also spent a lot of energy to catch up with the average line of the market.
I think these two things are very impressive. One is to seize the opportunity of the starting point. The outbreak of Tik Tok helped us to break the ceiling quickly. The other is that after the short play broke out, many strong people came in, and we also improved with them.
Deep ring: After these professional companies come in, what kind of influence will they have besides raising production costs?
Wang Xiaoshu: I think the production cost is at the level of comparison results. The real difference is that after a large number of Tik Tok MCN and professional production companies that make movies and TV series entered the market, the talent structure of the industry has undergone important changes.
For example, the main screenwriter who writes well now has become the original screenwriter who writes long plays. He has transformed into a short play with small programs and is very active in the market. Including directors and actors are also a migration of long dramas. You finally see the cost increase because the short dramas are finer and better, but in terms of the process, we are more concerned about the change of talents, which has been fully done by talents of medium and long dramas. Now this situation is more and more in the industry.
Deep ring: Are those people who used to do short plays eliminated?
Wang Xiaoshu: In fact, most of them have been eliminated. Of course, there will certainly be some people who are very capable of learning and can be active in the market, but from the perspective of the whole big industry structure, the former head may now be reduced to second-rate, and emerging and really good talents will come in and form a squeeze on them.
Deep ring: It’s like a math problem. After the influx of professionals, the cost will be higher and the profit will be thinner. Does the business model of short play support this surge in cost?
Wang Xiaoshu: So far, it’s actually fine. For example, we say that there may indeed be some producers or platform companies that will suffer mass losses this year, but after the whole market pulls the content to a level because of the head, it looks like malt, just like the situation we are facing, that is, you follow or not, because if you don’t follow, your business can’t go on; At least you have a chance if you follow. If you are in the top five in the whole market, you still make money, and if you are in the top ten, you should not lose money.
Now, the content cost has basically reached a stable period, and its cost growth is slow in a short time or for a long time. In the early years, it changed from 100,000 to 200,000 to 300,000 to 400,000 and 400,000 to 500,000. This change is very strong, and it has doubled. But now you have changed from 400,000 to 500,000, and this growth has become linear, so the impact on us is not great.
Deep ring: Listen, I feel that the short drama practitioners are still in an acceptable state for the platform and professional companies to raise the competition line, right?
Wang Xiaoshu: Objectively speaking, it is actually irreversible.
For practitioners, this incident happened a bit like the early cyber-movie. It was hundreds of thousands in the early days of filming a cyber-movie, and then it may be millions or even tens of millions. Of course, I don’t think short plays are very good, because short plays take the story route, not the special effects route. It will be somewhat different, but I think it can’t be confronted at the regular level. The only way is to actively cooperate with the transformation, because many colleagues have experienced things like what we are experiencing now.
Doing fine products, cultivating high-quality talents, doing more exquisite creativity and refined operations, including brand tonality and content supervision, will all change, so I think this matter is inevitable.
Deep ring: Who is the most central role in the whole process of short play? How to form a more stable relationship between the company and these core talents?
Wang Xiaoshu: In our industry, the core is the script, and we can also tell stories.
In our job, the person in charge of the story is generally divided into two. The first one is product selection, or planning, which mainly sets the general direction and categories. The other is script implementation, which is the familiar screenwriter. These two positions are the editor-in-chief, so simply speaking, this position may be the core driving force. He is setting the direction, and he will go to the script implementation after setting the direction.
In fact, if a play is successful, I think the story accounts for 50%.
Deep ring: Now everyone in the industry is talking about quality, but in fact, users are looking for coolness when watching short plays. He wants a 70-point thing, but if you give him a 90-point quality, he will not appreciate it. So what is the promotion of short drama quality? Service road? Plot? Actor? How to grasp the degree of this boutique?
Wang Xiaoshu: Short plays are mainly aimed at mass consumers. What is our deepest understanding in this field? Many things are driven by human nature. For example, the actor’s face value, the actors we used in our early years, had a few hundred dollars a day, and there were one or two thousand days. Then the actor who is better now is at least five or six thousand a day, and even better, he may spend more than 10 thousand yuan a day. Then the so-called cost increase actually only brings about one change, that is, the face value can be played better.
People like to see beautiful things by nature, so from the user’s point of view, he actually doesn’t care about your cost, he only cares about saying that the short play I saw is good-looking. Many companies do short plays well, and to some extent, they are "rolled out". If you want to be more successful, you must meet the needs of users. The most basic needs of users are to see more beautiful people, more professional acting skills and stronger emotions. In our interpretation, these things are to use better people, so that the audience’s visual experience will be better.
Short play is a kind of visual communication, which is very intuitive. Your service is not good, your face value is not enough, and many problems are particularly obvious. Some angles are also related to its investment.
Nowadays, dozens of new dramas are put on the market every day. When you are in the stream, the paying ability and depth of the drama must be determined by the satisfaction of consumers. If consumers are satisfied, they will pay more. Paying more will make your bid high enough to get traffic. This is completely the logic of users voting with their feet.
So, for example, we both played a play today, and the actor you used was a little better than the actor I used, and everything else was just the same. From a certain point of view, your competitiveness might be stronger than mine. The pricing of short plays is more dynamic, but because your visual effect is better, that user may be willing to pay 50 yuan to watch your film, while my user is only willing to pay 45 yuan, which seems to be only 5 yuan short, but in fact it may be several times worse.
The video itself makes the good and bad exposed very obvious, and at the same time, the business model of streaming makes this gap more "Matthew effect", which is a bit strong and strong. Or, you can understand the investment flow as a lever. Your advantages and disadvantages are magnified by geometric multiples. You may be just a little at first, but the differences in various superpositions are very big in the end.
Deep ring: So do you do it yourself? Or should I outsource to those distributors?
Wang Xiaoshu: I think it is the different strategies of each company. Like a crowd, it will be more comprehensive. Like most of our startups, we will concentrate on one point. Like Kyushu, although we have almost the same time of establishment, Kyushu is basically purely self-funded and has a team of hundreds of people.
Deep ring: As you mentioned just now, the core of the short play is the script. We see that there are statistical data, and 80% of the short IP plays are online. Is this data accurate? I can see people collecting scripts every day in some short drama groups, which gives people a very contradictory feeling. What is the IP supply situation at the source of short dramas?
Wang Xiaoshu: Generally speaking, many heads and explosions are from well-known IP. The head company has its own novel reserve, a stable screenwriter team, and self-made scripts are the main ones. An IP is very classic, so it is normal to change it three times and five times. For example, Dragon King’s Order is a classic male frequency. As far as I know, it has been changed ten times. Ten short plays are called Dragon King’s Order, and the possible differences are gaiden, prequel and 123.
As for accepting scripts, I think it may still be a new company, which has no script ability and its own screenwriter team in a short time, but if he wants to make achievements, he can only buy them. I think this is a strategy of each company at different stages.
Deep ring: How much will it cost to buy IP now? What is the most expensive link in the whole process of short play?
Wang Xiaoshu: If you only count the source of the novel, the general price is tens of thousands of dollars.
If you want to look at it from the perspective of revenue, it is investment, but we generally don’t count investment as cost, which is called marketing expense, because investment will only happen in one situation, that is, your ROI has become positive. If you can’t vote, you won’t vote. If you don’t vote, you won’t lose money. Although the marketing cost is big, it is not the most difficult place. The most difficult thing is the shooting and production of the drama.
If you want to say the most expensive, it may still be the shooting and production. A 500,000 film may cost 100,000 yuan for IP and scriptwriting in the early stage, and the remaining 400,000 mainly happens in shooting. The shooting cycle of short plays is about 7 to 10 days, and the costs of cast members, costumes, scene props, etc. are all spent in 7 to 10 days after starting.
Deep ring: Short drama actors seem to be hard to be recognized by mainstream entertainment circles. Some film and television dramas explicitly say not to play short dramas when casting. What do you think of their development? This has also led to a chain of contempt. Big screenwriters don’t take short plays, and some actors from good schools in China Opera and North Film don’t shoot short plays. Short plays are the feeling of low in many people’s eyes. I wonder if you have any troubles in this regard?
Wang Xiaoshu: I can understand. First of all, it is a new thing. Objectively speaking, the short play business will last for two or three years. People don’t understand it or there are many misunderstandings, and we are very calm inside. Like the online novel industry in the early days, it has developed for more than 20 years since 2002, and then it has entered the mainstream field. The mainstreaming of short plays will also be an inevitable process.
The core of the content industry is the work to speak, whether the actors have acting skills or not, not by speaking, but the core logic is the satisfaction of consumers. Many actors were amateurs before cooperating with us. After cooperating with us, his fans may now reach hundreds of thousands or even millions, which is another way to grow.
Moreover, the fan stickiness of the head comedian is very scary. If the actor’s Tik Tok account has millions of fans, and there are dozens of fans, each with 500 people, then after a play starring him is launched, everyone in the group will comment, like and forward it. I personally think that actors in medium and long plays may spend the same money, but actors in short plays bring millions of fans, and the cost performance is still very high.
Now doing brand short plays, many brand owners will name names and say that I want someone in this industry. He is in line with my brand tonality. This is a very obvious change, and advertisers have begun to pay the bill.
I think a lot of changes are continuous. Just like making the sea now, many medium and long videos are also making the sea for many years, but the short drama has not been out for a long time. Last November, ReelShort (a short drama platform of Chinese online subsidiary) surpassed Netflix in North America, which has produced a very important influence in developed countries around the world. This has never been done before, and many inherent impressions in ideas need to be slowly told with facts and time.
[About going to sea]
Deep ring: When talking about short plays going out to sea, I feel that the maturity of short plays in overseas markets is still much worse than that in China. However, many media reports have made a lot of money by going out to sea, including that foreign users will like the themes that are popular in China. Everyone has some inherent impressions. Are these impressions consistent with the real situation?
Wang Xiaoshu: I think there is a big deviation, and many concepts may be wrong. I made my own sea, and now the company that made the sea used to be my colleague, just everyone or that group of people. Our common understanding is that going to sea is not a short-term behavior.
Because China is a unified big market, everything you do in China is ready-made. You go overseas to do short plays, overseas users are newer and more fragmented, and there are cultural obstacles. You need to do infrastructure work first. On the one hand, it is necessary to cultivate users, so that users can understand short plays and consume them. Secondly, it is necessary to cultivate creators, including screenwriters and directors. For example, when we do short plays in Japan, we have to find new translations from the basic to the most basic, and we have to help Japanese creators how to write scripts, shoot short plays and find rhythm. In any case, this is not a short-term thing that will get excessive returns. Moreover, the cost of overseas drama production is much higher than that of China. If the cost is high and infrastructure is needed, how can we make money? This is so unreasonable.
Therefore, I think it is a long-term behavior to go to sea. All companies that do short plays to go to sea are more interested in the opportunities in this market in the next three to five years.
Deep ring: It’s like you just mentioned that there is a key node in China, that is, Tik Tok has released the jump of WeChat applet and opened up the whole market. Will there be such a node abroad?
Wang Xiaoshu: I don’t think it will happen in foreign countries, because its ecology abroad is originally in the form of App, and App actually focuses on long-term benefits. There is no so-called hypermedia abroad, such as Facebook, Google and TikTok, and the traffic is very scattered, so generally speaking, it won’t change overnight. Its more strength comes from long-term continuous improvement and steady promotion. From this point of view, I don’t think it will have such a particularly exaggerated moment, or it may have. The first two explosions in ReelShort suddenly brought the market up and drove many manufacturers to the sea. Recently, some colleagues and partners have talked to me, and everyone thinks that there will be some landmark events that show that this road is feasible. The course of history cannot be changed, but more people can come in and do it together, that’s all.
Deep ring: TopShort, Jiashu’s overseas short drama platform, launched the "Star Project" at the content production level, giving a list of eight finished dramas. What is the supply of this localized production team? What are the specific methods to cultivate creators in the local market?
Wang Xiaoshu: We are all doing it by local teams in Japan. I think the most basic method is recruitment. In Japan, we have offices, long-term employees, external partners and a lot of visits to many Japanese companies.
Deep ring: Will it appear that the Japanese team will be educated for him, the market will rise, and then people will do it themselves? How can the investment we sow in advance maintain its advantages in the subsequent outbreak?
Wang Xiaoshu: First, your App has users, and user accumulation is your asset. Take Japan as an example. Whether it is the download list or the best-selling list, our Topshort is higher than Netflix, which means that your progress is faster than Netflix at this stage. This is easy to understand. If your growth rate can be maintained for a long time, then you will naturally form your own barriers at the user level and the brand level.
Second, we have a cognitive lead. Now the scale of short plays in China market is very large, which is a good soil for content creators. What kind of lens should be used for shooting, how to adjust your color and how to play your lighting? Slowly, there is an understanding of specific methods and the precipitation of details. It will take a long time for the real local creators to reach the same level of cognition as us in short plays after they have completely grown up.
I think many local talents don’t care so much about which company he must serve. In fact, it is more about which company will have better personal growth and economic returns. I think our enterprises in China still have advantages in this respect. They dare to give new people opportunities and invest in new people to learn. I believe that you have trained 10 such directors, and eventually two or three people think you are very good. This is your precipitation. In the long run, if you make a market in a country and continue to generate profits, you can still survive.
Deep ring: TopShort surpassed Netflix in Japan’s iOS. Why did it suddenly make such a breakthrough? What is the competition situation of short drama App overseas?
Wang Xiaoshu: Surpassing Netflix is a dominant result, and our process is always iterative.
Topshort is the same as ReelShort. Almost a dozen films have been filmed in Japan, and the App has been launched for a while. Our understanding of the Japanese market is improving. At the beginning, we translated dramas online and translated domestic dramas overseas. If the results are not good, then adjust, what kind of Japanese users like, what kind of aesthetics they have for actors, and constantly communicate with local creators.
To tell the truth, the taste of Japan will actually be heavier. Japanese dramas like cheating, but this is not a particularly big category in China. We are mainly fond of cheating. Cheating may be just a negative behavior of love rat, which leads to the tall image of positive people. But in Japan, cheating is the main line of a story, so we have to adapt to this change. Finding a creator is the same. In a local shooting team, it is very likely that the first one is not good, so remove it, and the second one is ok. Then we will see how to make progress and keep iterative growth.
In the process of adaptation, the most important thing is that the understanding of local users has deepened and the accumulation of local talents has become thicker.
Deep ring: Sora released everyone’s discussion, saying that the video generated by AI was the first to subvert the short drama industry. I don’t want to ask Sora’s influence on short dramas, but I want to say whether we use AI in the actual operation process now. Is it happening if it is really practical? Or is it too far away?
Wang Xiaoshu: I think it is quite far away. Sora is really revolutionary, but my point of view is also very clear. It helps 90% ordinary people, but not 10% professional creators.
For example, my son will go to school to give a presentation the next day, which is very difficult for him, so Sora can definitely help most ordinary people. For another example, you are an ordinary user and want to show the decoration designer the decoration style you want. After you have mastered this tool, you can send a video to the designer, and people will know how you want to feel.
But for us, a professional creator of 10%, what we pursue is the optimization of content quality, not the reduction of cost. Because the cost reduction is meaningless in some ways, just like when we shoot a film, there are tens of millions of top-ups in China. At this time, cost is not our most consideration. What we consider is how to make high-quality content.
Therefore, the main value of Sora is to reduce the cost of video production extremely, so he must help ordinary people. Ordinary people can’t make videos or it’s very difficult to do them, so AI is very helpful to him. For professional creators, a thing has a cool effect. If you tell others that it is made by robots, everyone will feel amazing, but if you tell them that you need to pay to see it, I don’t think most people will watch it.
To put it bluntly, it’s all driven by commercialization in the end. Professional content producers are faced with the consumer market where the public pays. A 100-minute short play costs an average of 500,000 yuan, which is a great cost advantage compared with tens of millions of movies. If there is a technology that can make the cost of short plays change from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, but the effect may be much worse than hundreds of thousands, then I think the payment logic will not stand.
