“Isn’t this my useless sister? Why is she asking for money like a beggar? If you are willing to marry Bastian for me, then we can give you money.”
This is the beginning of a modern Cinderella story. In order to pay for her mother’s medical expenses, the poor heroine had no choice but to agree to her venomous step-sister’s request to marry a rich man she had never met.
This short drama combines various cool elements such as “evil stepsister”, “marriage first, love later”, “overbearing president falls in love with me”, etc.“The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” became popular overseas in the second half of last year, and its views on ReelShort have exceeded 300 million.
ReelShort, a Chinese short drama app owned by Chinese Online, became an instant hit thanks to a series of hit short dramas about overseas bosses represented by the drama. The myth of “a boss going overseas and making millions a day” spread back to China, driving headlines. Some online content exporting companies and other platform parties are accelerating their plans to export short dramas to the overseas market.
The popularity of short plays overseas has continued to rise in the past six months.Sensor Tower data shows that as of the end of February 2024, more than 40 short drama applications have tested overseas markets, with a cumulative download volume of nearly 55 million times and in-app purchase revenue reaching US$170 million.
As market competition becomes increasingly fierce, overseas short drama productions are becoming more localized and high-quality. The industry generally believes that the reason why ReelShort can successfully enter overseas markets isThe key is that it uses overseas shooting teams and European and American actors, and combines themes familiar to European and American audiences such as werewolves and vampires to create a local hit short drama that conforms to local culture and aesthetics..
Following the example of ReelShort going overseas, more and more platforms are choosing to develop production capacity overseas.An overseas short drama production ecology composed of platform parties and producers has been formed.Among them, the producer is responsible for the actual production of the short drama, including local adaptation of the script, coordination of overseas resources, completion of filming and post-production, etc.
With the craze for short dramas going overseas, what kind of cooperation model does the platform and the producer usually adopt? Who is producing overseas hit short dramas? Is there a hot-selling methodology? We chatted with several front-line practitioners and project leaders of relevant contractors.
1
When short plays go overseas, who is making hits?
In mid-March, ShortTV, Jiuzhou Culture’s overseas application, surpassed ReelShort for the first time and topped the U.S. iOS free entertainment list.
During the same period, the werewolf-themed short drama “Reborn to Revenge The Betrayed Luna” (Reborn to Revenge: The Betrayed Luna), co-produced by producer Gao Weina who currently lives in Los Angeles, was launched on Short TV.
“The average ROI of this drama is 1.4-1.6, which is considered healthy.” Gao Weina told the editorial department of the new list, “It usually takes three days or at most a week to know the life or death of a short drama.”
The life or death of a short drama is determined by the number of views, collections, app downloads and net revenue it drives.Both the platform and the producer are betting on a hit. Especially for producers, platforms usually only provide basic fees, and additional income beyond production costs is extremely dependent on the market performance of the work.
According to Zhao Tao, co-founder of Multispace, the more common cooperation models between platforms and producers include the following:
1. For investment, the platform party and the contractor will invest in a ratio of 50%:50%. After the project goes online, the two parties will divide the accounts according to the pre-agreed ratio;
2. Producer. The producer will produce short plays in specific areas according to the platform’s requirements according to the needs of the platform. The producer is mainly responsible for the production tasks, and the copyright belongs to the platform;
3. Joint development, the production company independently incubates the topic and IP, and jointly invests in the production with the platform or other investors. The copyright belongs to the producer or is shared according to the investment ratio.
The myth of getting rich in short dramas such as “Recharging over 100 million yuan in 8 days” often has little to do with the producer. “In the entire short drama ecosystem, most of the funds are used for streaming and marketing activities, and relatively little money ultimately returns to the producers. The basic fees provided by the platform are usually only enough to cover the production costs.Only when the market performance of the work is particularly good, the producer may obtain a certain proportion of profits.. ” Zhao Tao added.
Currently, Multispace is producing local short plays in many places by participating in Kyushu Culture’s “Chengfeng Project”, among which the Korean project has been finalized and entered the post-production stage.
Gao Weina and his team have already cooperated with leading domestic online content exporters such as Jiuzhou ShortTV, Dianzhong DramaBox and Xinyue Times GoodShort, and many of their productions have been launched online.
In 2019, Gao Weina brought her nearly 31 years of experience in the domestic film and television entertainment industry to move to the United States and founded the company “Forest Dream”. While focusing on the TikTok MCN business, she continued to produce local films and documentaries.
Late last year, she began to get involved in short drama production.
As a producer, she is responsible for assisting director Xiang Sining in handling external communication and cooperation. “At that time, director Xiang Sining and I were preparing a horror film. The project cycle for theatrical movies is relatively long. During this period, he took on a short film project from ReelShort. After it became popular, he took on another one, which became popular again. Many people came to us to do production work, and they began to undertake projects intensively as a team. ”
According to Gao Weina,ReelShort has three hits, and Xiang Sining directed two of themrespectively “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” (The Double Life of a Billionaire Husband) and “Married at First Sight” (I got married to the person I met for the first time). The former has been viewed 300 million times, and the latter The number of views has exceeded 100 million.
In overseas short drama production, Chinese creators and teams play an important role.
Gao Weina’s team is a typical example. Its creative team is “half foreigners and half Asians.”
In addition to the creative team members such as producers, directors and screenwriters,Other members of the crew will be replaced according to schedule. Among the crew members who followed the project, there were Chinese students who had graduated from film and television majors, as well as professional film and television practitioners affected by the Hollywood strike. Gao Weina had encountered them all in the project. “At first, some people looked down on short dramas, but Later they were all filming.”
The New List Screenwriting Department learned from many sources thatAt present, most of the overseas short drama production teams are Chinese and are responsible for the planning, core creation, docking platform and other tasks.Among these teams:
Some are made by havingInternational students with film and television major backgroundTemporarily formed;
Some are like GalvinaChinese who own local production studios and have rich experience in overseas production;
There are also teams such as “Multiple Spaces”.Although the main creative team responsible for planning and selecting projects is concentrated in Beijing and Los Angeles,There are senior producers all over the country organizing filming. At the same time, directors and teams with domestic vertical screen shooting experience will also go overseas to teach their experience and guide the local team’s work.
2
How did the overseas hit short drama come about?
Guohai Securities reported that as of January 15, 2024, ReelShort had launched a total of 31 short dramas, with main themes including love, vampires, werewolves, etc. According to the standards of more than 30 million views and more than 500,000 collections, 6 short dramas have reached the blockbuster level.
Xiang Sining directed two of the 6 hit short plays.
One hit can be attributed to luck, but multiple hits are undoubtedly traceable.In Gao Weina’s view, behind the high hit rate of Xiang Sining’s works is first of all thanks to“Chinese and Western” internal team cooperation model.
According to her, Xiang Sining was born in Inner Mongolia, and later went to the United States to study. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), majoring in directing and production, and has lived in the United States for more than ten years.
As an Asian director, Xiang Sining “understands Chinese scripts”, but his screenwriting partners are usually Americans. “The scripts provided by the platform need to be localized, including character setting, scene selection, line modification, etc. The lines are very important and need to be grounded, close to local culture and local expression.This is also the reason why we have in-house American screenwriters on our team. “
For example, the hit short drama “Married at the First Sight” was the result of a local adaptation by Xiang Sining in cooperation with the well-known local screenwriter Patrick Boyd.
Secondly,Localization should not only be reflected in the script, but also involve aspects such as actor selection and set design. Gao Weina said that most of the outstanding foreign actors are concentrated in the United States, especially in Hollywood. The foreign actors found in the country are often not professional actors. They may be international students or part-time models who can speak Chinese. These non-professional actors can easily distract the audience. .
In terms of scenery and costumes, the difference between domestic and foreign filming does not simply depend on budget.Gao Weina explained: “Even if we find a mansion in China that matches the scene setting, it is difficult to completely simulate the reality of a mansion abroad. For example, in China we may only be able to use imitation frames, but abroad , we were able to capture authentic antique frames.”
Whether it is the script, actors, scene layout, costumes or props, they are all designed to make the short play more in line with the local culture and more appealing to “foreigners”.
Overseas short dramas are becoming more high-quality, and production fees are also rising.“Generally speaking, the budget of a short drama is around 180,000 to 220,000 (USD), but now ReelShort’s budget is generally around 300,000 (USD).” Gao Weina revealed.
In addition, Xiang Sining’s experience and resources accumulated in film production were applied to the production of short plays. In Gao Weina’s view, this was a “dimensionality reduction blow.”
“As a film director, he has strict requirements for the quality of his works. From pre-script preparation to shooting and post-production, he will participate in the entire process and control the final quality of the work.”
However, Gao Weina said,This kind of dimensionality reduction is only at the production level. The real test of the production team’s skill is how to cleverly set up the “hook” to attract the audience in each episode.in this regard, Xiang Sining and the screenwriting team spent a long time getting along.
For professional film and television practitioners with a college background who switch to short plays, it is a dimensionality reduction attack. Zhao Tao, who has many years of experience in film and television content planning and distribution, believes that whether it is a movie, online drama, or vertical screen short play, each one is different. product line,Each product has its own budget, ecological rules, creative logic and business model. Different product forms require different teams and production ideas to respond.
“Although movies and short plays are both art of storytelling, in movies and TV series, the audience pays more attention to the story itself,In short dramas and short videos, the audience pays more attention to whether it provides emotional value in a short period of time.For example, the protagonist’s reversal from being suppressed to defeating his opponent. This rapid change in emotion is very important. “
Therefore, Zhao Tao believes that short plays have higher requirements for scripts.
First, in terms of creative logic,Short plays pay more attention to immediate emotions and sensory stimulation, rather than the continuation and transition of long-form plays.need to capture the audience’s attention in a short period of time;
Second, unlike traditional film and television,The short play is more like an Internet productthe production of short drama content cannot only be thought from the perspective of traditional film and television,It also needs to be combined with the distribution logic in the information age. The information flow logic of short dramas increases the difficulty of script creation. Each episode needs to have a strong sense of substitution in order to capture the audience.
3
Popular short plays are not a game of probability, short play production is “hard work”
The birth of a hit short drama is mainly divided intomakeandXuanfa defectedtwo important stages.
Different from the “reproduction” of the traditional film and television industry, even now that short drama production is becoming high-quality due to fierce competition, in order to obtain more clicks and paying users for a hit short drama, the large-scale streaming cost may be as high as millions. Even tens of millions of yuan, and the investment in the promotion and distribution of domestic hit short dramas may even reach the level of 100 million yuan.
In order to achieve the hit effect, the cost of distribution far exceeds the cost of production.
in this case,Short dramas seem to have become a business that relies heavily on “probability” and traffic.
“The short play market also follows the principle of the 80/20 rule. Only two or three out of ten short plays can become a hit. I even think the probability is that only one out of ten will not lose money, and one out of one or two hundred will be a hit. “Zhao Tao said frankly that the short drama cases on the market are often a few hits.
In his view, whether a short play is a hit or not is the result of a combination of factors such as “the right time, the right place and the right people”. The birth of a hit drama, from topic selection, script to production and final casting, is interlocking. Only when all links meet certain standards can it become one of the few hits that stand out.
As the producer, Kovina and his team have successfully created a number of overseas hit short dramas. She believes that the producer is responsible for producing good content, just like carefully completing a test paper. As for how many points this test paper can get in the market, it still needs to be verified by platform promotion.However, content quality is a key factor that affects the streaming effect, and hit short dramas are by no means pure luck.
“There must be dramas that are of poor quality but explode unexpectedly, but the probability of this is extremely low,” Gao Weina said.
Talking about future development, Gao Weina plans to expand the team and train more directors and screenwriters in a “old-to-new” approach to cope with the growing demand for short play production.
For Xiao Mengyuan, the founder of Multispace,Producing short plays is a “hard job” with low profits. Especially in overseas productions, it is common for uncertain factors to lead to budget overruns, and production companies need to bear this part of the risk.
“First of all, the cost of living overseas is very high. The cost of food, accommodation and taxis for the crew are much higher than at home. Secondly, the habits of staff in different countries are different. For example, Koreans are used to saying that they need to take a rest after working for a while. Unlike The domestic crew is very tight from morning to night; in addition, finding locations for filming overseas, renting equipment, etc. are not a small expense.”
But high risk does not bring high profits.
therefore,Multispace is shifting from pure production to development, independently developing original short drama projects. According to Xiao Mengyuan, original projects in multiple spaces will adopt a more localized story structure and narrative method, directly producing English or Korean scripts, instead of writing Chinese scripts first and then translating them; the selection of screenwriters also tends to follow the guidance of screenwriters living in the local area. Cooperate and polish quality products.
“The creative team’s energy and time are limited, so it’s better to focus their time on distinctive projects.The short drama itself is not a high-profit business line, and there is no need to focus on volume.. ” Zhao Tao added.
Whether it insists on being a producer or turns into a full-link production company that develops, operates and produces short drama content, it is certain that as more and more professional production companies and film and television practitioners enter the market, short dramas will go overseas. The competition is no longer just a competition of streaming numbers, but also a competition of content quality.
Note: Text/Ishize, article source: New Rank (public account ID: newrankcn), this article is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent the position of Ebang Dynamics.
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