Watching the market vane of short dramas in “Hutong’er”[Film and television students have ended up with short video content upgrades and iterations]
The recent Kuaishou short drama summer event “A Summer of Chasing Dramas” is underway. The Kuaishou Xingmang short play “Hutong Er” starring Wang Yuzheng and directed by Lu Tian is launched on the Kuaishou platform. Each episode is 2 minutes and only 10 episodes are updated. It has exceeded one billion.
A refreshing atypical skit
Whether it is the life atmosphere of the large courtyard full of regional characteristics, or the nostalgic style of the atmosphere, the Beijing-style “Hutong” is indeed a refreshing and atypical “short play”: in the past, this track was full of ancient puppets, In the world of sweet pets and funny themes, Hutong culture and family ethics and emotions are very mature elements of long dramas. TV dramas such as “The Happy Life of the Poor Zhang Damin” and “Zhengyang Gate” have already broken through the geographical restrictions of Beijing-style children’s dramas and become a few dramas. Emotional memories shared by generations. The short drama “Hutong Er” has made a useful attempt to break the dimensional wall of long and short videos with its excellent production and original intention of filming the stories of the common people.
The short play “Hutong Er” didn’t come out of nowhere. From the perspective of the general background, in October 2021, at the Kuaishou Short Drama Industry Conference and the Kuaishou Starlight Short Drama Upgrade Conference, Yu Ke, the head of Kuaishou Short Drama Operations, announced that the “Kaishou Starlight Project” will be officially upgraded to “Kaishou Star” Mang Short Play”. Through the three major directions of content themes, creative support, and business cooperation, it will provide all-round rights and assistance for short drama creators and institutions, and create a benign short drama ecological reservoir in terms of creation, promotion, and income. In terms of content, the earliest Kuaishou short dramas were divided into male and female audiences, so types such as high sweet theaters and explosive theaters were produced.
Since the 2nd Golden Drama Awards in October 2021, while clarifying the Kuaishou Xingmang skit label, the focus of exploration will also focus on breakthroughs in individual themes, including “inspirational youth, ancient national rhythm, urban workplace, family sharing” Love, the melody of the times”, “Hutong Er” has reached the cultivated market; from an individual point of view, the director Lu Tian and starring Wang Yuzheng of “Hutong Er” are both academic backgrounds, the former graduated from the Photography Department of Beijing Film Academy, the latter Graduated from the Chinese opera performance major, worked in Renyi. The professional background of the two main creators has indeed made this short drama significantly improved compared to similar works. Except for the “short”, the quality is not significantly different from that of traditional long dramas.
At the same time, they used their personal experiences to encourage young graduates of the Nortel “class” of Chinese opera to break industry stereotypes and have the courage to try, “Short dramas are the biggest platform for young film and television artists at the moment… We are creating, and what we need is Export, who doesn’t want to practice kung fu on the mountain and go down to see the outside world. It shouldn’t be held on the mountain by the so-called ‘chain of contempt’.”
Director Lu Tian’s heart of “making good stories for the common people”
In 2020, Kuaishou officially ended, providing resource and financial support to high-quality short video creators, and director Lu Tian began to officially cooperate with Kuaishou on short drama projects. At the end of the year, the first “Mao Xiaoxu’s Electric Shock Life” will be released; ten films will be collaborated in 2021, and ten films have been completed so far in 2022.
Lu Tian is a native of Beijing. He just got married and had a daughter in his early thirties. In addition, he was born in a professional school and has always been in the complex of “making good stories for the people”. Therefore, combined with the Hutong culture, he talked about a “Beijing who is struggling in Beijing”. The idea came into being.
Innovation means risk. Lu Tian said that he was also worried about the market response of “Hutong’er”, but it turned out that viewers of short video platforms also like to watch short videos. The biggest challenge for Lu Tian in the creation is how to convert the dominant theme of this long drama into the efficient output of short dramas. After all, an episode of a TV series has 40 minutes to slowly pave the way for the joys and sorrows of “Zhang Damin”. When the audience stays in “Hutong Er” for ten seconds, the opportunity is completely lost.
In the end, what broke this “dimensional wall”, Lu Tian believes, is the same as the traditional long drama, which is also the precise polishing of the script and the high matching of the actors’ performances. “If a long drama is a conscience drama, it will look good in any way it is cut, but there are also many shoddy productions, and 20 episodes must be poured into 40 episodes.”
It is reported that when creating “Hutong Er”, Lu Tian not only led the screenwriting team, but also carefully embedded the specific problems faced by young people in their thirties into the script, and also invested a lot of empathy. For example, the background of the times was deliberately pulled back to around 2006. “For the post-90s, it was a period that resonated with them. Economic development, the Olympic Games, and even many classic songs burst out at that time… Everyone in the play is listening to Jay Chou. ‘s song, watching Little Dragon Girl, and now we are still discussing Jay Chou’s new song and Liu Yifei. Classic things are hard to obliterate, and I think the audience recognizes this kind of echo in and out of the play.” Lu Tian said.
What is more surprising is that in the field of short dramas where young people win the world, Lu Tian boldly set the target audience of “Hutong Er” to users aged 30 to 50, “I don’t think everyone has to go blindly. Catering to young users, in fact, my creative intention is to let people with more life experience see it under the condition of conforming to the public aesthetics.”
It took 33 years for starring Wang Yuzheng to prepare for the role of “Yuzheng”
“Hutong Er” can make a huge breakthrough in the theme of short dramas on the Kuaishou platform. In the words of director Lu Tian, Wang Yuzheng, the actor of the male protagonist Yu Zheng, “this face is very important”. On the short-video platform, his personal account @ Beijing Guy·Yuzheng has tens of millions of fans all over the Internet with his sharp jokes. In this short play, there was a magical chemical reaction between Wang Yuzheng himself, the Internet celebrity “Beijing Boy Yuzheng” and the hero Yuzheng. He told a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily that he “prepared for this role”. 33 years”.
In 2019, between the long announcements of the TV series, newcomer Wang Yuzheng began to try to shoot short videos with his partner. “Patting and patting, your likes and dislikes, aesthetics, and personality will be revealed. I am more eager to express, and I am good at expressing it. Slowly, I have formed a form that is close to reality, and refined the voices of the masses according to the hot spots. The violent output of ‘positive energy’ ‘Style”, @ Beijing guy·yuzheng quickly became popular.
Although Wang Yuzheng has the right to speak and the status of Internet celebrity after the transformation of short videos, his awe and professional background for performance has not diminished in his bones, or it is this professional spirit that makes his short video works match Different. “In the beginning, I received short videos because the market was not good in the past few years, and there was no drama. I was always thinking about how to maintain the status of an actor. @ Beijing Guy·Yuzheng is my way to maintain the energy of an actor. Slowly economical It’s a little supportive, but now, this job is more of a sense of mission.” Wang Yuzheng said that users of short videos do seem to like exciting things, this is human instinct, in fact, what you feed him, He eats whatever he wants; and as a literary and artistic worker, in addition to learning to get along with the user, he should always stretch a string. The little flame that slightly improves the taste cannot be extinguished, which is the driving force for him to continue to do it. . “The big environment is like this, but each of us is actually a big environment. We can make the big environment a little better.”
After graduating from the Department of Chinese Opera Performance in 2011, Wang Yuzheng stayed on the stage for six years. He once performed “Wotou Guild Hall” with He Bing, Song Dandan, Pu Cunxin, etc. The artistic nourishment of his predecessors and the unique charm of Beijing-style dramas made him Wang Yuzheng, a native of Beijing, has always wanted to make an authentic Beijing drama. Director Lu Tian came to him with the script of “Hutong Er” and hit it off instantly.
Text / reporter Yang Wenjie
Coordination / Man Yi