Author | Gu Han
Editor | Li Chunhui
In just a few years, short video has become a daily life of modern people, and naturally it has become a position that major Internet giants will never give up. With the expansion of the user scale and the continuous entry of new players, the content of short videos is constantly seeking to upgrade. From the concept of Chinese video to micro-integrated water testing, the current trend is more clear:Each family invariably turned their eyes to the miniseries.
During the Spring Festival, Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker, Tencent Microvision and other platforms have launched a series of new short plays, which are rich in themes and well-made, which is enough for the short plays to slowly take off the "earthy flavor" label. However, among all the youthful handsome men and beautiful women dead ringer, it is a bald uncle who attracts the most attention of Hard Candy Jun.
This "Glowing Uncle" was jointly created by Baidu’s good-looking video and Mahua FunAge, starring "ex-husband brother" Du Xiaoyu, focusing on a wide range of social hot topics with the theme of middle-aged crisis, family and marriage, aiming to make the audience laugh and cry more rewarding. As a good-looking video, the drama was launched on February 22, 2021.
Compared with the cool feeling and love women, which are common in the short drama market at present, uncle’s short plays, which are so unconventional, can brush out a super sense of existence. Is it because of missing short drama types or the right medicine for short video users?
If the long video online drama has formed its own type law: the explosion is scheduled to be a big production of ancient dolls, the top price-performance ratio is a sweet pet drama, and the word-of-mouth dark horse is a suspense drama.So what is the "light of genre" of short plays?
blaze a trail
Let the neglected "uncle" shine
"I’m Du Xiaoyu. I’m a good employee in the company. At home, I’m a good husband and father. Today, I’m going to have a highlight moment in my life …" With the voice-over, the scene flashed between the tea room, the office, the dining table, the bedroom and the annual meeting.
This is the title of "The Glowing Uncle". In just over ten seconds, the identity of the hero has been clearly explained:Middle-aged people, married with children, submit to humiliation, looking forward, but still have expectations for life.
Nowadays, under the intangible cultivation of short videos, short plays become shorter and more pithy, and an episode often has only one theme, instead of a collection of paragraphs. For example, the first episode of "Glowing Uncle" is called "The True Meaning of Masters". Under the material temptation and competitive pressure of modern society, there are always people who yearn for success but are unwilling to pay. A batch of successful training that sells anxiety and advocates "crash" comes into being and harvests "IQ tax". The opening of "The Glowing Uncle" is directed at this social phenomenon.
The "master" image in the play can be said to be very typical. Dressed in a double-breasted shirt, he strung his hands together, telling Brother Xiao’s demon to whisper "understand the applause". When the hero asked for help, he was as warm as the spring breeze, and when he cheated money, he turned his head and pulled black. The protagonist was skeptical when listening to the lecture, but refused to think independently when he actually encountered setbacks. He couldn’t help but want to ask for help. Finally, he suddenly woke up when he saw the police uncle take the master away. This experience is also very real.
It is not difficult to see that it is not only the difference between horizontal screen and vertical screen on the surface, but also the difference in team source and texture. The concept of the topic of "Glowing Uncle" has already shown obvious differences from the market. It is not a cool drama in the style of Long Aotian’s web, nor is it a simple repetition of funny scenes in life, or a scratch on hot topics on the internet, but it has actually fallen into the real life of the audience, with certain humanistic care and value output.
We should know that for a long time, the drama market has always been female-oriented, or deliberately "flattering" and naturally speculating and catering to the preferences of "Generation Z", and middle-aged roles are often marginalized and stereotyped. Few dramas can truly describe the distress of middle-aged men peacefully and grounded, and often use too much force. Together, they are green hat topics or forcibly re-take the road of youth, making middle-aged people silent and young people want to vomit.
Included in short video dramas, the first popular themes are also younger and more online, such as antique, sweet pet and fantasy. But in fact, the data shows that compared with long videos, the short video market is more balanced between men and women, and even the proportion of men is slightly higher than that of women.In fact, short video dramas don’t have to follow the old road of long dramas, and continue to pursue youth and high value while ignoring the needs of middle-aged users.
Throughout the Spring Festival mini-drama, there is Jin Jing with 20 boyfriends in Tik Tok on the left, and a micro-vision on the right to push the ancient sweet pet to celebrate the New Year. The beautiful video "The Glowing Uncle" is like a simple "mudslide", which is risky to some extent, but it will not open up some new ideas for the market.
Join hands with Mahua FunAge.
Go deep into the middle-aged hinterland
However, why does this drama dare to choose a middle-aged protagonist and achieve such a degree of completion? We should also talk about the two major producers behind the scenes, good-looking videos and Mahua FunAge.
Let’s talk about the platform’s good-looking video. Perhaps today, people’s search is no longer just a choice of search engines, but it still inherits the spirit of "Baidu, you will know" and is loyal to those old netizens who grew up with Baidu.Positioning in the pan-knowledge video platform, serving the "social backbone" aged 25-40.
This group of people covers the core labor force in society, and their work and family occupy most of their time and energy, which has created their more precise and simple use demands. But it is precisely because of this that they can’t "vote" in the way of consumption and expression like Generation Z, thus becoming the "silent majority" on the Internet. There have not been many Internet products around them for a long time, and there are also huge dividends to be tapped behind these people.
Good-looking video selection provides valuable content for this group. In December 2020, on the basis of insight into the new trend of short video content consumption, the brand of good-looking video was upgraded, and a brand new slogan of "easy and rewarding" was released, and it was announced that it would continue to build more extensive knowledge content. Its self-made business is carried out under these premises, and the content tonality of entertaining is also determined.
Obviously, the choice of uncle as the protagonist is determined by the mainstream user attributes of the platform in addition to the consideration of differentiation. In this way, Mahua FunAge is indeed the most ideal partner for watching videos.
When many people think of Mahua FunAge, their first reaction may be the face of Shen Teng, the "national bad uncle". Whether it’s those hot drama works, Spring Festival Evening skits with classic packages, or explosive cinema films such as goodbye mr. loser and Shame Iron Fist, Mahua FunAge is very good at exploring the desires and sufferings of middle-aged men from the perspective of men, dispelling them with sharpness and laughter, and arousing the audience’s resonance, while the works such as Aunt Li Cha, with young actors as the main coffee, are barely performed.
In 2020, the epidemic hit the offline industry in an all-round way, and Mahua FunAge stepped up the layout of online content and entered the field of mini-dramas. As a star team with film-making ability, comedy creative talents and hundreds of signed actors, Mahua FunAge quickly got olive branches from all parties, from the traditional video platform Youku (I didn’t expect it, my brother offended) to the short video giant Aauto Quicker (Today’s menu really wants to be together) until this beautiful video.
In previous attempts, Mahua FunAge basically complied with the trend of short drama market, starring young newcomers and telling the hilarious interaction between couples and brothers.However, as in the film field, these attempts failed to make Mahua FunAge famous in the short play market. Obviously, The Glowing Uncle is more in line with the audience’s impression of Mahua FunAge.
From this point of view, although the positioning of the people and the pursuit of knowledge in the short drama market seem to be taking risks, for Good Video and Mahua FunAge, it is a cooperation in each other’s comfort zone. On the topic of young and middle-aged people, both sides are veterans, and naturally they understand how to start from the pain point and seize the users. Judging from the results, this "atypical entertainment" attempt jointly promoted by both sides is successful.
It is imperative to upgrade the miniseries.
Fill the value gap for entertainment
At this stage, for good-looking videos, project profitability is not the main consideration. "The core still lies in the construction of the whole pan-knowledge content ecology."Li Min, head of good-looking video content operation, said.
"Good-looking videos made a brand upgrade at the end of last year and put forward the values of’ Save Time’. Therefore, the content we do can bring users a sense of value and gain, which is our main consideration. From the internal system of Baidu, we have a very rich knowledge and content reserve.So the problem we have to solve now is how to lead the content creation of short plays from the perspective of pan-knowledge, rather than following the trend of entertainment.. "Li Min told hard candy gentleman.
Based on the actual crisis that middle-aged people will face in the workplace, marriage and family, The Glowing Uncle is developed in combination with social hot topics, and finally outputs values in an entertaining way, instead of simply entertaining the audience with jokes, which is a faithful reflection of the pursuit of this content.
Moreover, although the protagonist focuses on the middle-aged group, many topics involved, such as intergenerational relations, family education, neighborhood, and workplace problems, are actually resonated by everyone and have certain universality. They don’t really exclude young audiences, but hope that all audiences can benefit from it.
In addition, although "Glowing Uncle" is made by Mahua FunAge, which is out of the category of PUGC, the good-looking video also hopes that it can better integrate into the whole platform ecology and interact with other pan-knowledge creators on the platform organically and deeply. It is reported that the high-quality creators on good-looking videos such as "Talking about Travel in Tiancheng" and "Fitness in Wei Wei" are all participating in this short play. The main creator combined with the author’s characteristics to create a plot for him, giving the creator more opportunities to go out of the circle while delivering the content of the platform.
"Now many creators already have the qualifications of stars, but the audience is relatively narrower. But their talents and the impact they can bring, I think there can be more display. " Li Min said that good-looking videos have been thinking about what kind of boutique self-made programs should be used to carry the platform creators. "In the future, they will meet with you in different programs and even make them better IP."
"Good content has no upper limit for us to invest." Li Min told Hard Sugar Jun that not only is there no limit to the number, but they are also considering other forms of programs such as long dramas and celebrity interviews, and making diversified content layout around the universal knowledge and valuable core positioning. In Li Min’s view, the key is not the timing of entering the market, but whether the content is suitable for the platform and whether it is high-quality enough.
As Hard Sugar Jun discussed earlier, according to the situation that major platforms are heavily subsidized, free reading platforms and traditional film and television companies are entering the market one after another, it is imperative to upgrade micro-short dramas. Who can take the lead in breaking through the profit model and content bottleneck, find out the vertical content that conforms to their own content tonality, and avoid falling into the deadlock of homogenization, who is more likely to run ahead.
Mahua FunAge, the master creator, appreciates the "alternative" persistence of good-looking videos in content."In the era of fragmentation, more and more people hope that they can use their time to fill the gaps in knowledge, and valuable videos will become a growing trend."
When short videos are mostly simple and straightforward, good-looking videos that are full of care for old netizens in the PC era insist on valuable and rewarding content. Isn’t this a new and differentiated idea?