Movies and miniseries： How to get out of the development puzzle of changing one from another

After last year’s boom, the film market in China began to get cold. According to public data, as of October 31, the cumulative box office of the domestic film market in 2024 was 38.3 billion yuan. Compared with the same period of last year, the summer file and the National Day file fell by 44% and 23% respectively.

At the same time, the mini-short drama has become a new favorite of the public. The White Paper on the Development of China Miniature Drama Industry (2024) released by China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association recently pointed out that the domestic mini-drama market is expected to exceed 50 billion yuan in 2024, and the total box office revenue of mainland movies is expected to be 47 billion yuan. This also means that the market scale of miniseries is expected to surpass the box office for the first time.

From the perspective of revenue alone, miniseries are not "micro", but have been able to compete with movies. Why is the movie market tired? How to treat the trade-off between movies and miniseries?

one

Behind the market changes, it reflects the change of audience’s entertainment consumption habits. With the rise of mobile platforms such as Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker, the traffic pattern of mobile Internet is undergoing a subversive reshuffle, and mini-dramas attract users’ attention with "fast food" content. This kind of instant feedback is like weaving a tight net, which firmly grasps the users and makes them gradually adapt to and indulge in this fast and efficient stimulation mode.

Movies represent a completely different viewing experience. It requires the audience to take out a whole block of time, walk into a specific viewing place and devote themselves wholeheartedly in a quiet environment. This immersive experience is like a ceremony, which allows the audience to temporarily break away from trivial daily life and enter a brand-new world of light and shadow. However, with the development of the mobile terminal, people’s time is increasingly fragmented, which makes watching a movie more luxurious. In addition, the narrative rhythm of the film is relatively slow, and the audience needs to patiently follow the continuity of the plot, feel the subtle changes of the characters, and think about the layers of the theme. For the audience who are accustomed to quick access to information and instant satisfaction, such a viewing mode has gradually become a "burden".

The reasons for the "declining trend" of the film market are complicated. Apart from the change of audience habits, an important reason is that the content and production mode are slightly outdated. In terms of content, traditional movie themes often fall into a rut. For example, romantic movies always follow the same pattern of meeting, misunderstanding and compounding, while action movies are simple dramas in which heroes save the United States and defeat villains. In terms of production, there are many and complicated links from script creation, preparation and shooting to post-production, and a high-quality film often takes several years. In this process, the market demand may have changed, making the final work out of line with the audience’s expectations.

In addition, although film creation is market-oriented, it always follows a creative principle, which means that investment in high-input, long-term films needs to bear great risks. Once the box office performance is not good, it may lead to the loss of investment. Therefore, when choosing projects, we are more and more cautious, which leads to the financial support of high-quality projects being constrained. Micro-short plays completely accept product thinking, and the audience’s interest, experience and patience are considered from script to shooting to editing. In addition, the shooting cost of miniseries is low, the cycle is short, and it can quickly respond to market changes. The production team can complete a mini-short play in a short time, go online quickly, and adjust the content direction in time according to market feedback. This flexibility enables miniseries to catch up with the explosive content of traffic, better meet the audience’s current expectations and gain the upper hand in the market competition.

two

Does miniseries become the new favorite of the market, which means that movies are "out of date"?

Film art pays attention to the integrity and depth of the story, has a unique narrative rhythm, and impresses the audience through delicate emotional expression, three-dimensional characterization and circuitous narrative process. Miniature plays, on the other hand, seem to be a variation of traditional films, but in fact they abandon many techniques of traditional narrative and lens, such as bedding, rendering, transition, blank space, etc., and simply use "cool feeling" as the anchor point to create conflicts intensively and accumulate a lot of suspense. There are even some so-called "standards" in the industry, for example, there must be dialogue reversal in 30 seconds, strong conflict in 1 minute, and the background/personality/behavior of the protagonist in 5 episodes must be upgraded and reshaped.

The "micro-narrative" which emphasizes emotion over logic and labels over characters is the characteristic of micro-short plays. Although this model ensures the attraction of the drama to a certain extent, it also makes the creation fall into a strange circle of stylization and become an "empty shelf" without soul. The audience will "vote with their feet" and the aesthetics will return. When they are tired of this stereotyped model, those short plays pieced together by short-term emotional stimulation and simple labels will lose the market.

It is worth noting that the adverse effects of "micro-narrative" have spread to the film field. In order to catch the audience’s attention and constantly create high-intensity stimulation, strong plot, high suspense and labeled characters have become the direction of some film creation. This change seems to be in line with the market trend, but in fact, the film has gradually become a simple entertainment tool, its content tends to be thin and linear, and the characters have become empty and replaceable. An inevitable result is that more and more films will lose the power to guide the audience to think and touch their hearts, and will no longer have the long tail effect of "watching repeatedly", which will eventually lead to the deterioration of the entire film and television cultural ecology.

The challenge brought by miniseries goes far beyond pulling the audience from screen to screen. Driven by the concept of traffic first, some creators use vulgar, money-worship, kitsch and other bad plots to gain attention in order to seek high traffic. For example, "Black Lotus Upper Manual" was originally favored by the industry, but it was taken off the platform in less than a week because of the content of extreme revenge and violence in the play. There is also "Li Tezhu so many beauties" which was banned by the whole network for allegedly scratching the theme. These works spread bad ideas such as getting something for nothing, refusing to accept it, and run counter to the mainstream values of encouraging hard work and encouraging hard work.

When the audio-visual service takes the weakness of human nature as a shortcoming and produces a large number of dramas based on machine algorithms and data models, the original humanistic care and emotional temperature in film and television works will be covered up, which will pose a serious threat to the healthy development of the entire film and television industry. In the long run, the audience may gradually get lost in the low-quality and non-nutritious content, lose their appreciation and demand for high-quality film and television works, and at the same time restrain the creative enthusiasm of creators for truly valuable content, forming a vicious circle.

three

If we don’t want to be abandoned by the times, movies and miniseries must be reformed accordingly. Although the two cultural products are very different in terms of duration, expression methods and communication channels, they are essentially narrative carriers that convey emotions, thoughts and stories to the audience through audio-visual language.

Cultural products can’t pretend to be "lofty" and disdain "flow value", but they can’t regard flow as the only and final destination. For movies, we can’t ignore the voice of the market and the preferences of the public, but we can’t give up artistic standards simply to cater to them. For example, we can use traffic thinking in marketing promotion to attract the audience into the cinema, but we should maintain a high standard in content creation, so that the audience can have a longing for images and stories after watching the movie. This is especially true for miniseries. On the basis of platform traffic, we should pay more attention to the improvement of content quality, so that ways and means can help the dissemination of high-quality content, rather than making content a slave to traffic.

The audience was "kidnapped" by the routine plot, which also showed the current situation of insufficient supply of high-quality works, and it was urgent to make efforts to optimize the creative environment. In terms of movies, investors and producers should dare to "escort" innovative scripts and directors, build a scientific risk assessment and sharing system, and break away from the shackles of high cost on creation. Government departments should also introduce relevant policies to protect the film industry, such as setting up special creative funds and giving tax incentives to outstanding projects, so as to encourage the film industry to create more works with ideological depth and artistic value. For miniseries, on the one hand, the platform should strengthen the screening and recommendation mechanism of high-quality content, and give potential creative teams more resources and exposure opportunities; On the other hand, it is also necessary to strengthen the training and guidance for the micro-short drama creators, improve their creative level, guide them to jump out of the routine, and create high-quality micro-short drama works that can meet the entertainment demands of the audience without losing the depth of culture and thought.

Technological innovation and artistic pursuit cannot stop, and film and television creation should actively embrace technological changes and enhance the artistic appeal of works. For example, the film The Battle at Lake Changjin vividly restores the cruel battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea with advanced special effects technology. Whether it is ice and snow or bullets, it makes the audience feel as if they are in the era of war; The Wandering Earth series movies, with stunning special effects, rigorous scientific settings and rich technical details, perfectly integrate China cultural elements with sci-fi themes. The mini-short play "I am in ignorance" uses special effects to enhance the visual effect in the color matching and scene layout of the picture, showing the charm of ancient style. These are all successful cases under technical empowerment.

Film and television works are like a bridge, one end is connected with the creator’s thoughts and emotions, and the other end is connected with the audience’s spiritual world. Finding a cultural and spiritual connection is the cornerstone of this bridge. For example, the movie Dying to Survive tells the story of the hero’s transformation from selling Indian generic drugs for profit to helping others at the expense of himself after witnessing the plight of his patients, which profoundly reflects the brilliance of human nature under medical difficulties. The mini-play "The Song of Ancient Lovesickness" tells the story of the love between the hero and heroine in different time and space that spans thousands of years, breaking the traditional love drama mode with unique settings, and showing the impermanence of fate and the tenacity of love.

Whether it’s a movie or a mini-play, if you want to improve your storytelling ability, you should constantly broaden the width and depth of the focused theme to meet the audience’s needs for emotional resonance, ideological enlightenment and cultural experience. If more such works can be produced in the market, movies may no longer suffer from the loss of audience and the shrinking market, and miniseries will no longer be a pastime of fragmentation time. It is believed that it is only a matter of time before movies and miniseries gradually become the dual highlands of mass entertainment and spiritual nourishment. (Author: Kong Deqi)