Short video planning and operation guide!

During last year's National Day, Zhang Ce and Zhu Yici "broke up" and never saw each other again. A year later, Zhang Ce created a new IP and became famous again, but Zhu Yici, who transformed into an actor, only had more than 2 minutes of performance time on "Talk Show Conference 4".

01 1000W+ playbacks, 400,000 followers, Zhang Ce is once again a god

When you see a group of old men and women carrying guns, with casual makeup, plastic props, and a rustic plot, it feels like the neighbors next door have entered the play, and it feels both friendly and funny.

This nonsensical scene comes from the video that has recently gone viral on Bilibili: "【Past Events in the Square】<Avengers>: Guns in hand, follow the goose! 》 。

How popular is it? 1139.7W playbacks, 124K barrages, 109.7W likes, 119.1W coins, ranking second in the entire site rankings. According to statistics from the "Xiaoxiao Data" website, the number of fans increased by more than 400,000 . These highlight data are enough to prove that the video is really popular.

The story told in the video is very simple. A group of grandpas and grandmas can be seen everywhere. They quarrel over daily necessities and square dancing territories. But after the granddaughter of the heroine "Liu Daye" was kidnapped and grandfather "Sanpao" was injured while saving people, Sister Goose and her sisters picked up weapons to beat the bad guys and uncovered the truth that they were all professional killers who retired to the countryside.

The personalities of the characters in the story can be seen in just one or two lines. You may even be tempted to say, "Hey, isn't this that so-and-so!", and the aunts and uncles around them will be able to identify with the characters in no time.

For example, Sanpao, who is "dominated by his wife", has been suppressed by Liu Da'e for many years. He curses people in a roundabout way in the last second, and becomes timid when he meets his wife's gaze in the next second, and he keeps his status in the family upright.

In order to cheat some extra pocket money, he had to use his "tool man" third uncle as an excuse. The old man fell and wanted to buy some things and visit him. The barrage of comments was flooded with comments like “Third Uncle: Are You Polite?”, creating the popular meme of “exchanging uncle for salary”.

While preparing for the final battle with the villain, Liu Daye's old sisters hesitated. As they get older, family becomes a hindrance that prevents them from “going into battle and killing the enemy.” The way they mutter to each other almost makes people believe that these unremarkable old ladies in reality were truly agents who traveled all over the world when they were young, but were finally constrained by money and family.

There is a scene where Erhua is looking at a group photo from the past, smoking one cigarette after another, with her husband and an ordinary farm house behind her, giving a sense of magical realism.

Finally, the old sisters gathered together, with the background music of "A Better Tomorrow" playing. Such a group of ordinary uncles and aunts actually excited the audience, and even made them shed tears for their "jianghu loyalty".

So, the video was successful, and the number of views exceeding 10 million made it a hit.

It must be admitted that the story is very cliché, the actors are ordinary, the advertising placement is obvious, and if it is put on the big screen, it is a commercial film that will be criticized if you spend money to buy a ticket. But on the short video platform, it has become another masterpiece of "Director Xiaoce".

02 From the man behind "Zhu Yici" to "Director Xiaoce"

The current B station UP host "Director Xiaoce" was more familiar to people for his other identity before this - the screenwriter of the short video top-stream "The Boring Life of Zhu Yici".

Zhu Yici can be called the top short video blogger in the past, of course, he has achievements:

Through the jokes of the rich people represented by "Zhu Yici" towards ordinary people, satirizing certain real social phenomena, which aroused complaints, he gained more than 8 million fans in half a year and became one of the top 100 UP hosts of Bilibili in 2019 at an unprecedented speed.

His iconic images include wearing a Polo shirt and a Rolex watch, and his wealthy temperament emanates from the inside out. The phrase "The life of rich people is so plain and boring" at the end of each video became a hot meme of the year.

There are also works that have gone viral. When the epidemic just started last year, the price of masks skyrocketed. "A Rolex's Journey Home" came into being. Through the dramatic plot of a Rolex watch flowing in a mask box and finally returning to Zhu Yici's hands, it satirized the various chaos at the time. The video has been played 1130.3W times, ranking first in the entire site.

This brilliant record came to an abrupt end in October 2020.

On October 16, 2020, Zhang Ce published a statement on his Weibo account "Director Zhang Xiaoce" that he had resigned and would no longer serve as the planner, director, screenwriter, or dubbing artist for "The Boring Life of Zhu Yici".

The former "beautiful partners" broke up so suddenly that it caused uproar in the industry, with analysts insisting that "the money was not in place". Zhu Gen (the real name of "Zhu Yici") said that there was no conflict between the two, but after Zhang Ce left, the first video of the account after its return on October 16, 2020, titled "【Zhu Yici】230 To be honest, I'm really a little tired of it", triggered another round of interpretation.

At that time, there were many voices that were pessimistic about both sides. Some people think that "Zhu Yici" has become a big success, and it will be difficult for Zhang Ce to achieve such success again without the big IP; others think that the soul of the IP "Zhu Yici's Boring Life" is Zhang Ce, and without Zhang Ce, "Zhu Yici" will lose its flavor.

Just one year later, Zhang Ce returned with "Past Events in the Square". Comparing the current situations of the two, the original debate seemed to have an answer.

Without his "soul", Zhu Yici's performance has continued to decline and his name is rarely heard now. According to statistics from the "FeiGua Data" website, his Douyin account has lost 77,000 followers in the past 30 days; according to statistics from the "Xiaoxiao Data" website, his Bilibili account has lost nearly 240,000 followers in 90 days, and the most recent update was still on August 26. It is reported that Zhu Gen has signed a contract with Yi Xin Entertainment and transformed into an actor. However, his "boring" 2-minute performance on "Talk Show Conference 4" was still using the same old tricks, so his road in the entertainment industry may not be easy.

Source: "Little Data"

On the other hand, Zhang Ce, the man behind Zhu Yici, did not have a smooth life after the breakup. Before "Square Past" of the "Fengshen" series, Zhang Ce had tried the costume short drama "Ma Xiaoce's Dream Journey into the Jianghu". From March to now, the highest number of views of the series of videos is only 811,000 , which is in sharp contrast to the "Square" series.

The precipitous drop in traffic made Zhang Ce start to reflect. In the end, he concluded that he was more suited to shooting subjects that he could come into contact with in real life , and his unfamiliarity with ancient costume content caused the video to not be well suited to the local environment. This idea is the origin of the down-to-earth "Past Events in the Square" series.

Although Zhang Ce emphasized in a previous interview that unlike the period when Zhu Yici had to follow a routine, his current works are freer and have no templates. But if you watch the series of videos of "Square Past" several times, it is not difficult to find that there are still universal "traffic codes" in the plot without templates:

1) The characters are down-to-earth

In the previous narrative, the word "ordinary" was mentioned repeatedly. Every character in Zhang Ce's script is very "ordinary", just like an elder or relative around him. Those with bad tempers, those who like to nag, those who are afraid of their wives, those who are good at asking questions... these "ordinary people" have a temperament that makes the audience feel involved and familiar.

This can be considered going against the trend in the era of short videos, which emphasizes the uniqueness of characters and is afraid of being lost in the crowd. But in the eyes of the audience who have seen many flowers, no matter how peculiar the characters are, they can only maintain their freshness for a short time. On the contrary, it is the down-to-earth reality that can make them feel like they are watching the lives of "living people" and buy into the reflection of their own life fragments.

For example , "【Past Events in the Square】To be honest, I hate the gifts I buy for my children. I am so tired! ” , several mothers played mahjong while talking about the Mother’s Day gifts given by their children. The mahjong table, the clothes, and the tone of voice that is more filial than that of a child are so soul-stirring that it makes one's soul travel back to the "overt and covert attacks" that occur when one's own mothers and aunts get together.

2) Drama

Zhang Ce's works follow the principle of "drama", magnifying the plots of daily life , and using appropriate exaggeration to become a punchline, preventing the video from becoming a mere account of ordinary people's lives.

At the same time, the video series imitated a large number of famous scenes from classic movies , as if filled with secret codes, allowing fans to actively refresh the original works in the barrage, creating a good interactive atmosphere.

For example, the place where many people's "dreams begin" - "【Square Memories】What is danced on the square is not dancing, but human relationships and worldly wisdom, and "Two Tigers"", where middle-aged women discuss the division of square dance territory, making it look like a meeting of gang leaders, and many tributes and imitations of the famous scenes in the movie "Black Gold", making the audience see the tricks and laugh.

3) Choose the right platform

In an interview with "Sansheng", Zhang Ce once said, "On other platforms, I dare to shoot a maximum of three minutes." And this time, "【Past Events in the Square】<Avengers Alliance>: Gun in hand, follow the goose! ”, which is 25 minutes and 46 seconds long. Compared with short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou that focus more on "short, flat and fast", Bilibili's long-term inclusiveness of videos has also contributed to the popularity of its works.

Zhang Ce believes that such videos should belong to the "middle layer" between long and short videos, which is similar to the concept of "medium video" which has been very popular recently. It can carry more content that short videos cannot express, and it can also avoid the pressure that long videos bring to the audience. Videos of this length are gradually becoming more and more common, and may even become the next trend.

The government has already stepped in to provide support. On June 7, Xigua Video, together with TikTok and Toutiao, jointly launched the "Mid-length Video Partner Plan". Medium-length videos refer to video content with a duration of 1 to 30 minutes, most of which are horizontal screen.

Having said that, the story of Zhu Yici and Zhang Ce can be regarded as a strong proof that "content is king". Content makes an IP, but it is difficult to maintain the vitality of an IP by just guarding it without outputting high-quality content.

Just like after the two "broke up", an article revealed this information:

After leaving Zhu Yici, many people came to Zhang Ce and asked him to help them build their own persona, offering 3 million or 5 million in one lump sum payment. There was another boss who offered 20 million to create an IP similar to Zhu Yici.

Guli Yuhe, WeChat public account: Bilibili Director Xiaoce: After leaving "Zhu Yici's Boring Life"

The answer given by time is that character setting alone cannot create another "Zhu Yici", and the next popular one will definitely not be "Zhu Yici", but content can support the new "Zhang Ce Universe".

Author: Micro Jam

Source: Weiguojam (ID: wjam123456)