"Transfer Scholar": How does variety show choose topics from campus?

After successfully creating Zhang Shenggui's "Workman" and Huang Guangxi's "Negotiation King", Qualcomm Huan PD once again opened a new variety show on Youtube - "Transfer Scholar".

The mode of the program is simple and clear, the main MC Lee Chang-seop "assesses" a major of a school every session, experiences the courses of the major, spends a day of campus life with his classmates, and finally gives the assessment conclusion of the major in one sentence.

Up to now, the show has been updated in the form of weekly updates for 16 episodes, with an average of nearly 3 million on-demand episodes on Youtube. In the artist's personal self-made micro-short mix, it is a very excellent result.

For entertainment content, exaggerated and curious content is inherently more attractive, and finding highlights from nearby life requires creators to have an eye for beauty.

We may wish to use the topic selection and creation of this show to talk about how variety show content is selected from the campus.

A new entry point for campus variety shows

The campus has always been a variety show theme valued by various platforms. Programs such as "Boiling Campus", "Baichuan College Voice", "20 Years Old" and other programs will focus on the campus and try to find different highlights from the student body.

But a closer look at these programs will find that most of them transfer the existing variety show categories and models to the campus, limiting the participants of the show to the group of "students": "Boiling Campus" is the college version of "This is Street Dance", "Baichuan College Voice" is the college version of "The Voice of China", and "Heartbeat 20 Years Old" is the college version of "Heartbeat Signal".

Especially in the past 3 years, due to the restrictions of epidemic prevention policies, it is difficult for variety show productions to really enter the campus, and they can only use the overhead campus setting and temporary virtual campus scenes, which is easier to make the show seem itchy and less flavorful.

Are there any other ideas for campus themes?

The solution given by "Transfer Scholar" is to start from the real pain points of students.

Ko Tong-hwan PD, the director of "Transfer Scholars", mentioned in an interview with Korea Daily that the original intention of the program was to answer the students' question: "Is this major like this?" ".

When choosing a university to apply for a major, high school students actually face a huge information gap, the professional introduction text on the school's official website is cold, the information on the Internet is uneven, and the inherent evaluation of parents and society implies stereotypes.

Many students don't really know what they want to study. What is the way out for future employment? The development path for the next four years or even longer was decided in a hurry.

In the face of this information gap, the solution provided by "Transfer Scholars" to students is "experience", that is, to use Lee Chang-seop's real professional experience and the real information he obtained from seniors and seniors to provide students with first-hand experience.

In the design of the program, the main MC Lee Chang-seop will transfer to a new major every term, wearing college uniforms, experiencing professional special courses, checking in the campus canteen and surrounding food with students, experiencing after-school life, and even showing the cost of studying by going to the academic affairs office to pay the tuition of the day.

In the interaction between Lee Chang-seop and the middle school students on campus, he can provide first-hand advice to the senior sister who is a "comer".

Can I definitely become a police officer after graduating from the police administration major? What is the significance of the modern dance major in the sports university? Is it okay to learn esports and play games every day?

As Lee Chang-seop interviewed international trade majors about their regular whereabouts of graduation, the senior replied: unemployed.

These answers are heartwarming and heart-wrenching, but they are all extremely sincere.

In addition, there will be a rich and interesting campus culture, such as the Korean cheerleaders telling about their feuds with Yonsei Cheerleaders over the years, and the unspoken rule of seating when drinking and socializing with each other: you must cross one by one to prevent teammates from taking care of each other.

This kind of "human reality" is difficult to obtain in the past in regular channels such as the campus official website, but it is what students are really curious about.

In the selection of universities in each issue of "Transfer Scholars", the concept of serving ordinary students is also implemented.

Korea's top SKY (Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University) focus and popular majors are out of reach for ordinary students. Therefore, compared with these top majors with strong topicality, "Transfer Scholar" has set its sights on more ordinary universities, looking for treasures from these ordinary schools, and even selected many unpopular local universities in other provinces and cities in South Korea.

They don't have SKY's attention, they don't have a lot of intelligence and exposure, but they need to be known by high school students.

In addition to the function of simply providing information, this show has another meaning now in 2023.

"Youth is only a few years, the epidemic accounts for three years", "When the school door opened, I had already graduated", "I was obviously a classmate, but I became a netizen alive"...

Affected by the epidemic, campus closures, cancellation of club activities, and indefinite postponement of large-scale campus activities, the lack of a campus life that should have been wonderful and rich has become an important regret in the campus life of this batch of college students.

The emergence of "Transfer Scholars" can in a sense help this group of college students and make up for the regrets of lost campus life.

In the winter vacation special of the second season of "Transfer Scholar", the focus is on the unique clubs of each university, such as the stock club of Dankook University, the drama club of Chung-Ang University, and the broadcasting club of Seoul National University. In the future, the program will also try campus activities, sports events, and campus festivals to present a richer campus life.

Just as Cold Eye in "Variety Show Creators, How Should I Pay Attention to "Nearby"? As mentioned in the book, a good variety show needs to have its traces of the times, and it can even be said that variety shows can use their own language system to build a complete set of era memories and become a cultural sample left for the future.

"Transfer Scholars" uses "campus assessment" as a starting point, forming a vivid Korean university guide. It shows the specific majors, the real thoughts and faces of contemporary college students, and the vivid campus cultural atmosphere.

If the IP of the program can exist for a long time in the year dimension, returning to the same school after a few years may see a different face. What about what was once a popular major? What changes have changed in the mentality of former freshmen to their senior year? This in itself is an interesting thing.

Recording 7 hours, 20 minutes of film, how to find highlights from ordinary daily life?

What exactly can I see when I enter the campus? Campus life is familiar to everyone, if the program team does not have the ability to discover the highlights of the variety show, the slightest carelessness will make the show dull and boring. This is the biggest challenge for the creative team.

Whether it is "Workman" or "Transferor", by treating the main MC as a strange experiencer, colliding with daily life as an "interloper", so as to rediscover the wonderfulness of life from a strange perspective.

In "Workman", Jang Sung-kyu enters a fast-paced and high-intensity part-time job as a completely unfamiliar newcomer, thus colliding with dramatic effects. In "Transfer Scholars", the main MC Lee Chang-seop, as a "freshman" who is not familiar with college campuses and professional knowledge, has a dramatic effect with the serious classroom environment and professional courses.

In order to strengthen the contrast brought about by this strange experience, when choosing the major and course of each experience, the program team also deliberately selected a field that the artist was not familiar with, and made a content design that could contrast with Lee Chang-sup.

For example, in the arrest course of the Department of Police Administration, the intensive high-intensity physical exercise made Lee Chang-seop put on a "pain mask", followed by the grappling action practice, he was repeatedly thrown around like a sandbag, full of laughter.

In addition to Lee Chang-seop's artistic ability, a group of fresh ordinary amateur students in the show is another highlight of "Transfer Scholars".

From "Workman" to "Transfer Scholar", the director's ability to create amateurs with a sense of variety has always been amazing, and even a barrage sighed: Why can Korean variety shows find so many amateurs with a sense of variety.

In the cold eye, it is not that Koreans have a sense of variety, but that the program team has really achieved effective communication between artists and amateurs, rather than embarrassing chats where they say their own words and express their own feelings.

The essence of communication is the transmission of information. In order for artists and amateurs to achieve effective communication, it is necessary for both parties to produce substantive information communication.

First of all, artists need to be curious about the topic itself.

The director of "Transfer Scholar" once revealed in an interview that the main MC Lee Chang-seop debuted early, and his college life was actually incomplete, leaving a lot of regrets. What is his current college life, Lee Chang-seop himself is also full of curiosity.

Communication, on the other hand, requires the exchange of information that produces information.

In "Transferring Scholars", Lee Chang-seop "messed up" into an unfamiliar university, and in the absence of guidance, if he wanted to successfully complete the experience, he naturally needed to seek help from other students. When the identity of the guest changes from a high-ranking artist to a newcomer in need of help, the reversal of identity and status helps to smooth out part of the gap in the interaction of stars.

At the same time, Lee Chang-seop himself undertakes the task of collecting professional intelligence on campus, and also provides a topic direction for his interaction with students: professional pressure, busyness, employment prospects, tuition fees, after-school life, and even gossip topics, such as whether the major is easy to get off the list, whether the professor is fierce, etc.

In this way, every communication between MC and students carries interesting information, and from time to time there will be violent revelations, with flowers and clips, you can feel the vivid character of the students themselves.

In those star interactions that make us feel embarrassed, there is often no effective communication between artists and amateurs. Amateurs are used as tool people, but hooks that lead to the artist's own gossip stories. How do tool people talk about variety show sense?

In terms of the editing style of the show, "Transfer Scholar" also continues the consistent fast pace since "Workman". The show hardly wastes time on procedural explanations, only retains the most interesting content, so that the laughter can burst at a higher density, and the audience's attention will not be quickly lost on the short video platform.

Because of this, each recording time of the show generally takes about 7 hours, but the final film is only 20 minutes. A 90-minute classroom experience, only less than 5 minutes in the program, other attractions were decisively abandoned by the director team.

So how do you keep the show fast-paced while not getting lost in the momentary distraction?

"Transfer Scholars" chooses to simplify the narrative structure of a single issue, each issue is a fixed campus experience process, and uses the simplest time logic to code a clear story line:

Lee Chang-seop arrives at the school - looks for the Academic Affairs Office to pay the tuition fee of the day - experiences professional theory class in the morning - lunch with classmates at noon - experiences professional practice class in the afternoon - life after school. In the end, Lee Chang-seop will summarize and recommend this school and this major in one sentence.

With the progress bar prompt similar to the "class schedule", the audience can easily follow the logic of the director's storytelling without using their brains, so as to be fast and not chaotic.

It is said that "artistic creation comes from life", but sometimes the highlights of life itself are the most difficult to discover.

When we continue to look for variety show topics in a newer, trendier and more cutting-edge world, we may wish to take a look at the life nearby, which is the most natural topic bank of variety shows.

How to "see" life again? Finding the real pain points from life, rediscovering the freshness of life with contrasting tasks and personalities, and finding fresh stories from real amateurs are the reference paths that "Transfer Scholars" gives us.