"Travel", as a white moonlight existence in people's hearts, is always full of expectations.
And content creation with the theme of "travel" naturally has a loyal audience.
Travel variety shows are a category with a "long history", from landscape films to reality shows, from food and beauty to life insights... Various types, varied themes, diverse forms, each team has done too much, as far as a single program is concerned, good is not good, a lot of content has also been talked about and analyzed with everyone.
But this time, I still want to talk to you about this theme, what other tricks can travel variety shows have? And an old category, how do we find a breakthrough in innovation?
Some combing about travel variety shows
First of all, let's briefly sort out the development trajectory of travel variety shows.
In the early days, it was mainly "taking you to see the world", showing and introducing the natural scenery and customs of tourist attractions, and satisfying the curiosity of the public. Among them, the most representative is the "The World Is Really Wonderful" section of "CP Variety Show", where the location host traveled the world and brought puzzle quizzes, which were interesting and novel, becoming a window for everyone to understand and explore the world at that time.
Around 2014, outdoor reality shows grew exponentially, and travel content began to be more biased towards reality shows, grafting emotions, observations, games and other elements onto tourism.
In the "Flowers and Youth" series, "old and young match" travels to a foreign country poorly, and without assistants and limited living expenses, goes to a country where you are not familiar with life and even do not understand the language, and complete a backpacking journey.
In this setting, the guests' getting along has become a more talkative topic for the audience, and the audience can't wait to pick up a magnifying glass and analyze the guests' micro-expressions frame by frame.
Han Zhen's "New Journey to the West" plays the game to the extreme, with wake-up tasks, common sense quick quizzes, zombie games, tricorn hat games, etc., with simple rules but outstanding effects. These games have become one of the representative elements of the program, and they are also the focus of secondary transmission, continuously providing topics and heat for the program.
In recent years, travel variety shows have become a concept of "travel +", as a basic element to superimpose richer creative themes.
Travel + food: "Street Food Fighter" Bai Zhongyuan takes you to taste street food from all over the world, for foodies, this is the biggest meaning of traveling;
Travel + Music: "Begin Again" A group of experienced and experienced singers came to a foreign country to find their original intention to make music through street performance;
Travel + Humanities: "Mysterious Miscellaneous Dictionary that is Useless to Understand" Several experts and scholars traveled around Korea, while showing a variety of miscellaneous knowledge, showing the audience an interesting and practical "chatting journey";
Even travel + environmental protection: "Little Chasing the Ball" stimulates thinking through immersive travel experiences, pays attention to global environmental protection, and interprets the grand and serious topic of environmental protection in a lightweight form.
To some extent, it is not difficult to find that the audience's viewing demand for travel variety shows has slowly changed from "on the road" to "stories on the road".
At the same time, audiences are no longer satisfied with pure entertainment and are seeking knowledge and meaning in travel.
So, how to create a "story", and how to make the "story" fuller?
Cold Eye disassembled the elements of travel.
Back to travel itself, how else can travel variety shows break through
1. Purpose – why go
There is always a purpose for traveling, whether it is simply to enjoy the beauty of food or seek spiritual relaxation, or to complete a task challenge or realize a dream...
The purpose of travel determines the destination, which is related to the temperament and content expression of the program, which is the logical main line of the program.
Generally speaking, the clearer the purpose, the more fully motivated, and the more universal the projection, the stronger the audience's sense of substitution and the easier it is to resonate.
This point is easy to understand, so we won't go into too much detail.
Leng Yan recommends two more representative programs here.
"Hitchhiking to Berlin" originated from a romantic idea in which the protagonist wants to ride all the way from Beijing to Berlin to meet a foreign girlfriend. In order to achieve this goal, he and his companions traveled 88 times for 3 months, traveled through 13 countries, and the journey was arduous but full of expectations because of the final goal, with an absolute romanticism.
"Unexpected Journey" is derived from a real itinerary, South Korean actor Yoon Ru-jung wants to participate in the Oscars as an award presenter, around her itinerary and life in Los Angeles, showing her real and vivid side.
In recent years, variety shows have also shown a trend of personalization, personalized narrative angle, life flow shooting method, closer to the real life state and life attitude of the guests, in this case, the purpose and motivation of the journey is very clear, the reason for departure is real - the Oscar itinerary and Los Angeles old friends to meet.
At the same time, the Oscars, as the world's most influential film awards, themselves make the audience feel curious, and it is a new and interesting experience to experience the Oscars from a third perspective and visit the Oscars scene. Seize the news learned by "accident", and a good variety show may be among them.
2. Characters – with whom to go and who to meet
"People" is the richest content variable, and there are too many relationships between people, which can collide N possibilities.
Ten years of lovers, friends of different zodiac signs, strangers of the same personality... As long as you find a link point or have the possibility of colliding with a spark, you can combine them, and of course you can produce a variety of programs. Many travel variety shows are essentially social, emotional, and observational variety shows.
Let's first talk about "who to go with", and the chemistry between "travel companions" greatly affects the topic and popularity of the show.
Like "Flowers and Boys" and "Attention Tourists", whether it is gender, age or the collision of stars, the relationship within the team is the point of view, and the audience also discusses the relationship between the guests.
"Just a Teenager" and "Flower Youth" take "friendship" as the starting point, highlighting the young companions traveling together, carrying not only the current young people's yearning for going out, but also the young people's longing for being with friends.
Another important category is parent-child, marriage and other original emotional relationships, from "Where Is Dad Going", "Traveling with Mom and Dad" to "Goodbye Lover" and "Wife's Romantic Travel 6", this category focuses on current social hot spots and topics of public concern from different angles, with its own discussion space, which is more likely to resonate.
Then let's talk about "who to meet", here we mainly discuss "actively chosen encounter", which echoes the "purpose", "encounter" is to provide an opportunity for dialogue, to understand, to feel, but finally return to the guests' own thinking landing point.
It may be clearer to explain with the two shows "Old and Teenage Adventures" and "Nice to Meet You".
The basic elements of the two programs are the same, both artists interact with local people, but the purpose or thinking of the guests is different, one cares about local issues outwardly, and the other inwardly understands and heals itself, then the production focus of the two shows will be completely different.
In "The Adventures of Old Girls", the three sisters visit all over Taiwan to silently contribute to the construction of their hometowns, not focusing on the three artists, but speaking out for these "Hanren", publicizing local culture, and committed to protecting the inheritance of traditional culture; And "Nice to Meet You" is an interesting amateur who visited all over the country with two friends, focusing more on the artist's self-perception after interacting with the locals, discovering life from the heart, and pursuing "self-reconciliation".
Leng Yi also wants to mention "Another Me in the World", the "who" choice angle of "who to meet" is very special.
The protagonist travels around the world to find people born in the same month and day as himself. It not only truly records the faces of the post-90s generation, but also writes a romantic poem about adventures, which makes people feel the fate and coincidence of life, and discover and understand the differences in the world.
3. Location – where to go
Of course, the destination can choose to go to the "unknown", which is the most common topic, and the cold eye will not repeat it too much. What I want to guide everyone to think about is whether we can go to a place where we have a "connection" with the guests?
It can be a place where guests dream, a place where guests have lived and studied or have special meaning, and so on. These locations naturally have emotions and topics, and guests have more motivation and room to play.
Han Zhen's "Where is My Friend's Home" is a spin-off program of "Non-Summit Talks", where young people from different regions travel together to get to know each other's families, so that others can also see and feel the beauty of their hometown;
"Seoul Hillbilly" allows "Seoul Hillbilly" who are only familiar with Seoul to travel together to the place where the guests lived, emphasizing a journey of Korean "rediscovery".
Cold eyes can often see celebrities on the hot search list in the topic of their hometown, "This is our family's big star Li Jiaqi", "Treasure boy He Guangzhi"...
Digging into the life of a star before becoming a star and feeling the "other side" of a star when you are with your fellow relatives and friends may become a good program content.
With this part in mind, I want to talk about the concept of "nearby" travel again.
Last year, we highlighted a full year of "cost reduction and efficiency gains". So how can travel variety shows "reduce costs and increase efficiency"?
- Might as well walk around the neighborhood and see.
Visit a certain area or street of the city, there is no prescribed route, you can talk to passers-by, you can taste snacks and food, you can feel while walking...
This type of "walking" program is very popular in Japan, such as "Wandering in the Night Alley" by the host Matsuko, who is marked by "Night Walk", which is laughingly called a program "for waste people", showing a different kind of human life that can only be seen at night and is different from the daytime; And poisonous tongue host Yukichi's "Honest Walk" shows his irreplaceable ability to "complain" and "criticize", which is real, sharp and interesting, and resonates with the audience.
"Walking Department Variety Show" conveys the joy of discovery and exploration, the reality of interaction with fellow travelers, the plain but full of life of human fireworks, and every moment is easy and healing. At a time when variety shows are seeking to reduce costs and increase efficiency, changing thinking to do subtraction is also a breakthrough.
4. Way – how to play, how to go
These two elements can be summarized simply and generally as "way", which is a very simple and practical innovation point.
"How to play" aspect:
During the epidemic, everyone uses weekends or small long holidays to carry out self-driving trips and camping trends, and the hottest word in the circle of friends is "camping".
Major platforms have launched a series of variety shows with camping as the main content while the iron is hot, such as: "Spring Sauce" featuring spring outing camping experience, "Let's Camp Together" with outdoor camping as the main display object, and "Flowers and Teenagers - Camping Season" with camping self-help travel.
"How to go" aspect:
Road trip reality show "Foodie and Ah Mao's Getaway", two guests on motorcycle self-driving tours, to all parts of Korea. "Every man has a motorcycle dream" is the emotional point of the show.
Get off at any stop on the way, look for all kinds of new things, and discover local products and small shops.
There are two highlights, one is that the tool is the tram, and the other is to get off at random, forming its own label in terms of transportation and gameplay.
In general, observing and analyzing travel hotspots and trends, seeing what social platforms are discussing, starting from the public's hobbies and needs, and tapping into some potential niche gameplay can be eye-catching.
Luo PD said of variety show innovation: "At least one small place must be new before the audience will start to be interested." Only the fun created in innovation has the power to attract the audience. ”
The innovation of variety shows is difficult, but it is not completely suspended, and the matter of "travel" is disassembled into multi-dimensional thinking and expansion such as "characters", "places" and "ways", and after turning the whole into zeros, you will find that there are still a lot of variables and spaces that can be created.
Of course, the elements of the program are not independent, and they will also affect each other, so the division will be a bit simple and crude.
But Cold Eye still hopes that in this way, creators can be given more space to think when brainstorming, so that innovation has more direction and grasp, and falls down more realistically, without waiting for sudden "inspiration" to land.