Draft production company: Accustomed to eating full seats, what do you rely on to live on now?
"Now everyone is just doing odd jobs and making ends meet."
Recently, the love track was filmed and broadcast, but the entertainment studio found an "old friend" who had been lost for a long time here.
In the R&D and production column of Tencent Video's "Half-Acquainted Lovers 2", in addition to Penguin Film and Television, Tianma Studio Group, and Weed Studio within the platform, there is also a company called Haofeng Yifan. According to Tianyan investigation, Haofeng Yifan is 100% controlled by Haofeng Qingyun Culture Media, which is the behind-the-scenes production company of "Creation Camp" for many seasons.
A hot knowledge is that the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television officially issued a notice in September 2021 requiring that idol cultivation programs should not be broadcast. Since then, "Youth Has You" and "Creation Camp 2021", which are modeled on the Korean "101 Series" draft, have disappeared.
In the blink of an eye, there is still no large-scale draft in internal entertainment. Some agencies and showmen fly overseas to participate in the draft in an attempt to "save the country with a curve". And what does a production company with this as its main business rely on to recover its performance? The draft is no more, how are they doing, is there still room to live?
The Xiang army went to sea
When the domestic entertainment draft was the hottest, the three video platforms Youku, iQiyi, and Tencent Video even chose to start playing at the same time, successively using "In the Name of the Group", "Youth Has You" and "Creation Camp 2019" to constantly divide the attention of show fans and the market.
And there are also their own production camps behind this.
"Idol Trainee" and later "Youth with You" were both helmed by Caviar Culture; "Creation 101" made the seven-dimensional power famous in a battle, and also divided it into two - producer Du Yan and chief director Sun Li parted ways, the former took the seven-dimensional power to Youku and cooperated in "In the Name of the Group" and "In the Name of the Youth", and the latter set up his own portal to establish Haofeng Qingyun and continue to hold the production power of the "Creation Camp".
Seven-dimensional power equity penetration diagram
In fact, caviar, seven-dimensional power, and Haofeng Qingyun must not be simply understood as start-up companies, and their core founders are all from Hunan Satellite TV, which has been in the entertainment industry for many years and once monopolized the domestic entertainment talent market.
Lei Ying, the founder of Caviar, was formerly the deputy director of Hunan Satellite TV News Center and the director of Golden Eagle Cartoon Satellite TV, and the core founding member Chen Gang is also the backbone of Hunan Satellite TV, and has served as the director of "Super Girl" and "Happy Boy" for many times.
Lei Ying, Chen Gang
Compared with his old colleagues, the founder of Seven-dimensional Power, Du Yan, went to the sea a little later, wearing the resume of "Supergirl" and the identity of the chief director of "I am a Singer", and took away many core creators of "I am a Singer" when he left, including Sun Li, the chief screenwriter of the later "split".
"Creation 101" is the first project of Seven-dimensional Power to enter the variety show production market, and it is also the first project for Sun Li to serve as the chief director. After leaving SevenD Power, Sun Li founded Haofeng Qingyun and received investment from Tencent, and the two sides continued to cooperate until "Creation Camp 2021".
Therefore, this is not so much the "draft supplier" behind each platform, but rather the collective turn of the TV Xiang Army in the era of network mix.
Good maple Qingyun equity penetration map
Platforms that cannot incubate the "TV station" model in-house need gold producers, and the rapid rise of the network shows that the market has a lot to offer. As a result, these TV people came to the center of the wave with years of experience in taking root in head projects and large-scale drafts, and started the draft of the new era with the platform, so that the "101 series" could take root in the local area.
Despite their shortcomings and deficiencies, these drafts have really been lively for four years. What's more, every year for an S+ level big project, the production company always has to earn.
Creation 101
After the draft
It's just that the good times didn't last long, and the draft once again became a variety show forbidden area.
Among them, the one who "disappeared" the longest with the draft was undoubtedly Sun Li and her good Feng Qingyun.
Since the night of the formation of "Creation Camp 2021", Sun Li has almost no new news, and Haofeng Qingyun has rarely spoken out. Search with "good maple Qingyun" as a keyword and sort by time, almost all of them are recruitment information in the past year. Of course, this may also be a good thing.
The only bit of information is from the release of Youku's film list in the second half of 2022, Meng Qingguang, head of Youku variety show UP studio, said that he will work with Haofeng Qingyun to launch a new music complex "Good Sound", a "new golden song and new lyrics competition reality show". The platform values Sun Li's team's many years of experience in the industry's top music mix, "which is very precious to various competitions and variety show formats." ”
At the end of last year, "Good Sound" had a list of programs, Sun Yanzi, Li Jian, Xue Zhiqian, Deng Ziqi, Pu Shu, Huang Lixing, Hu Yanbin, etc. were all in the proposed invitation list, and the online time was Q4 2022. Now it's March 2023, and "Good Sound" is still missing.
At present, Youku only has a 10-second preview
Surprisingly, the music complex is far away, but the love complex has become Sun Li's new position.
At present, she is serving as the chief director of "Half-Acquainted Lovers 2", and Haofeng Qingyun also has another "sister" - Haofeng Yifan. When preparing this manuscript, the entertainment studio also sent out a dialogue invitation to Sun Li, and she hoped to wait for a few more episodes of the program and wait for the audience's feedback, so that "we can see whether some new ideas and attempts are effective."
Objectively speaking, up to now, "Half-Mature Lovers 2" has not shown a dark horse atmosphere compared with its predecessor, and the degree of discussion and popularity have declined, and the Douban score has dropped from 7.4 points in the first season to 6.2 points. Some netizens sharply commented: "The mode is like "Heartbeat Signal", but the casting is in a hurry to copy Laura and Wang Nengneng . ”
《Hanjuku Lover 2》
Coincidentally, it is also seven-dimensional power that is deeply caught in the bad reputation of the word-of-mouth.
After breaking up with the "Creation Camp" series, Du Yan first led Seven-dimensional Power back to Youku to continue to take root in the idol draft, launching "In the Name of the Group" and "In the Name of Youth", but the response was always mediocre. The outside world often calls it "standing in line with Youku", in fact, Youku was originally one of the shareholders of Seven Dimensional Power.
Screenshot from the first issue of "The Name of a Boy"
At the beginning of 2021, when Haofeng Qingyun and Caviar Culture were still making boy group auditions for Tencent Video and iQiyi respectively, Duyan already had a new track, and joined hands with the short video platform and Zhejiang Satellite TV to create a cross-screen interactive music variety show "Praise for Song". To some extent, as a team that has led "I Am a Singer", it is also back to a more familiar track.
The chief producer of the program, Lu Lin (one of the main creators of Seven-dimensional Power and the chief screenwriter of "Creation 101"), mentioned in an interview with "Film and Television Industry Watch" that in December 2019, a short video platform threw an invitation to cooperate with a large-scale variety show to an industry production company, in which the song program plan given by Seven-dimensional Power coincided with the platform's attributes, which became an important opportunity for cooperation between the two sides.
"In recent years, 7D Power has continued to maintain close cooperation with major platforms, and regularly conducts project research and development and reserve internally." It's just that for now, the Douban score of the two seasons of "Praise for Song" has not exceeded 5.0 points, which seems to have not captured the preferences of most audiences.
"Praise for the Song"
In contrast, perhaps the most "stable" life is the caviar culture, which is deeply tied to iQiyi.
When "Idol Trainee" and "Youth Has You" were hits, Caviar Culture successively produced "The Flower Road of Youth", "Wonderful Food Light", "Chinese Music Billboard", "Perfect Trip of Girlfriends" and other variety shows, spanning travel, management, songs and other themes.
After the turmoil of "Youth with You 3", caviar culture was not too involved, and a few months later, iQIYI Encore Studio and iQIYI Little Monster Studio launched a new musical ensemble "Burst Stage", aiming at the girl group members and female musicians who have debuted, inviting Liu Baixin, Shan Yichun, Song Yuqi, Anqi, Lu Keran, VaVa, Wu Xuanyi, Yamy, Chen Zhuoxuan, and Zhou Jieqiong to compete on the same stage.
In addition to the familiar singing and dancing stage, iQiyi's "We Folk 2022" and "Let's Camp Together" last year were all from the hands of caviar culture, which has begun filming for a new season.
But these shows didn't create much spark either. The Douban score of "Burst Stage" is only 5.2 points, "Let's Camp Together" rose to 6.3 points, and the highest rating is 7.6 points of "We Folk Songs 2022", but this music complex has fallen into the dilemma of "song quality programs are difficult to break the circle" since the beginning of the broadcast, and it has not improved until the end.
As of press time
The gold medal effect, does it exist?
The reality is that no matter how much life there is, it is difficult for each production company to have the next masterpiece.
Whether it is "Praise for Song", "Half-Acquainted Lovers", or "Burst Stage" and "We Folk Songs 2022", there are many S-level key projects, but they have never reached the volume of the draft that year. Because of this, some production companies are obviously doing business continuously, and they have not left a new impression on the industry.
Talking about the transformation of the three draft production companies, some insiders bluntly told Entertainment Studio: "Now everyone is just doing odd jobs and making ends meet." ”
"In the past, taking a draft could support the company for a year, and even had bonuses, but now you may have to take three jobs, which is not necessarily. (The draft) has a large plate, a long cycle, and many participants, which is destined to have the largest profit margin. The plate of the waist variety show is estimated to be 1/3 of the draft, or even less, and how much money can be given to the team after doing it? ”
For the talent production company that is used to living a good life, overcoming the difficulties together is a problem that must be faced at this stage, and it is impossible to choose.
According to Entertainment Studio, the "Learning Camp", which previously set off a large discussion on Weibo, originally wanted to take over the banner of "draft" in 2022, shouted the slogan of "stars go to technical schools, learn to be able to camp", and planned to invite more than 20 artists such as Da Zhang Wei, Liu Mintao, He Guangzhi, INTO1-Lin Mo, INTO1-Boyuan, etc., and the producer behind it is still Sun Li's team, which finally failed to appear in 2022. Some people say that the project cannot attract business, and some people say that the plan has not been approved at all.
"Learning Camp" poster
Five years ago, when various platforms wanted to seize the "101 series" opportunity, TV station backbones with more than ten years of production experience became the "gold medal promoters" of all parties, and also promoted the development of a number of variety show production companies. Caviar culture, seven-dimensional power, and Haofeng Qingyun are all beneficiaries of that era, and likewise, Tencent Video and iQiyi have also ushered in a leap forward.
The wind of the elected show blew, the platform began to reduce costs and increase efficiency, the enthusiasm of brand customers receded, and the gold medal effect of the draft production company seemed to be a dream - as if it had come, as if it had been owned.
The excitement of the draft has ultimately blurred the competitive barriers for production companies. When almost all projects start with cost-effectiveness, talent and experienced teams may become less important. Attracting investment and making money are the most important.
Therefore, for the production company that once controlled the draft tide, the next masterpiece may not be important. Being alive is the most important thing.
Just looking back at those classic variety shows that have become social currencies and social events, as producers in them, they should not be reduced to suppliers for work.
In the current variety show market, it sometimes seems impossible to stick to your own ideas, but I believe that every aspiring variety artist will do their best.