TikTok has become an essential part of the digital landscape. Whether or not it’s ultimately banned in the United States (my bet is it won’t be), these short videos have transformed large parts of our lives, from how music is consumed to how political messages are communicated.
Some Chinese companies believe short
videos can disrupt the movie and TV industry, too. Today, how a batch of
Chinese apps are trying to introduce the US audience to drama series made up of
two-minute-long segments viewed on a smartphone, a digital phenomenon that has
become unexpectedly popular in China in recent years.
These
shows are “soap operas for the TikTok age,” as one of my
interviewees put it. One such series usually contains about 90 two-minute
episodes, and the content is often simple: dramatic stories about love, wealth,
sex, and mystery, told through low-budget productions. To my surprise, these short
dramas have found a huge audience in China, adding up to a $5 billion market.
FlexTV is one of the Chinese companies
that believe these shows will also appeal to the American audience. Not only
has FlexTV been translating and dubbing short drama series that were successful
in China, but it’s also filming new productions in English to better adapt to
the local market. They have even begun shooting in Los Angeles, taking
advantage of the first-class movie industry there.
But
what surprised me when I talked to FlexTV was the realization that the industry
is not just about China and the United States. Specifically, it has chosen
Southeast Asia as both a target market and a production hub.
For Chinese tech companies, Southeast
Asia has often been the first frontier of expansion outside the domestic
market. This is where Chinese smartphone, e-commerce, gaming, and even
electric-vehicle companies have all chosen to export their products first
before growing into the rest of the world.
Southeast Asia also responds well to
China’s cultural exports too. When tech giants like Tencent and Baidu wanted to
internationalize their streaming platforms, it was the only region where they
saw some success. So it’s not surprising that FlexTV chose Thailand as one of
the first countries in which to release its app, and it has made quite a lot of
shows in the Thai language so far.
The
company is also filming content there for the global English-speaking market.
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Eren Kereci is a 30-year-old Turkish
actor living in the Philippines. At the end of 2022, he joined the production
of a short drama called The
Bride of the Wolf King in Tagaytay, a city south of Manila.
While he didn’t know at the time that this show would eventually be released on
FlexTV, he did know he was acting in a drama shot for the vertical screen.
“It was like theatre acting while
trying to stay in such a small frame. We were advised to make more facial
expressions, since our body movements were limited due to vertical filming,”
Kereci tells me.
Also, because the scripts were
originally in Chinese (they were likely adapted from a web novel, as is the
case with shortest dramas), parts of them didn’t translate well. “Some of the
text didn’t make sense due to translation, so as actors, we made slight
adjustments on the spot,” he says.
Kereci didn’t interact with anyone from
China during the filming. The production was carried out by a Filipino team.
Sitting at a crossroads between major cultures, Southeast Asia has plenty of
English-speaking creatives, making it possible to produce short dramas there
that cater to the global audience.
The location also offers significant
savings on production costs. According to Xiangchen Gao, the chief operations
officer of FlexTV, filming a show in Thailand costs between $40,000 and
$80,000. A similar production in the US would cost double that amount. That’s a
significant advantage when the whole business model revolves around quick
content that isn’t worth big-budget production. Going forward, FlexTV will
continue to film in both the United States and Thailand, Gao tells me.
There
could be more Chinese companies joining FlexTV and similar apps in producing
short dramas overseas. The Chinese government is looking to regulate
this medium more strictly, just as it’s done with film and TV. Some short-video
firms will probably move their business abroad in response.
I’m curious to observe how these
productions will be received by the global audience in the long run. Despite
the size of China’s economy, its cultural industries are not very influential,
at least relative to Japanese anime or Korean dramas and music groups. Will
short dramas be the game-changers here? Maybe not. But they could be an
important step, helping the Chinese entertainment industry learn about the
global market and leading the global audience to understand more about China.
That wouldn’t be a bad outcome after all.
Do
you think these short dramas can replicate their success in markets outside
China? Tell me your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.
This
story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about
technology in China
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