Photo: ReelShort App/Crazy Maple Studio.
Want a short soap opera for Valentine’s Day?
Has there ever been a soap opera that wasn’t about romance? Even hospital dramas are mostly about jealousy and staff affairs. But given that typical plots take years to come to a resolution, entrepreneurial geniuses have popped up to meet a need.
Learn about the 60-second soap-opera episodes that are gaining a contemporary audience.
Claire Moses reports at the New York Times, “When Albee Zhang received an offer to produce cheesy short-form features made for phones last spring, she was skeptical, and so, she declined. But the offers kept coming. Finally, Ms. Zhang, who has been a producer for 12 years, realized it could be a profitable new way of storytelling and said yes.
“Since last summer, she has produced two short-form features and is working on four more for several apps that are creating cookie-cutter content aimed at women. Think: Lifetime movie cut up into TikTok videos. Think: soap opera, but for the short attention span of the internet age.
“The biggest player in this new genre is ReelShort, an app that offers melodramatic content in minute-long, vertically shot episodes and is hoping to bring a successful formula established abroad to the United States by hooking millions of people on its short-form content.
“ReelShort is owned by Crazy Maple Studio, a company in Northern California that is backed by the Beijing-based digital publisher COL Group.
“ReelShort’s titles include ‘The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband,’ ‘I Got Married Without You’ and ‘Bound by Vendetta: Sleeping With the Enemy.’ The shows are formulaic: The plotlines include romance and revenge, the characters are archetypical and the dialogues are simple.
“The extremely short genre became popular in the Asia-Pacific region during the pandemic, and Joey Jia, the chief executive of Crazy Maple Studio, took notice.
“ReelShort aims to get people hooked as quickly as possible, with much of the action happening in the first few super short episodes. ‘This is a pay-as-you-go model,’ Mr. Jia said. ‘If people are confused by the story, they leave.’
“The cost of making these features is relatively low, $300,000 or less, according to Crazy Maple Studios. The crews are small and partly made up of recent film graduates in Los Angeles, according to actors who worked on the productions.
“Viewers can watch dozens of minute-long episodes on ReelShort for free via multiple platforms, including YouTube and TikTok. But at some point, they must either pay or watch ads to unlock subsequent episodes. Sometimes people pay as much as $10 or $20 to keep watching, Ms. Zhang, the producer, said. …
“In the United States, ReelShort is trying to succeed where the short-form content company Quibi failed. … While Quibi focused on more highbrow content with A-list stars, ReelShort is doing the opposite: It’s giving people juicy plot points, from werewolves to evil step mothers to secret billionaire husbands to more werewolves.
“ ‘We learned a lot from Quibi,’ said Mr. Jia. … ‘To build a successful mobile app, you need to find out your core audience,’ he said. And that audience is women who love soap operas. …
“In total, more than seven million people downloaded ReelShort in the United States in 2023, on Apple and Android phones combined, according to data.ai. …
“Kasey Esser, a Los Angeles-based actor who has worked on short-form shows for ReelShort and other apps, described the format as this generation’s soap opera. He drew a comparison to channels with made-for-TV content, such as Hallmark.
“ ‘People know exactly the story they’re going to be getting, but they will still watch it,’ Mr. Esser, 34, said. ‘They will still love it.’
“For the actress Samantha Drews, ReelShort was a chance to play different types of characters. ‘I can say now that I’ve been cast in 15 to 16 features in the last few years,’ Ms. Drews, 25, said. ‘That’s not something every actor can say.’ “
More at the Times, here.
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