The Oak of Dad and Mom, Blue Tears and Love from Heart (from top to bottom) won awards at the first Shanghai Public Short Film Festival in 2015.

 

The various characteristics of online media, such as fragmentization, convenience, immediacy, individuation and compression, have given short films an edge with audiences.
 

Since 2010, short Chinese films have utilized these advantages to become popular. As digital products became increasingly available on the Internet and mobile platforms, consumers will grow accustomed to new ways of acquiring and recommending information through short film communication and its narrative style and production process.

Thus, these short films must conform with “Internet thinking” and comply with the golden rule “Content is king,” activating and integrating content production mechanisms to improve connectivity, interactivity, openness and service functions.
 

 Short Chinese films have gradually transformed from classical narratives into post-classical narratives, revealing the cultural vitality of deconstruction. These films are mainly consumed by the Net Generation born after the 1980s in China. They generally hold a suspicious and critical attitude toward authoritarianism, rational centralism, androcentrism and other commanding ideologies embedded in enlightening modernity and the centralized power structure, in the aesthetic field.
 

Classical narratives focus on individuals’ free will, advocating human-centered subjectivism and mankind’s confidence as master of its own destiny. In film, classical narratives always satisfy audiences’ expectations for stability and purposefulness with a closed film structure, great adventures and a happy ending while manifesting respect for moral authority and rational spirit. On the contrary, post-classical narratives tell stories in an open style, operating under the assumption that the world is diverse and unstable. That’s why heroes and celebrities have gradually lost their charisma and central position in short Chinese films and instead are replaced by individuation and plebification.
 

Short Chinese film production should follow the creative tactics of genre films, grasp the zeitgeist to control the public’s emotion or collective unconsciousness in order to bear the media’s liability to reduce pressure and ease society’s anxiety. Also, these short films need to respond, reflect, replace, satirize, enhance, warn or reconstruct real life, stressing its transfer of information and its value to the public in an open style. In the process of content production, the production of short Chinese films should not be limited to producing information, but should utilize effective data collection and the observing system for audiences in the Big Data era to find out the public’s desires and anxieties. Externalizing the main characters’ internal motives and anxiety can make narratives become psychotherapy and provide utopian solutions to audiences’ daily problems and desires. The narratives of short films can try to use precise calculations to simulate audiences’ experiences and make audiences submit to their emotions. They can combine the target audiences’ pursuit of happiness and desire into the story and help audiences detach from their daily life when they enjoy the short films.
 

Short film series need to integrate all kinds of relevant information to customize different productions for audiences, fostering a loyalty between brand image and audiences. The film story and characters have both fundamental stereotypes and generative values, which become a motivating factor to achieve continuous production and growth. If creators can understand the prototypical function of a certain character, they can judge whether this character can play a full role in the story. In the film narrative, the design, integration and optimization of prototypes will help films transmit stronger information to audiences.        

From the perspective of long-term development, short Chinese films will achieve greater results by improving production values. A successful film narrative will transport audiences to a deeper level and during this process will exert positive effects. While it contributes to bringing new ideas to audiences, the narrative will make audiences better understand the story and its themes.  
 

In the context of media integration and transformation brought by the Internet Plus strategy, the goals for short films should be to improve production values and perfect content. This can not only help short Chinese films find a foothold in the local area, but also develop more opportunities in foreign markets. At present, the creation of short Chinese films should regard the target audiences as both consumers and citizens, focusing on emotion and the significance of content. In this way, audiences can both acquire various emotional experiences and concern about profound development issues underlying human society by watching short films. Short films cannot settle for telling fragmented and daily stories, and instead should go deep into social issues to explore their root causes.    

           

Chu Shuangyue is from the Research Institute of Television and Movie Art at Chinese National Academy of Arts.