【Audio-visual observation】

  "Home and Outside" has become a masterpiece in the micro-short drama field in 2025 with its good market performance: the number of views exceeded 1 billion in 3 days of online playback, and the number of topics on the entire network exceeded 4 billion in half a month. The birth of this popular product not only breaks the long-term production and operational pattern of the micro-short drama industry, but also marks a fundamental change in content creation thinking - from sensory bombing that relies on "strong stimulation" to emotional connections that pursue "strong resonance". At present, some content production is trapped in the data logic of input flow and algorithms, affecting the quality of the content. The success of "Home and Outside" proves that real life narratives, sincere emotional expressions, and sincere artistic creations have the power to penetrate algorithmic barriers and reach the audience's hearts.

  "Home and Outside" opens up a new track for the creation of realistic themes of micro-short dramas. The play aims at ordinary people, integrating the regional culture, ethical and emotional narratives of Bashu with memories of the reform and opening up era, telling the warm story of a reorganized family working together in the 1980s in the tide of the times. The high frequency of refreshing points is a common feature of micro-short dramas now, and it caters to some viewers' needs for emotional satisfaction and emotional remission. However, these cheap refreshing points are difficult to support the social value of the series, nor can they provide the audience with lasting spiritual nourishment and in-depth aesthetic experience. In "Home and Outside", the heroine Cai Xiaoyan dares to love and hate, and does not fuss inside. She is a well-known "false woman"; the hero Chen Haiqing is responsible and responsible, and is a "harrowing ear" for all housework and paying wage cards. This reorganized couple with different personalities gives full care to the children of both parties, and they work together to build a warm little home. The creator buried the camera in the emotional folds, captured the dramatic tension of life itself, and through real and delicate observations and humorous and warm narratives, it showed warm and natural emotional interactions and the process of reorganizing the family to build trust, which triggered the audience's emotional resonance.

  For some time, the micro-short drama industry has fallen into a misunderstanding of user perception: based on stereotypes, practitioners simply position their core audience as a "sinking market" and apply some routine models of online literature in content production. This innate deficiencies in the creative logic leads to a paradoxical phenomenon - the audience is addicted to the instant pleasure brought by fragmented narratives, but they have a shame to watch the show due to the low quality of the content and vulgar style, and even doubt their own aesthetic taste. The emergence of "Home and Outside the Home" breaks this industry dilemma. In terms of audience perception, the industry bias of "micro-short dramas are exclusive to the sinking market". In terms of viewing ethics, it frees the audience from the psychological burden of "watching micro-short dramas is a low-level fun" and realizes the transformation from "secretly watching dramas" to "active sharing".

  China's micro-short drama industry is at a critical juncture of transformation and upgrading. Although the hit broadcast of "Home and Outside the Home" has injected new vitality into the industry, we must be clear that breakthroughs relying solely on individual high-quality works are far from enough to change the overall ecology of the industry. At present, the micro-short drama industry still faces many deep-seated problems: from the content level, problems such as homogeneity, vulgarity, and refreshing and cheapness are still prominent; from the perspective of business model, a single investment flow mechanism and "traffic black box" restrict the healthy development of the industry; from the production side, the speculative mentality of small investment and fast returns has led to the frequent occurrence of "bad money drives out good money". Even "Home and Outside" inevitably has limitations of patterned sketches and joke expressions.

  In 2024, the market size of China's micro-short dramas has exceeded 50 billion yuan, and the industry is ushering in a turning point from quantitative change to qualitative change. To achieve real transformation and upgrading, we must fundamentally change the development logic: on the one hand, we must break through the shackles of the single investment model, expand the user group by deeply exploring the value of content, and increase the proportion of high-quality users; on the other hand, we must establish a benign business ecosystem and explore non-traffic monetization paths. The successful experience of "Home and Outside the Home" shows that only by adhering to content innovation, value improvement and audience reconstruction can micro-short dramas move from "traffic sales" to "efficient cultivation era".

  It is gratifying that under the guidance of policies, more and more practitioners have begun to actively embrace change. They are rooted in the fertile land of the industry, abandon vulgar content, and actively explore high-quality development paths. Of course, this transformation is not achieved overnight. Those creators who are still mass-producing "smooth sugar substitute" need to understand: what can really impress the audience is never the waterfall recommended by the algorithm, but the glimmer that can shine into the audience's spiritual hometown - there is the fireworks of life, the rhythm of time, and the resonance of human nature across time and space. Facing problems and being brave in innovation, China's micro-short dramas will eventually achieve a qualitative leap.

  (Author: Zhou Rong, deputy secretary-general of the Film and Television Art Professional Committee of the China Television Art Exchange Association)

[Editor in charge: Tang Wei]