In the middle of the night in Hengdian, there was silence all around, only the dim light cast by the street lamps. In a café that is open 24 hours a day, Sun Yiran held the script and read it hard. Her face was covered with makeup that couldn't hide her exhaustion, and the light of her phone screen reflected on her puffy eye bags. She is twenty years old this year, and she has just experienced an unexpected explosion, and her career seems to have been pressed the accelerator button, leaving her with no time to breathe.

The makeup artist of the crew privately revealed that in order to find his state, Sun Yiran slapped himself twelve times on the set, and finally even hit him until his nose bleeded, and he couldn't hold down the cotton pad. On a whim, the director added a scene and let her continue to curse with a blood-stained tissue in her mouth. This improvisational performance became the highlight of the whole play, which made the audience addicted. As the clip went viral on social media, the data went all the way.

《家裡家外》上線短短二十四小時，播放量便突破了一億大關，四十八小時后衝上平台熱度榜首，七十二小時後，孫藝燃的粉絲暴漲三百萬，徹底躍升短劇女王。這一切的背後，是短劇行業的野蠻生長，像是一場資本主導的軍備競賽，將演員們推向流水線，速成、速爆、速枯。

Liu Nian is one of the "lucky ones" on this assembly line. Her audition method was simple and rude, she read a few lines to the mobile phone camera, and the producer liked it at a glance, just because her pear vortex position was similar to that of a popular female anchor, and she signed ten sweet pet dramas on the spot. The abnormal development of the short drama market has changed the selection criteria for actors from acting skills to "in line with big data portraits".

And Li Keyi's baby face has become a sweet spot in the short drama market, and it was booked by the five crews in turn. The picture of her wearing a JK uniform in "Gentle Night" and gently feeding the male protagonist a bite of cake was cut into a moving picture and went viral on social media. A look and a smile are enough to bring tens of millions of playbacks, which makes capital flock to it.

But the short drama market doesn't always pamper these upstarts, and Yu Yin's experience is the best example. She has been in the limelight in a short period of time, starring in many popular short dramas one after another, but in just half a year, the attention has plummeted, and there are few film appointments. She fell from the top and even broke down and cried during a live broadcast. The cruelty of short dramas lies in the fact that the "life and death" of actors are completely controlled by data and algorithms, and once the traffic declines, the capital will immediately withdraw and put on a new face.

This model makes the industry seem prosperous, but in fact it is fragile. The high-intensity, high-paced shooting of the short drama makes the actors tired, and even affects their health. During a certain filming kiss scene, the director held a tablet and told the actor word by word: "The angle of the mouth must reach 15 degrees, which is the best sweetness obtained from data analysis." "Even the smile has to cater to the algorithm, is this still acting?

But there are always people who break the rules. Sun Yiran's image of "crooked mother-in-law" can explode precisely because she broke through the established template of the heroine of the short drama. She is no longer the same delicate face, but roaring, hysterically scolding, and even spitting at the camera, and directly picking up the mop dry frame when she catches the junior. This kind of performance with a "sense of madness" makes the audience want to stop. In the sweet and greasy "Silly White Sweet" in the short drama industry, her role is like a strong medicine, tearing off the mask of the traffic game.

然而，在短劇的快節奏更迭中，頂流的保鮮期往往只有幾個月。某資深製片人曾算過一筆賬，培養一個短劇新人，成本約五十萬，而一旦爆紅，三個月內就能回本。但如果半年沒有新作品，市場會迅速遺忘這個人，資本便會毫不留情地換掉他，繼續尋找下一個風口。

那些想擺脫這種消耗戰的演員，正在另尋出路。孫藝燃在爆紅后，果斷推掉了二十部惡女劇本，自費去學習話劇表演，希望跳出短劇的桎梏，尋找更長久的未來。她知道，短劇的紅利終究不會永遠屬於她。

The short dramas in Hengdian hide countless stories of blood and tears. Make-up artists revealed that many skit actors now carry quick-acting heart-saving pills with them, because they may fall down at any time due to the high-intensity work of continuous rotation. Capital only cares about traffic, not people, and the health and even life of actors have become the most luxurious consumables in the short drama industry.

A new round of change is brewing in the skit industry. The progress of technology, the influx of capital, and the adjustment of the rules of the platform are all driving the reshuffle of the market. Only those who can truly grasp the initiative, break the shackles of algorithms, and create works with more depth and vitality will be able to gain a foothold in this skit frenzy. It's just that the road is far more difficult than imagined.

Hengdian in the middle of the night is still full of traffic. The surveillance camera on the street corner silently records all this, but it never appears in the algorithm recommendation.