Short, fast-paced Douyin aims to become the new generation's 'director’s workbook'

Veteran documentary director Li Dongshen has been experiencing anxiety and fear over the past two years: Where have the viewers gone? Do creators like us still have a chance to be seen?

This kind of anxiety is not new. Every generation of image creators will experience a sense of 'being abandoned by the times' at the critical juncture of media transition.

As the main arena for video distribution quietly shifts from large cinema screens and TV sets to small handheld devices, filmmakers who remain true to their creative principles are facing the challenge of 'losing connection with the audience.' This time, however, the change has come faster and more thoroughly—viewers haven’t disappeared; they've simply moved away from the old entry points.

It wasn't until the end of last year, when Li Dongshen received an invitation to participate in Douyin's 'Future Director Support Program' and viewed works by a group of young creators, that his anxiety began to ease.

In his view, Douyin penetrates every crevice of society like capillaries, allowing every ordinary person to become a creator and be seen.

This is an extremely fine-grained and almost irreversible infiltration. It doesn’t build the 'sense of ritual' that cinemas do, nor does it occupy the 'center of the home' like television. Instead, it integrates into daily life in a lower-intensity but higher-frequency manner.

Later, Li Dongshen led his team to create a 125-minute serious documentary with visuals generated by AIGC. He believes that in this era of great transformation driven by algorithms and artificial intelligence, Douyin is a 'Noah’s Ark capable of carrying creators forward.'

On March 31, the launch event for the 'Douyin Future Director Support Program' was held in Beijing. Douyin’s head of entertainment business, Wu Qiong, announced that the second phase of the program had officially begun, shifting from basic support to building growth systems. The initiative will assist creators in continuously improving across three areas: traffic, commercialization, and industry recognition.

Wu Qiong, Head of Entertainment at Douyin

The wind rises from the gentlest beginnings; waves form in the smallest ripples. Known for its 'short, fast, and punchy' content, Douyin aspires to become a new generation's 'director training manual.'

By the end of 2025, Douyin launched the 'Future Director Support Program,' offering targeted assistance to creators with strong content production capabilities through traffic support, funding, industry resources, and commercial collaboration opportunities. The goal is to encourage creators to complete a virtuous cycle of content creation, operation, and monetization, producing more influential works.

Traditional film and television industries have long been constrained by high barriers to entry, high costs, and long cycles. The pressure on return on investment has made creative endeavors increasingly conservative, making it difficult for niche topics and emerging creators to gain access. Countless individuals with directorial aspirations are kept outside the industry gates.

Over the past few months, Wu Qiong has witnessed many tenacious dreams striving to break through and observed numerous creators evolving from lone efforts to professional upgrades.

Some people seek traffic, hoping more viewers will discover their work. Others want cash support to buy equipment, allowing them to shoot better multi-camera productions. One student wrote over 40 pages of PowerPoint slides just to prove they genuinely needed funds, applying for 8,000 yuan in financial aid. Some directors even acted in their films to save costs.

According to Wu Qiong, the program’s first phase covers three major content categories: lightweight, highly interactive original variety shows; story shorts emphasizing cinematic visual storytelling and humanistic values; and documentaries combining authentic documentation with in-depth narratives.

Currently, Douyin has collaborated with over 300 creators, launching more than 100 works with cumulative views surpassing 3 billion. During the Spring Festival period, project-backed creators contributed to six movie spin-off shorts, receiving over 1.8 million likes and achieving over 200 million views.

What truly matters about this data isn’t the scale but the signal: audiences don’t reject long-form content—they reject ineffective and low-quality content. Duration has never been the barrier; content density is what counts.

In the age of celluloid and traditional filmmaking, directing was a rarefied profession at the pinnacle of the pyramid, wielding the power of visual expression while ordinary people could only passively consume as spectators.

The emergence of platforms represented by Douyin has broken this 'power monopoly.' With an extremely low threshold for creation, it has returned video production to the masses, allowing every person who loves life and is skilled at expression to become a recorder of life and a storyteller. This is not only an iteration of content platforms but also a decentralization of cultural dissemination power, an inevitable trend in the rise of popular culture.

@Haha Big Gold Tooth’s variety show 'Devil Winter Travelogue' challenges six rappers to complete a two-day, one-night game challenge, being called the 'Running Man of the rap circle.' @Weekend Universal Gravity’s 'Blind Date' uses a 1v6 blind-dating format, creating multiple viral hits. Within just a few months, their followers grew from 6,000 to 440,000, with commercial orders now too numerous to handle.

In the short film category, @Zhongchuan Wu Baby successfully filmed the wildly imaginative sci-fi story 'The Three-Body Invasion of Zhongchuan Campus.' @Jiang Wen Yu's 'Little Hua' reinterprets the painful invasion of China through symbolic expressions, garnering over 2.63 million likes, proving that high-quality mid-length videos on Douyin also have strong communicative power and commercial value. @Old Cloth Crease’s short film 'That Stick' collaborates with the movie 'The Blade: Wind Rising Over the Desert,' featuring actors like Wu Jing, Yu Shi, Xiong Jinyi, and Lin Qiunan, receiving over 570,000 likes.

@Old Cloth Crease was originally a stage actor who turned to making short films on Douyin due to a lack of acting opportunities. With platform support, he gained chances to collaborate with top artists. 'Short films are not a monk's miserable task; they allow us to enjoy creation while fulfilling our lives,' he said. 'This initiative enables those of us dedicated to scriptwriting, texture, and performance to continue confidently.'

In the documentary category, @Zi Feiqiu focuses on Emperor Qin Shi Huang, using reliable historical facts, moderate academic depth, and an engaging narrative style to create 'understandable serious historical documentaries.' @Qin Xiaoyue’s documentary retraces a train journey across China from years ago, seeking out strangers met by chance to rediscover the original passion.

Among these creators are professional production companies and well-known actors, as well as unknown students and newly established teams.

In Wu Qiong's view, all of them could be future directors. 'The Future Directors Support Plan is becoming a dream incubator for young creators.'

With the second phase of the Future Directors Support Plan launched, they plan to 'set more ambitious goals and take more concrete actions.'

Wu Qiong stated that Douyin will provide 10 billion units of traffic support, offering guaranteed commercial orders for high-quality viral content to help creators achieve 'self-reliance,' completing a positive cycle from production, operation, monetization, to reproduction. Outstanding works will be honored at Douyin Movie Encounter Night and the Douyin Creators Conference, ensuring each creator has a stable audience base and clear commercial path.

For the three distinct categories—variety shows, short films, and documentaries—the project has formulated precise support strategies. In the variety show category, Douyin collaborates with iQIYI to produce high-end variety shows, extending platform content into long-form premium productions. For the short film category, creators are provided with resources such as industry film festival screenings and collaborations with movie IPs. In the documentary category, creators receive opportunities to work with professional supervisors and other industry resources.

Partnering with long-video platforms, connecting with film festival resources, and collaborating with film IPs—this indicates that TikTok is attempting to break the boundaries between short-form and long-form video, as well as online content and traditional cinema, building a complete chain of 'content creation - incubation - growth - going viral'.

By 2026, TikTok plans to promote over 500 high-quality directorial works to go live and create representative annual case studies across different categories, fostering a stable OGC self-produced content ecosystem.

TikTok's push into premium mid-length and long-form video isn't merely about expanding content; it's a strategic positioning concerning platform identity, industry landscape, and ecosystem influence. Currently, competition in the short-video industry has entered its later stages, and after traffic dividends have peaked, content quality and ecosystem construction will become the core competitiveness for platforms.

According to data from TikTok's 2025 Creator Conference, the playback duration of high-quality content increased by 220% year-on-year, 17 times more than ordinary content, reflecting a shift in user demand from entertainment to practical value and deeper emotional resonance.

Renowned director Ning Hao stated at the launch event that the visual freedom brought by mobile internet and smartphones is redefining what it means to be a director and what constitutes a work. The threshold for filmmaking has disappeared, and everyone is the director of their own lives, exploring new possibilities.

Ning Hao

Actor and director Dong Zijian believes that the smallest, most genuine moments in life are the most touching. Short films and feature films can influence each other, and those moments that move audiences in short films may one day become the theme of a movie.

The launch of TikTok’s Future Director Support Program marks a new phase in the competition among short-video platforms: shifting from a battle for traffic to a focus on value cultivation, and from UGC free growth to meticulous OGC development.

Traditional film and television, constrained by investment return pressures, tends to be relatively conservative in terms of subject matter, casting, and storytelling. TikTok, on the other hand, adopts a relatively nimble approach, providing fertile ground for overlooked subjects and exploring the application of AI and other new technologies in film production. At the same time, it serves as an 'incubator' for emerging directors, breaking the talent monopoly of traditional filmmaking and fostering a more open and diverse industry ecosystem.

Whoever defines the standard for good content holds the key to the industry.

When more seasoned directors emerge on Douyin, when Official Generated Content becomes a crucial part of the platform, and when the boundaries between traditional film and television and short-video platforms further blur, 2026 may well be a year of significant transformation in China's film and TV content ecosystem.

Conclusion

The so-called new generation 'director's workbook' is not just about giving young creators a platform to practice on; it’s more like 'rewriting' how the profession of directing is cultivated.

In the past, directors often emerged from high-barrier industrial systems, requiring resources, qualifications, and an entry ticket before they could produce work. Today, Douyin has broken down creation into a series of repeatable, actionable steps that offer instant feedback and continuous refinement, transforming directors from 'chosen ones' into 'people who grow through practice.'

Its greater significance lies not in nurturing a few lucky newcomers but in making more people believe again: visual expression is not a privilege reserved for the few, and creation doesn't have to wait until everything is perfectly in place to begin.

Author: Wu Zi

Editor: Gao Peijun

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