Author: Number One
Explosive short dramas, with the blessing of AI, what sparks will they collide?
When it comes to short dramas, I believe many people's first impression is still the "Nike Smile" that supported a large number of ghostly area up masters a few years ago. In the eyes of many people, short dramas often refer to those vulgar, short content, many episodes, fast-paced and exciting web series. However, this "a bit low" short drama, is now called the "most profitable track in 2023".
Explosive Short Drama Track
Public data shows that the explosive short drama "Unparalleled" was launched on WeChat mini program on August 25th this year, and the advertising revenue exceeded 100 million yuan after 8 days of broadcast. Since then, the myth of "earning over 100 million yuan in 8 days" has spread in the short drama circle.
Former internet celebrity Mi Meng has also entered this track. The short drama "Black Lotus Ascension Manual" he launched broke 20 million yuan in 24 hours, although multiple platforms have been announced to be removed due to the extreme revenge and bad values of violence rendered by the drama. According to reports from Lanjing Finance and China Economic Net, the daily recharge consumption of paid short dramas on all platforms in China has increased from 40 million yuan in June to 60 million yuan in October, and even reached a peak of 100 million yuan during the National Day period.
In 2022, China's domestic box office was 30.1 billion yuan, and this year the market size of short dramas has approached 20 billion yuan, which is 66% of last year's box office, and according to this year's box office, it is conservatively estimated to be around 50 billion yuan. The market size of short dramas has also approached 40% of the annual box office of movies.
The film industry has developed for over a hundred years and has a mature and complete industrial chain system, while short dramas have achieved nearly half of the box office of movies in just three or four years, and it is still rising rapidly. It's no wonder that the film director Wang Jing has also entered the short drama track, preparing to shoot the vertical short drama "The Foolish Prince", and Hengdian has also become "vertical" store.
Why are short dramas so popular?
When short dramas first appeared, they were in the form of advertisements, with the aim of visualizing the content of popular novels and guiding customers to read the novels.
Even now, short dramas still cannot escape the need to satisfy users' "curiosity" and "excitement", and although they are also a manifestation of fragmented entertainment time, compared to short videos, the plot of short dramas is more coherent and more desirable for people to continue watching.
In addition, the popularity of short dramas is also due to its business model. Short dramas generally monetize through membership subscriptions or pay-per-episode. Users can unlock a single episode by paying 1-2 yuan, and based on 80-100 episodes per work, users would spend an average of 80-200 yuan to watch a complete work, which is obviously higher than the ticket price of many movies. However, using the pay-per-episode model easily gives users the illusion of low consumption.
In terms of costs, compared to movies or microfilms, the production cost of short dramas is low, averaging from hundreds of thousands to 1 million yuan, and the production cycle is short. The largest part of the cost is the advertising expenses, which generally account for 80-90% of the paid revenue of short dramas.
Therefore, if the short drama market wants to continue, the relatively low production cost is one of its must-maintain advantages.
The future of short dramas lies in AI
If asked what the role of AI is, many people would answer "cost reduction and efficiency improvement". If short dramas want to last, their content production must be improved, and improving quality will undoubtedly increase production costs, so in the future, AI will play a greater role in the production of short dramas.
Some time ago, a domestic live-action love and romance video game "I'm Doomed! I'm Surrounded by Beauties" topped the Steam national bestseller list for several days, pushing the "short drama + game" model to the public. Interactive short drama games will be one of the directions for the future development of short dramas.
The core gameplay of interactive short drama games lies in the fact that the development of the game plot will change as players choose different responses.
In this field, AI has already played a significant role. For example, Netease's "Nishuihan" combines AI with NPCs, reducing the gap between NPCs and players, and these intelligent NPCs have independent judgment, personal characteristics, and action goals, and can achieve "free interaction without setting" with players.
Similarly, a few days ago, Bilibili up host Risd_Ruixiaodu integrated ChatGPT into "Genshin Impact", truly achieving "open world", and many viewers exclaimed that game development should follow this. In interactive short drama games, AI can be used to generate corresponding response content, and by using AI to simulate voices and lip-sync tools, the cost of shooting game videos can be greatly reduced, and with the help of MR devices, a better gaming experience can be obtained.
Another development direction for short dramas is going overseas.
Compared to the fierce competition in the domestic short drama market, the overseas short drama market is still in its infancy. Recently, the short drama app "Reelshort" created by Chinese Online reached 2.25 million downloads in October, with revenue reaching 3.5 million US dollars, and even surpassed TikTok for a time, becoming the number one in the entertainment list of the US iOS market. The plot of "domineering president falls in love with me" is indeed a pleasure for all mankind, and it has also given many people in the short drama industry hope for overseas gold mining.
However, shooting with local actors, language, and living scenes will undoubtedly increase the production cost of short dramas.
I don't know if you have watched the video of "Guo Degang speaking English Crosstalk" before. Now AI technology can already replicate voices and perform language translation. If combined with AI face-swapping technology, it is completely possible to use domestic actors for interpretation and transform them into short dramas suitable for overseas markets through AI technology. Some companies are already working on related businesses in this direction.
And just recently, the domestic large-scale video generation team CreativeFitting (Jingying Technology) announced that it has completed a pre-A round of financing of several million US dollars. Its self-developed high-quality video generation model can generate AI short drama videos, and it plans to enter the overseas short drama market and release the world's first AI short drama app.
Obviously, using AI to generate short drama content is no longer just an imagination, but it is getting closer and closer.
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