The AI circle has been booming recently, short dramas have been exported, and people are making a fortune every day. What is going on?
How did the AI trend come to short dramas? In fact, short dramas have exploded in China since the beginning of 2022.
Short VideoOnce a certain type of short video becomes popular, imitators will follow suit.Mushrooms after rainThey usually pop up. After short videos with plots became popular on Douyin, many accounts that make short videos with plots appeared.
So the question is, how did this type of short video become popular?
In the final analysis, the biggest feature of short videos with plots is that they use the "cool points" of novels as content and use jokes to attract the attention of platform users. Those who like to read online novels must have stayed up all night to read them. Like popular online novels, plot-oriented video accounts with fixed characters are also easy to make viewers addicted. The reason why people can't help but watch a short video and then a serialized short video in the same series is mostly because the screenwriter has designed the plot. Popular plot accounts are nothing more than the following types.
I believe that when you watch Douyin, you can see some short dramas with various plots. Sometimes you will watch more and more without realizing it, and you will become more and more addicted.
With the rise of short videos on TikTok in recent years, creators have seized the high ground of traffic with their own skills and output a variety of wonderful content. As the pace of life of consumers accelerates and their free time gradually decreases, fewer and fewer people are willing to spend a lot of time watching dramas. "From long to short" is a major direction for the development of online dramas in the future, and the emerging industry of micro-short dramas has emerged accordingly.
Among the micro-short dramas, there is a type that has been sought after by many people.
There are thousands of short videos, small ones rely on promotion, big ones rely on luck. Once a certain type of short video becomes popular, imitators will pop up like mushrooms after a rain. After plot-based short videos became popular on Douyin, many accounts that make short video plots appeared.
So the question is, how did this type of short video become popular?
"So rustic, I like it." "So rustic, but I really want to watch the next episode! Hahahaha~" "Why do I want to keep watching the more I watch?" What kind of video makes us call it "rustic" and yet be so addicted to it?
In the final analysis, the biggest feature of short videos with plots is that they use the "cool points" of novels as content and use jokes to attract the attention of platform users. Those who like to read online novels must have stayed up all night to read them. Like popular online novels, plot-based video accounts with fixed characters are also easy to make viewers addicted. The reason why people can't help but watch a short video and then watch a serialized short video in the same series is mostly because the screenwriter has designed the plot.
Generally speaking, the cool dramas we often watch have these routines:
1. The protagonist strikes back
The protagonist, who was mediocre from the beginning, was not as good-looking and rich as the villain, and was bullied everywhere. But one day, he suddenly fought back, suddenly dressed up very nicely and appeared in front of the villain, and told the villain, who was surprised, that he was his boss and was going to fire him.
2. Tear apart the scumbag and the mistress
My scumbag boyfriend was secretly dating my best friend behind my back, and I accidentally discovered it but he remained silent. I secretly collected evidence and exposed their scandal in a public place where all their relatives and friends were present, making them feel ashamed.
3. Punish bad guys
Seeing someone groping a girl on the bus, the protagonist immediately stood by the girl to speak up for her, but the bad guy kept scolding him, so the protagonist immediately raised his phone: it was the evidence of the bad guy's groping that he had just secretly photographed. The bad guy was pinned to the ground, and the driver locked the car door, and everyone wanted to take him to the police station together.
There is no need for tight logic or a very smooth storyline. As long as it hits the audience's "happy points", it can get a high click rate.
It seems that everyone is very familiar with these routines, right?
In which episode do the hero and heroine meet, in which episode do they fall in love with each other, in which episode do they start to be ambiguous with each other, in which episode does the hero's childhood sweetheart, the second female villain, suddenly show up, in which episode do the hero and heroine resolve their misunderstandings and finally get together...you can guess it with your eyes closed.
After all, these routines have already existed in the street novels and old TV series 20 years ago. We all grew up watching such TV series, but I didn’t expect that now, more than 10 or 20 years later, when I open the video player software, I still see this type of drama being updated.
Unlike traditional TV dramas, Douyin dramas can advance the plot faster and amplify the audience's "satisfaction points". Dramas can tell the plot clearly in just a few dozen seconds, so short video dramas, like Jin Yong's martial arts novels and Qiong Yao's novels, have easily occupied everyone's spiritual world.
Every young man has a dream of becoming a hero like Guo Jing, Linghu Chong, or Qiao Feng (at the very least, he wants to be Lord Wei and live a life of luxury with seven wives), and every woman has also imagined herself to be Lu Yiping or Xiaoyanzi, meeting her own domineering CEO or Prince Charming.…
Human nature is universal. There is not much difference in human nature between people fifty years ago and people today.
Similarly, there is not much difference in human nature between Chinese and foreigners. The only difference is that they imagine themselves to be Robin Hood or Snow White.
As the domestic market approaches saturation, more people are doing it, the dividends disappear, and it becomes a red ocean market. So some people turn their attention to overseas markets.
But the problem arises again. If we invite foreigners to perform, the cost will be quite high.
How can we bring these domestic short dramas to overseas markets at a low cost?
With the help of AI, everything becomes possible. No need for real people to appear in the filming, no need to hire foreigners for dubbing, just move the short dramas from Douyin, Kuaishou, and Butterfly, AI head replacement, AI dubbing, one person and a computer can do it, mass-producing hundreds of episodes every day!
This group of people began to test the waters overseas. After all, domestic online literature now has a huge market overseas, and foreign short videos are also very popular. The first fortune made by overseas short dramas was made by the live-action short drama APP ReelShort, which became famous overnight with two overseas short dramas, reaching a turnover of 35 million US dollars, and its market value even soared by 11 billion yuan.
andAI face-changingThe emergence of technology has given short plays wings and allowed them to fly to distant overseas markets.
Why are short dramas so popular overseas now?
1. Tiktok, the overseas version of Douyin, has launched a video payment function, opening up a huge market and paving the way for short drama producers and players.
2. The gradual maturity of AI technology, video face-changing, and AI lip-syncing dubbing technology have reduced the cost of video production.
Current gameplay
There are currently four main ways to play on the market:
1. How to play Chinese and English subtitles
The simplest way to play is to move popular short dramas onto major platforms and use editing techniques to make videos with English and Chinese subtitles. The characters and images remain unchanged, and only dubbing and subtitles are used.
2. Lip Translation
The AI video translation language function is used to process the video. When you are browsing Douyin, you can see Guo Degang speaking English crosstalk. In China, the video is directly translated into English and matched with the lip shape, without changing the face.
3. Film and TV commentary gameplay
By using AI to generate text for short play commentaries, the original films can be batch processed into plot commentary videos. This is also a form of content editing that many people are currently playing with.
4. Change face and voice
With the help of AI technology, we can directly make localized videos for foreigners, combine the character IP and the short drama characters, and use AI to change the face and voice. This approach is the most in line with localization and has more diversified forms of monetization, but it has relatively high requirements for computer configuration.