This summer, the new employees in the video industry are not human

This summer, AIGC technology not only shines in content marketing, but also begins to penetrate into the core links of film and television production, bringing unprecedented immersive experience to the audience. However, the large-scale application of AIGC still faces challenges in technology upgrades and cost investment, and its future development prospects in the film and television industry still need to be further tested by the market and audiences.

Since the TV series "Longing 2" was broadcast on Tencent Video in July, in addition to watching the show and discussing the fate of the characters with friends, Li Shiyun, who calls herself a "fanatic fan of the show", has also developed a new habit - chatting with the character AI. Through the Tencent Yuanbao App or the "AI Dialogue" column on the show's broadcast page on the Tencent Video App, you can communicate with the character AI in the form of text or voice. In the conversation, she feels that the distance between herself and the characters in the show is "closer".

In addition to accompanying viewers in watching TV series, AIGC has also begun to enter the upstream link of content production. This summer, Douyin and Kuaishou launched their first AIGC short dramas: "Sanxingdui: Future Revelation" and "Shanhai Qijing: Breaking the Waves", which respectively chose science fiction and fantasy themes, and all the shots were generated by AI.

From content marketing to short drama production, AIGC is creating changes for the film and television industry through practice. This is related to the accelerated implementation of domestic large-scale model applications - Tencent Yuanbao is the first C-end AI product built based on Tencent Hunyuan large-scale model, which was launched in May this year. After launching the Doubao large-scale model, ByteDance has incubated Doubao App, Button, Jimeng and many other products. Kuaishou Keling Wensheng Video Large Model was officially launched in June this year, and its functions are continuously updated - all of these have laid the foundation for the integration of AIGC with the film and television industry.

This year, the Beijing International Film Festival also set up the AIGC Short Film Unit for the first time, aiming to explore new directions for the development of film and television. However, in the initial stage, the large-scale application of AIGC is inseparable from technology upgrades and cost investment. Changes in content forms and the renewal of communication methods all need to be recognized and affirmed by the audience. What's more, behind each generation of technological waves, there is a process of creating and squeezing out bubbles. For the film and television companies, platforms and other roles involved, benchmarks and successful experiences are very important, but whether they can bring intuitive growth is not clear enough.

1. Playing the character AI while watching "Long Sang Si 2"

The so-called character AI is a product jointly created by Tencent Yuanbao and Tencent Video. By clicking the "Go to Dialogue" button on the corresponding page, the audience can enter the world of the characters in "Chang Xiangsi 2" and communicate with them through text and voice.

At the beginning of the launch, there were a total of 9 characters for the audience to choose from. According to the development of the plot between the heroine and the four male characters, four classic scenes were set up, including "Xuan is jealous", "Tu Shanjing's first kiss at the seaside", "Chishui Fenglong chases his wife", and "Fangfeng Bei teaches Xiaoyao to protect herself". Li Shiyun has just forced the emperor's brother to ask what he wants, and he has to appease the cold Hydra. In the middle, he probably has to get in touch with the fox official match and the fourth male guest. She described the process of talking to the character AI as a "self-made small theater", "I have been guiding the conversation I hope to achieve. Although I don't know what answer I will get, the feedback given by the other side is relatively close to the character, and it has the flavor of the play."

After the experience, the power plant found that Tencent Yuanbao equipped "Long Xiang Si 2" with a variety of gameplay such as character interaction, plot interaction, character COS, etc. Not only does the voice response of the character AI fit the character in expression and tone and restore the original sound, but the text response also adds actions and expressions in brackets.

In round after round of dialogue, the character AI can continuously generate personalized communication content, which is very similar to the interactive process in otome games such as "Love and Producer" and "Light and Night Love" - ​​the difference is that the option path of the latter is derived from the game script setting. No matter how the player chooses, he can only trigger a relatively fixed plot, and there is no possibility of self-writing. In addition to training and fine-tuning based on the plot of the original novel, the content of the script data, and related knowledge graphs, the reaction of the character AI of "Long Sang Si 2" will also be "upgraded" as the dialogue data increases. In other words, while the audience explores the character AI with curiosity, they also complete its re-development, so that it can have a deeper understanding of the core characteristics of the character, based on the plot, but beyond the plot.

At the same time, based on technologies such as image fusion generation, Tencent Yuanbao meets the audience's demand for "same stills" through character COS gameplay. This function is similar to the Miaoya Camera under Alibaba Entertainment, and the presentation effect is more like a simplification of the latter. After users upload their personal front-facing photos, they can generate the same stills of the characters in the play according to the template selection.

From the data performance point of view, the character AI is a successful attempt. Less than three days after the launch, the total interaction heat (that is, the number of questions users asked to the character AI) of "Long Xiang Si 2" has exceeded 15 million. The Tencent Yuanbao team even urgently expanded the capacity, increasing the conversation limit to more than 10 times the original, and further optimizing the experience. As of press time, its total interaction heat has exceeded 100 million.

An industry insider told the power plant that games, film and television dramas, and advertisements are all commercial directions that are more suitable for large-scale model product capabilities. Especially in the film and television industry, the improvement of tools will promote the improvement of productivity. Specifically, for the character AI of "Long Sang Si 2", for the audience, this creates an immersive experience that is synchronized with the drama. Whether it is fans of the drama, fans of the characters, or fans of the actors, they can get more interactions, deepen their perception of the plot, establish a closer connection with the characters, and then derive rich creations-and this is also the effect that the drama marketing hopes to achieve. The difference is that most of them were previously completed through related topic interactions, secondary content linkage, highlight segment releases, and actor live broadcasts.

In fact, before "Chang Xiang Si 2", Tencent Yuanbao had launched character AI for "Joy of Life". The mode is basically the same, including dialogues with character AI such as Fan Xian, Lin Wan'er, Chen Pingping, Wang Qinian, and the eldest princess, as well as plot test challenges, plot interactive interpretation, stills COS, etc. However, its volume is not as high as "Chang Xiang Si 2", which is related to the different audiences of different dramas. The latter has stronger fan stickiness, the story is emotional, and the interactive gameplay with character AI is more in line with it.

2. Douyin and Kuaishou compete for the “new species” of AIGC short dramas

This is just one example of the combination of AIGC and the film and television industry. In addition to relatively extensive marketing methods, AIGC has also begun to enter the core links of content production. This summer, Douyin and Kuaishou launched their first AIGC short dramas: "Sanxingdui: Future Revelation" and "Shanhai Qijing: Breaking the Waves". The former is a collaboration with Bona Film Group. Bytedance's AI creation tool Jimeng AI is based on Doubao large model technology and participates in script creation, concept and storyboard design, image to video conversion and other processes; the latter is produced by Kuaishou Xingmang Short Drama, and Kuaishou's self-developed video generation large model Keling provides in-depth technical support.

At present, the total number of views of "Sanxingdui: Future Revelation" on Douyin is 37.56 million, and it has been updated to 13 episodes; "Shanhai Qijing: Breaking the Waves" has a total of 5 episodes, and the total number of views on Kuaishou has exceeded 51.88 million. In the comment area of ​​these two short dramas, some users gave positive comments on the visual effects, leaving messages such as "the special effects are quite powerful" and "strongly request to be made into a movie". In addition, some different voices have also appeared, such as "the characters' expressions are relatively stiff" and "the story needs to be greatly improved."

Previously, the power plant participated in the screening of "The Mirror of Mountains and Seas: Breaking the Waves". On the screen of the theater, the hair of the ancient mythical beasts was clearly visible, and the huge waves and flame special effects were very realistic. The director of the play, Chen Kun, believes that in the early stages of the development of AI film and television, it is necessary to create based on the pain points of traditional film and television - in traditional film and television, the two major tracks of fantasy and science fiction are subject to the high cost and long cycle of CG special effects. Although they have a solid audience demand base, their development is relatively limited. The addition of AI has improved the efficiency of the entire production process.

The power plant learned that the production process of short dramas is basically the same as that of long dramas, starting from script creation to post-production, but the former takes less time and has a smaller team. The shooting cycle of vertical screen short dramas is usually about 1 week, plus the pre-production preparation and post-production editing, it can often be completed in less than 1 month. The shooting time of horizontal screen short dramas is slightly longer, usually more than 20 days, which involves the time required for visual post-production works.

Chen Kun revealed that in the past, short dramas of the same size and quality, whether shot on location or produced in the form of animation, would take at least 3-6 months to produce. However, "The Mirror of Mountains and Seas: Breaking the Waves" took only 2 months to produce, with a team size of about a dozen people, and the overall cost was reduced by "one-Nth", where "N is greater than or equal to 4".

"Spending little money to do big things" and meeting more user needs at a lower cost have been the direction that the film and television industry has been working towards in recent years. Chen Yiyi, head of Kuaishou's entertainment business, said that there are "a lot" of short drama users on the Kuaishou platform, with more than 270 million users watching short dramas every day, and more than 300 short dramas with over 100 million views. In addition, there are more than 100,000 creators creating content related to short dramas. She mentioned that from the data, the content of Kuaishou's short drama boutique brand "Xingmang Short Drama" is in short supply, and the empowerment of AIGC technology can greatly improve the efficiency of short drama creation.

At present, the shots of "Shanhai Qijing: Cutting Waves" are all realized by the path of Wensheng pictures and pictures. As for the use of Wensheng videos, Chen Kun said that the consistency of the pictures cannot be achieved at the current stage, and the aesthetics of the shots cannot be unified-the duration of each shot is basically less than 5 seconds, and they need to be spliced ​​one by one. In fact, even if it follows the experienced path, as Kuaishou's first attempt to use AI technology in the field of film and television production, the visual effects of "Shanhai Qijing: Cutting Waves" still have room for improvement. As some viewers have perceived, the body movements of the characters in the play are not coordinated enough, the vividness of the expressions needs to be continuously strengthened, and the development of the plot is still in the "primary" stage driven by narration. Chen Kun told the power plant that these are the difficulties faced by the team. Therefore, in the subsequent creation, the content generation at the level of character emotions and action interactions will be strengthened, and the narration will be separated as much as possible. With the advancement of technology, the complexity of the story will gradually increase.

3. Pursuing the dream of film and television industry, the possibility of AIGC

The leading companies and platforms have given a relatively clear attitude towards the integration of AIGC and the film and television industry. Chen Yiyi said that he hopes that more and more creators who are highly sensitive to technology, have certain production capabilities, and are willing to try new things will participate and jointly expand the space for the combination of short dramas and AI. To this end, Kuaishou launched the "Xingmang Short Drama × Keling Big Model" creator incubation plan, which will provide creators with initial financial support and incentives to help short drama creators create better content, and will iterate the incubation plan in the future.

Bona Film Group CEO Jiang Defu mentioned that he hopes to rely on the AIGC short drama model to explore market trends, thereby gaining more improvements in the planning process, making investment in long dramas and movies "more certain" and the investment direction "more accurate." From short dramas to long dramas and then to movies, the "three-step" approach is implemented to form a closed loop in the industrial chain.

However, in the opinion of a short drama practitioner, if you want to develop the application of AIGC in the content production of the film and television industry from short dramas to long dramas and movies, you still need continuous iteration of technology, "exploration" of more works, and "reducing costs." After all, not all players are like the leading companies and platforms, who can set up independent departments for AIGC business and invest generously. For most short drama producers, real shooting is still the fastest, time-saving, safest and most acceptable way, and it is not expensive. The cost of a work can be controlled between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of yuan. After using AIGC, "risks and effects need to be guaranteed, and this is the case for short dramas, not to mention long dramas."

What's more, in addition to visual effects, the core of a work and the way of telling the story are the key to attracting the audience. At this stage, it is difficult for AIGC to fully participate in script creation. In addition, there are certain limitations in the areas it can cover. "If the short play goes overseas, maybe it can be used for face-changing and translation? To be honest, I don't really understand it." said the aforementioned person.

However, there seems to be no so-called threshold for using AIGC to shorten the distance between users and content and to leverage marketing. Especially compared with the topic marketing that has already made the audience tired, the drama marketing wrapped in AIGC is novel and interesting. Recently, Li Shiyun's dialogue partner has changed to a bird, to be precise, a white-feathered golden-crowned eagle named "Maoqiu", the mount of Xiangliu in "Longing 2". Like many viewers, she posted screenshots of the "interesting" conversations between herself and the character AI on social platforms to share the joy of "eating sugar". "You can only see the movements of this guy in the play. I can hear it chirping across the screen and ask it some questions. It feels quite cordial."

A relevant person in charge of Tencent Yuanbao said that in the future, they will study more integration points with AI for the IP of such film and television dramas, and conduct more exploration on how AI can expand the boundaries of film and television dramas, how to allow users to participate more in the co-creation of dramas, and how to provide emotional value to users through characters.

However, every emergence of a technological wave is accompanied by the creation of bubbles. What users need are new creations and applications, not concepts and gimmicks that remain on paper. The former "VR outlet" is a lesson for us. In other words, whether it is content marketing, short drama production, or even more in-depth participation in the upstream and downstream of the industry, AIGC and the film and television industry need to find opportunities to leverage each other and repeatedly test the waters through suitable themes. Setting a benchmark is just a starting point. To truly form an industrial application, more cases of breaking the circle are needed, not just once.

(Li Shiyun is a pseudonym in this article.)

Reporter: He Chang, Editor: Gao Yulei

Source: WeChat public account "Power Plant"