On the wedding night, the eldest lady betrayed the family and eloped with her lover, and in desperation, a maid from a poor background married into a wealthy family instead of the eldest miss. In the life after marriage, the maid is trembling, but full of loopholes, but I don't know why she has never been debunked by her husband...
Under pressure from her parents at home, the girl had to obey her parents' arrangement to marry an honest man. After marriage, in the face of her incompetent and cowardly husband, she began to regret it, but by coincidence found that her husband turned out to be the leader of the most powerful organization in the world...
Now the famous wolf king is a powerful existence that makes the entire demon world fearful, but when facing a human girl, he is known for his cruelty and tyranny, but he is gentle and willing to turn into a wolf dog to protect silently...
From the return of the son-in-law, the contradiction between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, to the domineering president, the true and false money, the eye-catching micro-short drama content on the domestic short video platform has also made netizens want to stop overseas.
Micro-dramas have become a new favorite in 2023. According to Zhixiang's overseas observation, many leading companies going overseas are planning to enter the game.
Alex, who is engaged in short drama overseas services, introduced to Zhixiang: "This wave of short drama going overseas craze that began in the second half of 2022 is different from the 7-12-minute horizontal screen short drama on Youku, Tencent, and iQiyi, and even shorter than the 5-minute vertical screen short drama on domestic Douyin and Kuaishou, about 2 minutes, with a tighter rhythm and more bloody content, and it is not just placed on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, but on ReelShort, On apps like FlexTV. ”
1, werewolf vampires are true and false, online literary manufacturers compete for short drama tracks
It is not until 2023 that ReelShort has gradually attracted the attention of the overseas circle. But in fact, this wave of micro-dramas going to sea began in the second half of 2022.
On August 7, 2022, a vertical screen short drama app called "ReelShort" was launched, with each episode lasting about one minute. This is already a lot shorter than the previous hot episodes on social media platforms. ReelShort, which was only available in English, has now been added in Indonesian, Spanish, Thai, German, Portuguese and more. According to Sensor Tower data, in July 2023, ReelShort had a total of 1.9 million downloads on Google Play and the AppStore, with a total monthly turnover of $6 million.
Two months later, FlexTV went live, and in its product introduction, it said that it wanted to allow users to enjoy "the highest quality and most exciting video streaming services in a fragmented time." Sensor Tower data shows that in July 2023, FlexTV's total downloads on Google Play and AppStore were about 160,000, with a total monthly turnover of about $500,000. There is still a big gap with ReelShort.
Even so, there are still latecomers entering the game, and in June 2023, an app called "GoodShort-Movies & Stream TV" was launched, and its distributor was the head enterprise Xinyue Era, which released GoodNovel, GoodFM, BueNovela, MegaNovel and other novel apps. Zhixiang went overseas to learn that the annual revenue of Xinyue Times will reach 10 million in 2021, focusing on the layout of the online novel market in Europe, America and Spanish-speaking areas.
Observing the distributors behind this wave of micro-drama apps, we can find that they all have a deep accumulation in online literature.
The manufacturer behind ReelShort is Chinese Online, Chinese Online's story interactive mobile game "Chapters: Interactive Stories", which unfolds the novel in the form of dialogue, allowing players to make their own choices at some nodes and affect the direction of the plot. "Chapters" once sparked a boom in story-interactive mobile games, later including Pocket Gem's "Episode-Choose Your Story" and Pixelberry's "Choices: Stories You Play", Pocket Gem later received more than $100 million investment from Tencent, and Pixelberry was acquired by South Korean game giant Nexon.
FlexTV was launched by Anyue Network, located in Haizhu District, Guangzhou. In 2018, Anyue has begun to bring entertainment apps and tool apps to overseas markets, and its overseas online reading apps cover 10 languages and accumulate 10 million users. The recruitment platform shows that Anyue has recently released recruitment information for short drama editing, short drama PM producer and other positions.
From the content point of view, the plot of the overseas micro-short drama generally continues the core elements of the overseas web novel, according to the regional division, Europe and the United States are often werewolves, vampires, wealthy families and other themes, Southeast Asia is biased towards mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship, sadomasochism and other family ethics plots, South America will appear betrayal, gangsters and other content, but plots such as marriage and then love, rich family grudges, are universal.
One ReelShort fan commented on the AppStore: "It's good that some of the web articles I've read on other apps are now short videos. "This may mean that the drastic reform of high-quality web novel IP will also have prospects."
Alex said that despite the relevant content precipitation, it still takes a lot of energy to adapt a web novel of hundreds of thousands of words into an episode of less than 2 minutes and a micro-drama script of fifty or sixty episodes, "Within 2 minutes, you need to quickly attract the user's attention at the beginning, and ensure that the plot is complete and can show enough information." At the end, it is necessary to leave suspense so that users want to watch the next episode, in addition to considering the continuity of the plot, how to lay the foreshadowing, how to fill the pit, you must have a strong control. ”
In addition, for Chinese Online, "Chapters: Interactive Stories" and ReelShort are more different, the former is an interactive game where users control the plot trend, the age group is concentrated between 17-22 years old, while ReelShort is only a one-way output of film and television content, there will be no interaction, and the average user age is older.
Prior to this, short dramas appeared on Kuaishou overseas Kwai, as well as on long-form video platforms iQiyi, Youku, Tencent, and of course, TikTok and YouTube Shorts also had some content accounts to try.
Kuaishou, the originator of domestic short dramas, launched the entrance of "Kuaishou Small Theater" in August 2019 and officially laid out the short drama business. In 2021, Kuaishou introduced the mini-drama brand Telekwai on its overseas version of Kwai, and tried it in its main market Latin America, including Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, etc.
It was not until April 2022 that Telekwai was introduced to Brazil, where the official language is Portuguese. In just 3 months since Telekwai launched in Brazil, it has more than 180 short drama accounts and created 3 billion views. Kwai's 18-episode miniseries, Poliana Moça, which launched in Brazil at the end of August 2022, also takes an interactive approach in the penultimate episode, inviting users to vote to decide the plot direction of the finale.
In the Southeast Asian market, where the culture and aesthetics are more similar to China, Chinese long-form video platforms such as iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent have also tried short drama content. At the end of 2021, Tencent Video launched the industry's first micro-short drama brand "Ten Theater", and then iQiyi, Youku, Mango TV, etc. also established their own micro-short drama brands, and gradually moved the micro-short drama channel to the international version of the App. However, compared with short video platforms, short dramas on long video platforms are still longer, with an episode of about 7-12 minutes.
2. The production cost is 30w US dollars, and AI translation of domestic dramas is a horse race
The profit methods of micro-short dramas in the domestic market are relatively perfect, and there are probably 5 kinds of copyright distribution, platform accounting, membership payment, brand commerce, and e-commerce goods. Data shows that as of June 30, 2023, the daily revenue generated by short dramas in China has approached 100 million yuan.
But overseas, the commercialization path of short dramas is not clear. ReelShort, FlexTV, and GoodShort have adopted a paid method of unlocking a single episode after recharging, ReelShort has also tried to watch ads to get app currency to unlock content for free, and GoodShort has tried a subscription system, ranging from $99.99 to $399.99.
Although Kwai and ReelShort also share accounts with partners, accounts that publish micro-short dramas on social media such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts can neither obtain platform billing nor achieve closed-loop payment in the app, and often need to be diverted to the website and then guided to pay. Alex said that there are currently no mini programs on TikTok, and if there are mini programs like Douyin, the monetization of micro-short dramas will be very silky, otherwise it is a long path.
Yu Ke, head of Kuaishou Entertainment's plot business center, once revealed in a report that the current production cost of Kuaishou micro-short dramas will not exceed one million. 2 minute episodes, a total of 25 to 30 episodes, corresponding to 50 to 60 minutes. On average, it is about 20,000 yuan a minute, and the production cost is already high.
Richer, a short drama overseas practitioner, pointed out that it currently costs at least $150,000 to shoot a short drama overseas, and the production cost of an early boutique drama is $300,000, and it only has a hit rate of about 10%. This has brought a lot of economic pressure to short drama overseas manufacturers.
Richer's short drama overseas App team, in the early days, used its own scripts to hire overseas film and television production companies to shoot micro-short dramas, and the cost of a single drama was high, which was not cost-effective from the perspective of market recovery and launch. Later, they selected some scripts, which will be filmed by overseas partners, and at the same time enabled a large number of domestic content, using subtitle translation to enrich the App content, and achieved good results.
However, according to Zhixiang's observation at sea, it is very difficult to find a suitable shooting team overseas. Richer revealed that they tried to find foreigners in China to shoot short dramas, "they are easier to understand when they communicate, and they have a better grasp of the progress and quality of filming in China, and the cost of these domestic foreign actors is slightly higher than that of Chinese actors, but it will still be much lower than that of American production." ”
"In this way, our content costs have been reduced a lot, and we have also found that overseas audiences can also accept short dramas with Chinese faces," Richer said, "but retention and continuous payment are not as good as the quality dramas of European and American faces." If we continue to do Chinese content, it will solidify the tonality of the content platform, so in the future, we will still be more inclined to produce localized content and adopt European and American casts. ”
At present, the number of overseas micro-short dramas is small, and users are still in the stage of "what to see", in order to quickly translate the content of short dramas, manufacturers have adopted AI machine translation + manual methods, and a large number of domestic short dramas are translated and subtitled to overseas users. There are even manufacturers that hire hundreds of interns to manually annotate lines and then translate them.
In the face of this new incremental market, many AI translation service providers have emerged. Zhaoli Technology is one of them, its AI translation language covers many small languages, and has served hundreds of short drama companies and enthusiasts. Wukong, VP of Zhaoli Technology, said: "We have done some tests with some customers, most of the micro-short dramas do not need higher cost manual annotation, as long as they are simply corrected, because even if it is a direct machine translation, the self-traffic posted to overseas social media platforms is also very good, this scene is like Chinese listening to foreigners Chinese, what he said may not be right, but you can understand, so it does not affect the traffic very much." ”
However, in terms of specific implementation, if you want to use AI to serve short dramas with high quality, there are still huge challenges here.
Wukong pointed out that at this stage, if you want to use AI to help short dramas go overseas, in fact, the first thing you face is the problem of efficiency, the selection of algorithm models in the early stage, training, optimization, whether the computing power resources are sufficient, all directly affect the efficiency, if the processing reaches a certain magnitude, this part of the investment is unavoidable, and is relatively high. The optimization of the algorithm model is a continuous investment.
In addition, most of the short dramas purchased by manufacturers are suppressed videos, which have a large number of Chinese subtitles, which need to erase Chinese subtitles, and then replace them with subtitles in the target country, if the subtitles cannot be erased, it may affect the user's perception, and also make users have a clear perception of the second creation video. This part of the processing is also extremely demanding on the server. Our customers will have more requirements for image quality, size, etc., which require a lot of computing power as support.
The second is the quality of localization, although many dramas do not need a large number of annotations at this stage, but in the long run, high-quality content is sustainable, so a more suitable translation engine for short dramas is also needed. This actually requires a lot of annotation, because the context requirements of the short drama are relatively high, the background is relatively strong, and the simple literal translation effect will be relatively poor, so some customers of Zhaoli Technology have to mark separately. This part of the cost is also pulled up, and the same processing efficiency will also be pulled down.
Zhixiang went to sea to observe that most of the manufacturers who transported domestic mini-dramas overseas only did simple subtitle translation, and did not dub. Because the cost of manual dubbing is high, and it is difficult for AI to recognize the timbre and tone of the characters in the skit, Goku said, "There are usually many very subtle tones in the skit, such as aggrieved voices, crying and laughing voices, which are difficult for AI to understand." "Although this part is currently difficult, but the investment in this part is necessary, only by solving the problem of short dramas going overseas from many aspects can we fundamentally let AI give the greatest help to short dramas."
There are also some manufacturers who apply AI to the writing of mini-drama scripts, but although AI can quickly build text frameworks, name protagonists, etc., but limited by technology, some AI models will lose control after the writing content becomes longer, and the generated content often appears a little mechanical.