The Paper reporter Fan Jialai and Xi Guo Sihang
"Suddenly, I saw an overwhelming number of reports, and countless people flocked to it, as if they were not making a skit but picking up gold. "The end of 2023 is approaching, and short dramas have become the hottest content outlet this year.
Recently, North American producer Bailey admitted in an interview with The Paper that he has entered the European and American short drama market since June this year, and in just half a year, he has witnessed many scams, "defrauding investors' money, cheating scripts, cheating tidbits, and even taking other people's popular works and changing them, saying that they made them themselves." ”
Love after marriage, sweet revenge, wealthy sadomasochism...... According to third-party data, in November this year, the total monthly turnover of short dramas going overseas has exceeded 10 million US dollars. With the popularity of Chinese short dramas overseas, industry chaos has also emerged one after another.
"The skit has just broken out, and we didn't expect it to be so popular overseas. Yang Ruizhi, chief operating officer of Chinese Online (300364), a leading stock in the concept of short dramas, told The Paper. A number of practitioners revealed that more than ninety percent of the Chinese film and television teams in Los Angeles have filmed short dramas, and the director's schedule is generally scheduled after March next year.
Various unexpected routines have also appeared, and it has been said that as long as the domestic short drama "AI face change" is used, hundreds of thousands of production costs can be saved and overseas audiences can be harvested. In this regard, Liu Jinlong, the overseas head of Kyushu Culture, a short drama company, admitted to reporters that AI technology is not yet mature, and no manufacturers have been seen to officially use it, and it is still far from commercialization.
There are many scams, no money,
The skit leader also wanted to give up
"There are too many people in the industry who are fishing in troubled waters, and they all want a piece of the pie. Talking about the current situation of the industry that is somewhat rolled up today, Bailey sighed.
The most common scam is a "second-hand dealer" disguised as a "popular director". Specifically, after diverting the short drama materials shot by other teams for their own use, pretending to be their own work, attracting investors, and then looking for a new film team on social media, it is equivalent to the role of a "second-hand dealer", but the effect of this shooting is naturally greatly reduced.
"The investors of short dramas are often in China, and the producers are distributed in North America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other regions, and the investors are not clear about the specific information and appearance of the director, which leads to such scams are very common, and many companies find that their works have been stolen, but it is time-consuming and energy-consuming to really hold the other party accountable. Meilan, a producer of a short drama production company, told reporters.
When it comes to specific income, Meilan revealed, "A daily income of one million is definitely non-existent, and it can only be said that it is not a loss." "At present, the income model of overseas shooting teams is mainly based on a fixed proportion of service fees, usually 10%-30% of the total cost. The shooting cost of overseas short dramas is often 150,000 US dollars for a single film, that is to say, the overall income that the film team can get from shooting a drama is about 15,000-45,000 US dollars, which is also distributed to the upstream and downstream, including directors, producers, cameramen, etc.
As a representative of domestic short dramas going overseas, ReelShort, a subsidiary of Chinese Online, once surpassed TikTok and rushed to the first place in the entertainment list of the iOS store in the United States. Yang Ruizhi told the surging news reporter that the company has been laying out short dramas since 2021, and the initial idea was very simple, thinking that it could be realized by directly adding a translation overseas, but in fact the ROI (return on investment) was not good.
The home page of ReelShort, a short drama app owned by Chinese Online
Yang Ruizhi said that he almost gave up due to the poor playback data of the short dramas going to sea, until he started shooting short dramas with local American actors, "At first, it was relatively dull, but about the eighth part, the phenomenal werewolf-themed short drama suddenly became popular." ”
Liu Jinlong said frankly that the platform side does not have tens of millions of cash reserves, so don't enter the overseas market, "At present, the development of the industry is still in the early stage, and it is the norm to lose millions or tens of millions, and people lose money every day." ”
Cultural differences are the biggest problem
For overseas practitioners, a good script is the most scarce resource.
"In Chinese short dramas, it is common to see actors suddenly kneeling down and slapping themselves in the mouth while saying I was wrong, which is called 'cool point'. Bailey told reporters, but overseas, it is difficult for the audience to understand, and even foreign actors will ask the director what he means when he is halfway through. It is difficult for Chinese screenwriters to fully integrate into foreign culture, and foreign screenwriters do not understand what Chinese short dramas and online texts are.
"I often say that my company is a shit script factory. Bailey said with a smile that because no one can figure out the law of explosion in overseas markets, what themes are popular, investors often rush to the top, resulting in serious homogenization.
"Now when I see the werewolf script, I'm about to vomit blood.,Many people don't know that overseas werewolves have ABO (editor's note: Alpha/Beta/Omega, three common characters in European and American fan literature).,I don't know anything.,Just write it blindly.,It's very angry to watch.。 Meilan gave an example, before the emergence of popular themes such as werewolves and vampires on the ReelShort platform, which led to various crews following the trend of filming, and for a while, almost all the major short drama crews in North America were filming werewolves.
爆款狼人短剧《Fated to my forbidden Alpha》
The "Today you ignore my love, tomorrow I can't afford to climb up" that many domestic short dramas love, is not applicable overseas, "European and American audiences prefer heroism, such as Superman, Batman saves the world, or Cinderella becomes Snow White, and is especially uninterested in plots such as sons-in-law." Meilan said that in China, film and television dramas with the theme of hegemony are often accompanied by the heroine of the White Lotus, who is simple and kind, and often has others (often men) to lend a helping hand when encountering difficulties, but European and American audiences obviously prefer the story of the heroine's self-struggle, and these cultural differences lead to the fact that good scripts are currently very scarce.
Actors who fit the plot are also very sought-after. Because short dramas are often romance themes, they need to lead the actors with high appearance and good acting skills, and the income of short dramas is often not as good as that of film and television dramas, and the logic of the plot is not strong, which is a bit "Long Aotian", and many actors are reluctant to shoot. Bailey revealed that the price of skit actors has risen to about $400 a day, close to the mid-stream level of the American film and television industry.
Can "AI face swap" save hundreds of thousands?
Just legends
A phenomenon worth paying attention to is that recently, in the short drama exchange circle, there have been technology companies peddling "AI face swap" services, claiming that as long as AI face swapping is carried out on domestic short dramas, they can "one-click synthesize" overseas short dramas, which can save at least more than 300,000 yuan in costs.
A 90-second AI face-swapping video obtained by the reporter shows that the Chinese "president" who was originally sitting in the office has generated the image of an overseas president with one click through AI face-swapping, and the heroine who played against him has also turned into a foreign woman.
The "AI Face Swap" shown in the clip
According to industry insiders, the current basic price of AI face swapping is about 50,000-100,000 yuan/unit, in addition to lip-sync translation, there is also an additional fee, and the overall package price is about 200,000 yuan/unit. Based on the cost of 150,000 US dollars for an overseas short drama, if the domestic short drama (the cost is about 500,000 yuan), plus the face replacement fee of 200,000 yuan, the overall cost savings will reach at least hundreds of thousands of yuan.
However, what seems to be a low-cost, high-return AI face-swapping skit is currently more like a gimmick.
"It's just a 90-second clip, and if the whole film uses AI to change faces, it will be difficult to calibrate the mouth shape and the characters' words. Meilan admitted that in her opinion, AI face swapping is quite similar to the "IQ tax", because the most attractive thing about short dramas is the plot and content, not the actors' faces. In addition, face swapping involves copyright issues, and there are certain legal risks behind it. What's more, the current face-swapping technology is relatively rudimentary, and the effect is quite rough, making it almost impossible to attract viewers to pay to watch.
Although it is still in the reckless growth period, the prospect of short dramas going overseas is generally optimistic in the industry. Yang Ruizhi told the surging news reporter that "high-quality" is the ultimate trend of the development of short dramas at home and abroad, whether it is at home or abroad, short dramas are the derivative method of IP, and this market has just begun.
In Liu Jinlong's view, at present, short dramas going overseas are still an emerging industry, and everyone is groping, and leading companies will emerge within 1-2 years, and the entire market will become a "winner-takes-all". "In three to five years, if the global short drama market can reach more than 10 billion US dollars, we hope to promote Chinese short dramas to the global market in the process. ”
(Meilan and Bailey are pseudonyms in the article)
Editor of this issue: Zou Shan